On One Year Anniversary, Gig.U Delivers Impressive Results and Valuable Lessons for Gigabit Internet

[Commentary] Some people worry about slow deployment of high-speed broadband to U.S. consumers. Some people do something about it. Blair Levin does both.

Now a Fellow at the Aspen Institute, last year Levin launched Gig.U, a consortium of university communities hoping to attract investment in next generation infrastructure that would deliver ultra high speed IP services to its residents—not ten but a hundred times faster than current broadband speeds. Using fiber optic technology run directly to the home, Gig.U is pushing for broadband speeds of 1 Gbps. The consortium has nearly forty members. Why the leap beyond even the NBP’s impressive goals? The answer starts with Google’s announcement, shortly before the publication of the NBP, to create a gigabit testbed in one lucky U.S. community. The goal of Google’s “think big with a gig” was to experiment with new ways of delivering broadband, largely to see what kinds of applications consumers would use if they only had the capacity.

Following the successful completion of its initial efforts, Gig.U is now moving on to Phase Two. The goal going forward is to develop tools that will help more consortium members “change the math,” making next generation network deployment attractive to private investors in communities where traditional financial analysis doesn’t pan out.