Townships Lend Support to Kalamazoo’s Google Fiber Effort

By Jonathan Kleyer

The City of Kalamazoo is no longer the only municipality attempting to get Google to bring the Google Fiber Project to the area.

Information released by the city revealed that the cities of Kalamazoo and Portage, along with the townships of Kalamazoo and Oshtemo, are combining their resources in an effort to persuade Google to launch an experimental network here in the greater Kalamazoo area.

They have formed the Kalamazoo Google Collaborative, which sees the area as a community that is already thriving in both education and business, but also wants to add “Home of Google Fiber Optics” to the list of reasons the Kalamazoo area is successful.

So far, Mayor Bobby Hopewell has met with people who already support the Google effort, as a way of capturing the energy the project has generated and spreading it out though the community.

As a result, 13 Township Supervisors have declared their support of the Google Fiber Project.

These thirteen signed a declaration of support at the Supervisors Group of Kalamazoo County meeting on March 17th: Alan Bussema, Supervisor of Richland Township; Robert Vlietstra, Supervisor of Alamo Township; David Healy, Supervisor of the Chater Township of Texas; Donal Ulsh, Supervisor of Schoolcraft Township; Jeffrey Bither, Supervisor of Ross Township; Lee Philport, Supervisor of Brady Township; Libby Heiny-Cogswell, Supervisor of the Charter Township of Oshtemo; Patrick White, Supervisor of Pavilion Township; Phylis Simmons, Supervisor of Climax Township; Terri Mellinger, Supervisor of the Charter Township of Kalamazoo, Tom Swiat, Supervisor of Prairie Ronde Township, Timothy Hudson, Supervisor of the Charter Township of Comstock, and Jeffrey Sorenson, Supervisor of Cooper Charter Township.
According to Hope-well, the collaborative efforts of the areas municipalities, businesses and residents, might just catapult the Kalamazoo area to the forefront of consideration by Google for its high-speed network experiment.
The Google Fiber broadband network should provide users with the ability to access the internet at the speed of 1 gigabit per second, which is about 100 to 200 times faster than most internet speeds today.

According to Kalamazoo’s Information Technology Operations Manager, Michael Cross, Google is looking for cities with populations of 50,000 to 500,000 to test the network.

Residents can nominate Kalamazoo for inclusion in this project by completing a nomination form online at http://www.google.com/appserve/fiberrfi/public/options.

To stay updated with information about the progress of the Kalamazoo-Google Fiber Project, go online to the City’s website at www.kalamazoocity.org or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php? gid=3007887 54723.

For more information, contact kzoogooglefiber@kalamazoocity.org.