Google makes plea for broadband conduit on new fiber website

Since early February, over 1,100 communities have applied to be part of Google's experimental 1Gbps, open-access, fiber-to-the-home Internet service, including applicants who have promised to change the name of their town to Google (temporarily), name their expected twins after Google's co-founders (if they're boys), or train their puppy to bark "Google" (sort of) every time the phrase "high speed Internet" is mentioned.

But while the search engine giant has yet to decide which of these applicants will win the 1Gbps prize, the company is trying to enroll all of them, and everybody else, in what amounts to an advocacy campaign "for common-sense federal and local policies that would help fiber deployments nationwide." All the details will show up on Google's new fiber-for-communities website, which will update the public on the project. The key components of this campaign include showing support for bills in the House and Senate that would require all new federally funded construction projects to include broadband conduit -- plastic pipe that can house fiber-optic communications cable. Google also wants cities to establish the same policies for construction projects that involve street work.