Living in a college town can be pretty sweet. There are cool lecturers always coming to speak, the latest bands travel through, and you can often laugh at the drunken idiots staggering around on the weekends (while hoping they don’t get themselves killed). Now there’s another reason why college towns will be nice to live in: bonkers turbo fast Internet speeds. An Ohio startup has raised $200 million and will launch gigabit-per-second Internet services in a handful of college towns, with specific locations to be announced later this year. Those towns will get service that’s as fast as what much of Europe has enjoyed for a long time now and similar to what Google is trying to do with its test program in Kansas City.
From GigaOm:
Like Google’s network and others, the Gigabit Squared network will be open, which means other service providers can buy capacity on the network to offer other products. The plan isn’t just to offer people fast service and big capacity, but also to build programs in the community that will take advantage of the network and help drive adoption.
From the Gigabit Squared release:
“The Stimulus Funding was a great jumpstart to get broadband initiatives on track in the U.S. But it is just a starting point,” explains Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared. “In order to realize true economic revitalization, we’re urging our national and community leaders to think and act in more creative ways. And we’re backing those efforts with significant investment of our own.”
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