Between The Lines
Adam Rudnick's reporter notebook
Population threshold stifles city of Arlington exploring Google test network
March 10th, 2010 at Wed, 10th, 2010 at 1:52 pm by Adam
For the past month a few Washington state cities have been applying to be part of Google’s upcoming fiber-optic project, but Arlington won’t be joining them.
City of Arlington spokeswoman Kristin Banfield recently confirmed that Arlington did explore that option, but quickly realized that they didn’t meet the minimum population threshold required by the Seattle-based company.
Banfield said Google is looking for an area with between 50,000-500,000 residents. Arlington has about 17,500 residents.
“We sent feelers out to other jurisdictions in Snohomish County for the opportunity, but didn’t get much interest,” Banfield said in an e-mail.
The cities of Seattle and Bellingham have expressed interest in becoming a part of Google’s plan to build a high-speed broadband network that could offer residents speeds of up to one-gigabit-per-second.
Google is accepting applications from municipalities and citizens until March 26. The company plans to announce more details about which entities were selected later this year.
Adam Adam Rudnick has worked as a reporter in Snohomish and Skagit counties since graduating from Western Washington University in 2006. Since then, he has written for a number of daily and weekly publications, most recently The Arlington Times and The Marysville Globe.
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