More coverage of Greenlight as Google mulls fiber location

Our small city has benefited from all the talk about Google’s fiber optic initiative. Wilson’s Greenlight was recently mentioned in the San Jose Mercury News in a column by Chris O’Brien as well as several other regional publications.

Two things:

First, one of the intial questions is always, “how many people have signed up?” As of last week, we had about 4,700 subscribers. A subscriber means a home, a business or some other property. That’s roughly 23.4% of Wilson. Why is that important? Our business model says Wilson will be cash flow positive if Greenlight reaches 30% penetration after three full years. It’s been less than two years since the first residential subscriber signed up and we’re most of the way there. I hope this does away with the notion that people are happy with 20th century bandwidth.

Second, I hope Google’s initiative also emphasizes that fiber optic technology will remain the gold standard for a long time. Can you imagine Google spending millions (or billions, depending on the size of the town) on outdated technology?

The cable company is doing everything it can to stop municipal broadband, but Wilson continues to operate one of the fastest all fiber optic networks in the nation.

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