Last week, myself and others urged Pittsburghers to vote for Pittsburgh to receive Google Fiber coverage before last Friday’s deadline. How’d we do? No one will no for sure till Google makes an official announcement, but they did make a post the other day on the official Google Blog with some information on the nominations they received, and it revealed some good news for Pittsburgh.
The good news is that Pittsburgh appears to have done well. The map above shows the Google responses. Little dots denote government submissions and the darker shaded dots represent the “votes”. the larger the dot, the more votes a particular place received. It appears that Pittsburgh and several surrounding communities submitted applications. It further appears that only a handful (to my eye, 3) places received as many votes. If Google will be making their decision purely on votes, we appear to be well positioned. Unfortunately, we were one of the larger of the 1,100 applying communities so it is difficult to tell how good our response was from a relative perspective. They also asked for creative responses (YouTube videos, blog posts, etc…) and it’s difficult to tell how we might have faired there.
Of course, responses to a survey won’t be the only factor considered. Google claims they want to supply internet access to, “at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people”. With a population (in the city) of about 310,000, we appear to be well positioned in that respect. Other then that, Google’s been quiet on what the factors will be. So until further notice, cross your fingers and hope for the best.
