Will Rural Towns Bite Google's Bait?

[Commentary] As communities are jumping in response to Google's request for information (RFI), should rural areas apply? Sandie Terry, IT Director of Franklin County (VA), for one, is doubtful.

"We have such a limited amount of time and resources we're thinking twice about how appealing our community will be to Google," states Terry. "We have a lot of unserved people in mountainous areas and other difficult to reach places. Google says they want to do projects where they can deploy quickly, and that's not us." Rural communities and small towns that do respond to the RFI should be looking at how to maximize their appeal to Google. To summarize the many statements the company has made, Google Product manager Minnie Ingersoll sounds the common theme: "This is a test bed for innovation. We hope to take the learning from this test bed to the world." Communities applying for the Google networks, of course, should state why they represent ideal proving grounds for technology innovation, but they should emphasize why their locales are promising "test beds" for business models, too. Galen Updike, Telecommunications Development Manager at the State of Arizona's Government Information Technology Agency, made an interesting point. "It's extremely difficult for private sector companies to financially benefit from many of broadband's economic development benefits to communities," Galen says, "because these do not directly impact companies' bottom line. Therefore, communities have to spend a lot of time with potential partners working on this puzzle, or else face failure by the private partner in the long run."