Online community for Google applicants launches

A new online community aims to unite municipalities vying to get high-speed networks from Google. Launched in late March, the Facebook-based initiative, dubbed “Communities United for Broadband,” signed up nearly 500 participants in less than a week, said Craig Settles, project organizer and president of consulting firm Successful.com. Participation is not restricted to people who applied to get a gigabit fiber-to-the-home network from Google, but much of the initial outreach went to those applicants.

“What I’m doing is unifying people, giving them a source of information and resources and, in a collaborative fashion, providing insights and direction,” Settles told Connected Planet.

Why should people competing for Google funding want to collaborate with one another? The answer is that most applicants realize their odds of winning a Google project are slim, Settles said.

“There are 1100 communities going after three to five awards,” he said. “They did all this work and got people excited about broadband and now want to know how to move forward.”

Many applicant communities already created Facebook pages to help drum up support for their project applications. Ultimately Google received 200,000 letters from individuals nationwide about the broadband initiative, Settles said.