Dartmouth has joined with the Upper Valley Fiber Initiative in order to bring a competitively-priced, ultra-high-speed broadband Internet network provided by Google to the Upper Valley. In support of the Initiative's application in the Google Fiber for Communities contest, which was due on March 26, College President Jim Yong Kim sent a four-page letter to Google in which he explained the need for improved Internet service in the Upper Valley and why Dartmouth is "uniquely suited" to implement and take advantage of Google's new network.
Google announced the contest two months ago and requested online applications from interested individuals, organizations and communities, according to the project's web site.
The project will implement a "1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home" connection, which is more than 100 times faster than what the average American currently uses, according to the web site. Google has not yet specified how many communities it will select, although it said it expects to provide the service to between 50,000 and 500,000 individuals. Google plans to announce the winners by the end of the year.
ValleyNet, the nonprofit communications service provider that spearheads the Upper Valley Fiber Initiative, has worked tirelessly for the past two years to bring improved Internet service to the area, but has struggled because of low population density, a hilly topography and bad luck, Stan Williams '83, the chairman of ValleyNet, said.
"We've been trying for two years to get government or private funding to do this, and when the Google project came along, I thought it was a perfect opportunity," he said.
New Hampshire FastRoads, a group consisting of 35 towns, several government entities and WCNH.net a consortium of eight partner New Hampshire communities has joined with ValleyNet to submit the application. ECFiber, a community-owned organization representing 23 Vermont towns that was formed to bring subscribers a fiber-optic network, also joined the collective effort, along with the city of Lebanon and the College.
Williams contacted College Trustee Stephen Mandel '78 about enlisting the College's help with the Google application. Mandel then put Williams in touch with Kim, who was "extremely receptive" to the idea, Williams said.
In his letter, Kim explained how the College would benefit from and utilize the new high-speed network.
"Dartmouth supports the application with great enthusiasm, and we anticipate taking an active role in terms of research, deployment, and innovation," Kim wrote.
Kim also explained that the College brings "a culture of computer innovation," citing four breakthroughs in technology that have occurred on campus, each of which increased the "scope and breadth of computing." The examples included providing students with free access to Dartmouth's first computer in 1959 and becoming the first wireless campus in the Ivy League in 2001.
Internet access in the Upper Valley varies greatly from town to town, Williams said.
"We estimate that in the area encompassed by the Initiative, close to 40 percent of homes don't have access to anything but dial-up, satellite or wireless, none of which are nearly as useful as broadband," he said. "These other types are unreliable, spotty and certainly not very high-speed."
This problem is not only relevant to Dartmouth from a social-outreach perspective, but also from a practical one, given the number of faculty and staff who live in areas without adequate service, according to Kim. Providing improved service to these areas would improve connections between faculty and students, Kim wrote.
He also stressed that such a network would foster outreach efforts with local schools, museums and other universities.
"Fast Internet access is critical to enabling a rich experience, including audio/video conferencing, presentation sharing, and dataset visualization," he wrote. "Given the 'round the clock nature of international collaboration, faculty need fast access where they work and where they live."
Kim also said he believed the College's graduate programs could make use of the improved Internet connection.
The Tuck School of Business could use videos to bring more executives into the classroom as guest speakers, and the Thayer School of Engineering could integrate high-definition video with Google Maps to raise energy awareness and "improve energy management at a community level," according to Kim's letter.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Medical School would also benefit from the connection in studying improved methods of health care delivery, he said.
"With a latency-free connection to the Internet, patient portals, remote clinical monitoring of chronic health conditions and many other innovations essential to advancing health care while controlling costs become possible," Kim explained in the letter.
Williams also said that an improved Internet connection would positively affect the economy of the Upper Valley in the long run. He pointed to a recent study conducted by the Brookings Institution, which found that a faster Internet connection often leads to increases in employment.
"More specifically, for every one percentage point increase in broadband penetration in a state, employment is projected to increase by 0.2 to 0.3 percent per year," the study found.
In the application to Google, organizations were required to specify the population of the area, details about the ownership of utilities, how quickly the community would be able to deploy the new network and ideas for innovative applications of the network, Williams said.
Upwards of 1,100 communities and almost 200,000 individuals across the country submitted applications, according to the official Google blog about the project.
Given the number of applications, the Upper Valley's chances are somewhat slim, Williams said. He added, however, that there are several factors that may make the region a desirable choice for Google.
"I think the Upper Valley has a couple positives," he said. "It's underserved, and Google is looking to put its network in places where it's actually needed. Also, Dartmouth would be a nice academic partner for Google to test the potential of its new network."
He also acknowledged, however, that the Upper Valley may face a "slower speed of deployment" compared to other regions because it crosses two states and thus deals with two separate regulatory bodies.
Peter Glenshaw, Dartmouth's director of community relations, said that the collaborative nature of the area also makes it a perfect "test ground" for Google.
"This is an area with a history of innovation around regional community-based cooperation," he said. "We have the kind of social capital in the Upper Valley that makes this more than just about bringing advanced technology into a community. We're the kind of place where our connectedness as citizens means that we can really leverage this to do some extraordinary things."
ValleyNet and other local Internet providers will continue to work together to improve local Internet access if the bid to win Google's Fiber for Communities experiment fails, Williams said.
"We're definitely going to try to keep the effort going even if the Google bit isn't successful," he said.
Glenshaw also said that the combined efforts will continue after the contest is over.
"I think what's interesting is that we were able to form an incredible coalition, and we should look for other opportunities where we can take this incredible group of organizations that came together and look what we might do going forward," he said.
Several mayors across the country have attempted to convince Google to select their towns through unconventional measures. The mayor of Duluth, Minn., jumped into the ice-filled Lake Superior, while the mayor of Sarasota, Fla. submerged himself in a tank with sharks. The mayor of Topeka, Kan. renamed the city "Google" for the month of March.
Williams said that he has no "crazy publicity stunts" planned for the near future.
