Duluth, Superior campaigns to become Google super-fast fiber optic internet test market

The community group trying to persuade Google to test a super-fast Internet service in the Northland managed to keep the “Twin” in Twin Ports on Tuesday, heading off the potential loss of Superior from the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative.

Superior Mayor Dave Ross said that reports of his city withdrawing from the Google race were an unfair characterization, because Superior was never officially part of the effort. Ross had told Wisconsin Public Radio reporter Mike Simonson on Monday that he and Duluth Mayor Don Ness “really felt mutually that [Duluth] would have the opportunity to win the Google race here … without the complication of having a two-city and a two-state application.”

In addition, Ross said he worried that the high-energy campaign for Google, conducted even as Superior was applying for federal and state grants to improve its fiber-optics network, would have the city “juggling several fiber balls in the air.”

Superior’s separate effort includes partners from the University of Wisconsin, the Superior public school system and business community, Ross said.

A meeting Tuesday between Superior officials and a representative of the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative, however, appeared to allay Superior’s concerns. At the meeting, which included Ross and other representatives of the city, Chamber of Commerce and the Google Initiative, the sides decided that Superior will work to complete an application by Google’s March 26 deadline.

“I think it clears up a lot of things and puts us down the road to making this a Twin Ports effort,” Ross said after the meeting.

The chances of the Twin Ports landing the Google project “are looking really good” and “are getting better,” initiative project manager Christopher Swanson said after the meeting, helped by the initiative’s marketing efforts, the Twin Ports’ talented work force and the presence of colleges and universities.

Duluth is one of many cities vying to become a test market for Google’s one-gigabit-per-second fiber-optic Internet access that’s 100 times faster than current broadband speeds.

Despite some bumps along the way, the effort to attract Google to Duluth is going well, initiative spokesman Patrick Garmoe said.

“I’ve been looking at a lot of other cities, and they don’t have nearly the volunteer ground game we do,” he said.

On Saturday the group is holding an open casting call for a short movie to help attract Google.

“We found a Hollywood director with ties to our area to shoot a short movie, about 10 minutes long, that we are gearing for Google,” Garmoe said. “We want to make sure that Google sees us, and this is one of our many efforts make us stand out from other cities.”

The casting call will run from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the Carnegie Building in Duluth at 101 W. Second St., Suite 200. Part of the movie will be shot at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center during a March 20 Google Fest rally.

During Saturday’s casting call, the initiative will hand out cards that residents can mail to Google, pledging to buy the new service if it is competitively priced.

“It’s another way we’re going to stand out from the other cities because we will actually have people pledge: ‘Yes, I would do this, to buy this higher-speed service if it comes to Duluth,’ ” Garmoe said.

TO LEARN MORE:

For more information on the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative and what it is doing to attract Google to the Twin Ports, go to www.googletwinports.com.

Tags: daily updates, duluth mn, superior wi, twin ports, google, internet