UW-Madison is key to Madison’s push for Google Fiber project

Madison and dozens of other cities are rolling out their red carpets this spring for Google, hoping that the technology giant will select them as the test site for its high-speed broadband network.

Google has announced Google Fiber for Communities, a plan to build and test an ultra-high-speed network that will provide fiber-to-the-home connections at one gigabit per second, a speed more than 100 times faster than typical service. Proposals from interested communities are due on March 26.

To woo Google, Madison has created a Web site, held a pep rally, set up a fan page on Facebook, and galvanized civic support from across the region. But perhaps its trump card in the pursuit of Google is the tech-heavy presence of UW–Madison.

“UW is a Tier 1 research institution with nearly a billion dollars in annual research funding,” says Perry Brunelli, Director of Network Services at UW’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT). “Many of these researchers live in our community and would be prime candidates to explore the vast possibilities of the Google Fiber project.”

“Google itself found value in locating a research office in Madison, with its deep, highly educated labor pool” Brunelli adds.

According to Forbes Magazine, Madison has the highest number of doctorates per capita in the U.S.

The university has driven a skyrocketing demand for broadband resources in and around Madison. Internet consumption has doubled here every year since 1994, according to Dave Devereaux-Weber of DoIT.

The university’s network already provides robust service to tens of thousands of students, faculty and staff and, through peer arrangements, extends its benefits to city, state, and private networks around Madison. The applications of that network service are limited today only by available bandwidth.

“We are in great shape regarding network connectivity on campus, but we need to remember that thousands of our faculty, staff and students don’t live on campus,” says Ron Kraemer, UW–Madison’s chief information officer and vice provost for information technology. “The Google Fiber Project could extend extraordinary broadband service for teaching, learning and research to homes and off-campus offices throughout Madison.”

The university manages fiber infrastructure upon which the Google Fiber project could build and works closely with the city of Madison on fiber-optic projects.

“We are committed to providing technical assistance to the city of Madison on this and other projects,” says Brunelli.

In addition to supporting its own campus network, UW–Madison plays an important role in managing state and regional networks such as BOREAS, which operates over 1,500 miles of fiber through several Midwest states; WiscNet, which serves about 500 K-12, library, government and higher-education institutions in Wisconsin; and the Metropolitan Unified Fiber Network, or MUFN.

This recent addition to UW and Madison’s network portfolio will extend high-speed network service to unserved and underserved entities in the Madison metro area. The Google Fiber project would build on the MUFN infrastructure by bringing broadband service to residences.

Hoping to “build a community connected in more innovative and meaningful ways,” UW–Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin has supported Madison’s proposal in a letter to Google.

She added: “I imagine being able to share my convocation address with our 381,709 alumni around the world, or being able to invite them to interactively give advice to our incoming freshman class. . . I like to dream about how Google Fiber technology would allow me to better communicate with and learn from the talented students, faculty and staff who make up our university. It seems that with Google Fiber, we could put both the DISTANCE and the EDUCATION into distance education and provide outcomes benefitting students, faculty and communities alike. We could connect donors and students in new and exciting ways, and faculty could employ their expertise far beyond the walls of the classroom.”

And, as if the letters of support, public statements, facts, and statistics aren’t enough, UW–Madison’s Babcock Dairy has created a new ice cream flavor — tentatively called Madfiber — that features Google-colored M&Ms and sweet granola networked with vanilla ice cream.

The city and university hope to hear good news from Google soon. Proposals for the Google Fiber project are due to Google March 26.