Got Fiber? YPs Compete for Google's Super High-Speed

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Cities and towns across the country sent in their pleas to Google last month, requesting to be one of the trial locations where the company will test its new ultra-high speed broadband network.
 
Many of those communities used their young professional population as a selling point.
 
Google Fiber will deliver internet access 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, according to Google, with one gigabit per second, fiber-to-home connections.
 
In its petition, Durham, N.C., pointed out how graduates from nearby Duke University and University of North Carolina often launch Internet start-ups close to their alma mater.
 
There is a growing gaming development industry in Durham, but no core hardware infrastructure to support it, Jonathan Clarke, 23, said. Clarke is the youngest member of a Chamber of Commerce committee dedicated to bringing Fiber to Durham.
 
“With Google Fiber, we could unleash all the creativity here,” Clarke said.
 
Similarly, the many universities in New Haven have made the Connecticut city a hotbed of young entrepreneurialism, said Jack Nork, “head cheerleader” of the “Google Haven” campaign.
 
Young professionals have led his city’s campaign, Nork added. For example, the New Haven based YP micromarketing start-up, Ripple100, has promised it can find 100 New Haven businesses that will give away free products and services if they can get 100 times faster internet.
 
Cities also touting their young professional talent included Madison, Wi., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Fresno, Calif.
 
Others recognized that having Fiber in their towns will attract young professionals to their town.
 
“Whatever city gets Google Fiber will become a beacon as a place to go for young entrepreneurs,” Nork said. “It will be watched by the entire world.”
 

In Columbia, S.C., where there is a good mix of universities, military operations and hospitals, Google Fiber is seen as a major draw.  "This will help us attract young professionals," Mandi Engram, marketing director at the Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports & Tourism, told The State newspaper. "This would be huge for the knowledge economy here."

 
Google Fiber would be a great recruiting tool, Des Moines native John Hilmes, 25, told the Des Moines Register.
 
“Enticing young, creative, entrepreneurial people to work and live in the city center (at reasonable prices) is a key to nurturing a vibrant culture.  That vibrancy will make ex-pats and new prospects choose Des Moines,” Hilmes said in an email to the newspaper.
 
Rahul Devan, 21, agreed. If all other things were equal, Devan, a computer engineering major at Georgia Technical Institute, said he would prefer to move to a town with Google Fiber.
 
“It would probably make me think the area is high tech,” Devan said. “It would help local engineering businesses and it would promote high data usage firms. I would definitely think there would be more jobs there.”
 
Yet some young professionals, especially those not in technical industries, are saying Google Fiber alone would not be enough of a draw for them to pack up and move to an area.
 
“If there were more jobs there, then sure,” Alex Tsao, 22, of Columbia, Mo., said. “
 
Google said it will announce its target community by the end of the year.
 
(Photo of Jonathan Clarke)
 
Read more from Vinti Singh on personal branding.