Google Fiber Community Connections: Promises, pitfalls, and outcomes in Austin, Texas

ABSTRACT

Community Connections is a program tied to Google Fiber that provides free gigabit fiber connections to public or nonprofit facilities such as schools, libraries, community centers, and municipal buildings, thereby presenting substantial opportunity to improve digital equity. In the case of Austin, Texas, applications for Community Connections were received and evaluated, and the winners forwarded to Google Fiber, where final decisions were made regarding the provision of physical fiber connections. The purpose of this paper is to explore the intricacies of the Fiber provision process and its implications for digital equity, including the nature of the organizations interested in Community Connections and associated programmatic outcomes in Austin, Texas. The results suggest that while 100 facilities were forwarded to Google Fiber for consideration in early 2014, only 28 are connected as of 2019. The policy implications of complex public/private broadband infrastructure projects are discussed and recommendations of how to improve strategies for the provision of infrastructure as public goods are detailed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The most recent definition of broadband from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, 2018) is 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload speeds.

2. Only a portion of the Network Cooperation Agreement is publicly available for Austin. Information concerning access fees for poles, facilities, and other infrastructure elements was not made available. This is routinely the case with telecommunications providers (Helderop et al., 2019).

3. The 28 sites connected to Google Fiber in mid-2019 are categorized by the City as government entities (18), with a handful of organizations in social services (5), arts and culture (4), and education and workforce development (1) rounding out the list. The government entities include seven branches of the Austin Public Library, four public high schools, a museum, a senior center, and one public housing development.

4. It is highly likely that many of the applicants had no idea what their actual connections speeds are. For example, one institution reported 10,000 Mbps. Regardless, it is important to remember that advertised speeds (from the provider) do not always reflect actual speeds realized by the end-user (Grubesic, 2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caroline Stratton

Caroline Stratton is an assistant professor at the School of Information at Florida State University. She studies the organization and effectiveness of technology interventions for social good, including digital inclusion initiatives and ICT4D. She earned a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Tony H. Grubesic

Tony H. Grubesic is the Associate Dean for Research and Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin where he also serves as Director of the Geoinformatics & Policy Analytics Lab (GPAL). His research and teaching interests are in geographic information science, regional development and public policy evaluation. Author of over 180 research publications, his recent work focuses on community vulnerability, ICTs, coastal planning, health disparities, and transportation systems.

Edward Helderop

Edward Helderop is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. His main interests include GIScience, big data, and network analytics (particularly as applied to urban infrastructure systems). His previous research explored hurricane storm surge modeling as well as resiliency in plant-pollinator networks. Eddie received his M.S. in Geography from Oregon State University and his PhD in Geography from Arizona State University.