Central TX wants fastest Internet

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Three Central Texas cities are pushing the world's largest search engine company to bring the world's fastest Internet to their towns.

Austin, Round Rock, and Cedar Park city leaders are all pushing Google for Internet that would be 100 times faster than any other service.

The program, called Google Gigabit , would allow people to download feature length films, stream teleconferences, and perform other tasks at speeds over the internet not possible with current Internet service providers.

Google is asking for proposals from cities across the country, and would provide internet service for up to 500,000 people on a test basis, the company said on its Web site.

Austin city leaders are trying to impress Google executives in town for 2010's South By Southwest Interactive Festival.

The city has set up a Web site to attract Google's Internet service to town.

"We're inviting people to come to the website, share ideas, plot themselves on a map tat we're going to put up," said Chip Rosenthal, Chairman of the City of Austin's Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission.

Rosenthal, a software developer, said Austin is a great hub to attract Google's experiment because of the large number of electronics and software companies and technologically-savvy people in town.

"What Austin can do is really give [Google] confidence that people would be successful [with the service]," said Rosenthal. "We have a lot of people that are really connected."

The cities of Round Rock and Cedar Park are looking at the service as well.

Cedar Park will talk about the proposal Thursday at its city council meeting and Round Rock already has a Web site to attract the service to town. 

"The City of Round Rock feels it would be a great location for Google to test its new service," said the City's website specifically set up for Google's service. "We are looking for your help in providing some documentation to give to Google."

Google is requesting information from cities across the country.

Other cities have gotten creative, using flash mobs, diving into freezing lakes, and changing the city's name to Google itself.

The proposal is a big push because current bandwidth speeds in the United States are regulated by cable and phone companies and do not reach more than about 10 megabytes per second. Google's service would provide download speeds at one gigabit per second.

Google will accept applications through March 26, and make a decision later in 2010, the company said on its blog .