Cisco Working With Chattanooga Gigabit Network

One way for Kansas City to catalyze innovation on the upcoming Google Fiber ultra high-speed community network is to develop and launch collaborative projects with organizations which make hardware or services that benefit from or complement gigabit Internet access.

An example of this approach to innovation is Chattanooga's partnership with Cisco:

"...Norman Jacknis, director of Cisco Systems public sector group, announced...that the 70,000-employee tech giant is exploring a partnership with Chattanooga to find more uses for EPB's gigabit network. "Our job is to work with the innovators," Jacknis said. "This is the only city in America with the network that can support the future." Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield called Cisco officials the city's new "partners," which are "helping us to prepare this city in a way that no other city is prepared." Though both were short on details of the partnership, Littlefield stressed that he is interested in taking Chattanooga's edge in internet bandwidth to the next level before cities like Kansas City catch up..."

Many hardware and services organizations have great potential as gigabit innovation partners for Kansas City. Two immediately obvious ones are Sprint and Motorola. The Google Fiber Kansas City network will be a perfect complement to developing uber-fast wireless/mobile computing services, and Sprint researchers would be great partners on that type of project. People and companies who become accustomed to gigabit access on hardwired computers are no longer going to be satisfied with the slow access speeds, high monthly cost and data caps of current wireless/cellular systems.

The immediate potential of a gigabit project collaboration with Motorola for the Google Fiber Kansas City initiative became a reality this morning when Google announced it is acquiring Motorola Mobility. In Larry Page's blog post about the acquisition, he said,

"...Motorola is also a market leader in the home devices and video solutions business...we are excited to work together with Motorola and the industry to support our partners and cooperate with them to accelerate innovation in this space..."

The CNET article about the Motorola acquisition touches on the same subject, saying,

"...Beyond smartphones and tablets, Motorola has a television set-top box business and has relationships with carriers and cable providers, an area where Google can push its connected-TV ambitions. Likewise, Jha said he sees the opportunity for more convergence between the set-tip box and mobile devices..."

The Google Fiber Kansas City initiative has a great opportunity to lead the way in cutting edge devices and applications for gigabit Internet and complementary services and devices. The first step in doing so will be to build or strengthen relationships with Sprint, Motorola and other appropriate organizations, then to begin discussions about specific collaborative innovation project ideas for the Google Fiber network.

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