Cities Rush into High Speed Internet

(From Time magazine) Last year, when Google announced it wanted to build and test-drive a new hyper-speed fiber optic network in a U.S. community, more than 1,000 cities applied. Municipal officials from everywhere offered everything from tax abatements to free advertising. Topeka, Kansas briefly changed its name, officially, to "Google." In March, Google chose Topeka's neighbor, Kansas City, Kansas to be the home of its new super-fast voice, video and data system. But the competition for Google's attention underscored an important fact: Cities around the country have come to view high-speed access to the Internet as infrastructure that's as critical to their future as interstate highways were in the past.  Read more