Austin climbing in race for Google Fiber

Published 12:56 pm Saturday, July 10, 2010

Austin is still racing to the top in the competition to win Google’s high-speed, fiber Internet network.

The website fiberforall.org, the fiber advocacy group, posted that Austin moved up to 11th place among the 1,077 cities applying for the Google service yesterday. Austin has moved up two positions since the start of May.

“Our goal has been to make the top 10,” said Craig Hoium, Austin’s planning and zoning director who oversaw the city’s application. “Being able to make it to the top 10 out of 1000 plus communities would be very important. It would be awesome if we would be able to get another 1000 people to log on.”

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The fiberforall.org chart represents the percent of a city’s population using select Internet programs, like Facebook group members and Twitter followers, divided by the city’s population. Austin is currently at 9.36 percent. Hoium said that if an additional 300 people signed up, it would equal an increase of 1 percent.

“The ranking is only one component in Google’s decision. But, it definitely helps,” Hoium said.

The Google fiber committee recently hosted a tent at Freedom Fest to sign up more people. They held a drawing where they randomly selected one of the 50 individuals they were able to sign up. The winner was Chris Jensen of Austin, who received a Hormel gift basket.