Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis, far left, listens as Portland Mayor Charlie Hales discusses the possibility of Google expanding its optical fiber network into Portland and surrounding cities. Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis took the lectern at Portland City Hall this week and noted that Andrew Carnegie's job-building legacy was to promote education through the construction of libraries.
How quaint, particularly in the face of Google's announcement that it would consider installing ultra-high-speed fiber-optic cable in Portland and surrounding cities including Gresham. Yet it perfectly set Bemis up to make his point: The present and future educational and economic fortunes of Gresham and the region depend upon the unbridled delivery of information directly to homes and businesses.
A Google representative standing by smiled. Google's plan is simple: It wants to own a lion's share of the nation's market for high speed Internet and television service in the years to come. Portland could figure in β along with Gresham, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Lake Oswego and Tigard β as a market that embraces all things digital.
Google, of course, would be in competition with Comcast, Frontier Communications and CenturyLink, already here, but its fiber-optic network would run at faster, even blinding, speeds. Whether Google proceeds, as it did in recent years in Kansas City and Provo, Utah, depends on whether the installation of fiber-optic cable hereabouts looks sufficiently legible and affordable to make the investment.
In old Portland, where a lot of utilities are strung from telephone poles, comparatively few streets would need digging up; but that is not likely the case in modern suburban neighborhoods whose utilities are buried. Meetings start soon on how to best coordinate installations that will create what Google calls "fiberhoods," or sections of cities in which residents show demand for ultra-high-speed Internet connections. Not everybody will have access to the service or be able to afford it if they do.
