Following on yesterday's post about GSO's opportunity to be a part of AT&T's new broadband rollout -- and the importance of that infrastructure to our economic development -- the last I heard is that AT&T is "interested in working with communities that appreciate the value of the most advanced technologies and are willing to encourage investment by offering solid investment cases and policies," and that "Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan said Monday she hasn’t heard from AT&T."
I assume she's picked up the phone since then.
Beyond that, what's the plan?
GSO actually did a pretty good job of courting Google during the national contest to host its big fiber network.
That courtship generated serious, sustained attention across the community, with organization at the highest level and energy from the grassroots. A key consideration then was not focusing on what Google could do for us, but what we could do for Google -- and letting the company know, in detail.
Time to get the band back together again.
I didn't see anything about this in Friday's report from the City Manager. That was disappointing.
Madame Mayor, please let us know your plan, and what we can do to help bring this necessary project to town.
RLF communications marketing effort was abysmal for bringing google fiber to Greensboro wasting plenty of taxpayers money in the process especially dressing up some blobs to run around the ACC tournament.
Posted by: Triadwatch | Apr 26, 2014 at 11:13 AM
Yep. That was not the best part of our plan.
If you go back through the GoogleFi posts I linked, you can see I was not a fan of the stunts and PR. What we did pretty well was show community interest and also benefits to GOOG, e.g., location, demographics, infrastructure etc.
Posted by: Ed Cone | Apr 26, 2014 at 11:17 AM
Ed, I'm not so sure this AT&T thing isn't all hype. When Gigaom, Arstechnica, and DSLReports all call it a "big fat bluff," then I'd be skeptical this is "the" answer to any city's broadband infrastructure.
Posted by: Sue | Apr 26, 2014 at 04:48 PM
If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. Better to be ready if it does, and to demonstrate again our strong interest in becoming a fast-service city. The critiques I've seen - e.g., Austin isn't running at a gig yet! maybe AT&T won't come! -- are not arguments against GSO being proactive. Winston and Raleigh are getting this, it would be bad to get left behind.
Posted by: Ed Cone | Apr 26, 2014 at 05:08 PM
This story suggests that we'll be getting some kind of high speed internet in the next few years.
Posted by: David Wharton | Apr 26, 2014 at 06:24 PM
Everyone will have it eventually.
GSO missed the chance to get ahead of the curve. Now the goal is to avoid being a laggard.
Posted by: Ed Cone | Apr 26, 2014 at 06:36 PM
The plan is that Madam Mayor was attempting to garner herself some positive PR on the back of the AT&T announcement that they were going to do something in Greensboro that had absolutely nothing to do with Nancy Barakat Vaughan and would have happened if Mickey Mouse or Ed Cone's dog were mayor of Greensboro.
That's the plan.
PR, the favored tool of do nothing politicians everywhere. Remember how she blew the PR piece on incentives? The entire article was proven wrong and continues to be proven wrong today.
Posted by: Billy Jones | Apr 26, 2014 at 11:20 PM
Yeah, and then she kicked a puppy.
But I'm actually interested in the plan going forward.
Posted by: Ed Cone | Apr 27, 2014 at 08:36 AM
There is no plan going forward Ed. Nothing, nada, zip. The PR hacks simply saw the announcement as some good news they could attach Madam Mayor's name to and now you're hearing nothing about a plan because there is no plan. Mayor Vaughan and City staff had nothing to do with AT&T's decision to pick Greensboro. Nancy learned about it from a press release and the City PR staff took over from there.
You say she kicked a puppy? My sources missed that one.
It's called PR BS, the mark of every do nothing, failed politrickster.
Posted by: Billy Jones | Apr 27, 2014 at 11:09 PM
North Carolina company RST Fiber recently activated a super-fast internet backbone with the goal of providing broadband services to new customers in the state.
I blogged about it as an open letter to Mayor Vaughan, sent her a link to it and encouraged her to take some initiative in contacting RST as a liaison for our city. She did not respond.
About RST's new endeavor:
Posted by: Roch | Apr 28, 2014 at 11:16 AM
Like Roch's post now makes clear, Nancy has no plan, it's all PR BS. Another failed politrickster depending on the broken machine.
Posted by: Billy Jones | Apr 28, 2014 at 07:13 PM
Roch, do you know if she (or someone from the City) contacted RST?
Posted by: Ed Cone | Apr 28, 2014 at 07:20 PM
You'd have to ask the mayor that. As I said, she did not respond to me.
Posted by: Roch | Apr 28, 2014 at 09:30 PM
imagine that
Posted by: Slingblade | Apr 29, 2014 at 10:25 AM
Madam Mayor respond? Then she might be quoted. Then she might be held responsible. And we can't have Madam Mayor being held responsible now can we?
After all, I've already posted so many screen grabs of her lies that I can't even remember them all and I've still got more I've yet to post.
Posted by: Billy Jones | Apr 29, 2014 at 12:10 PM
Billy got quoted. Billy got proven wrong. Billy didn't acknowledge that. Billy tells so many lies he cant remember them all and he still has more that he is going to post. Billy respond?
http://thetroublemaker.blogspot.com/2014/04/billy-jones-challenge.html
Posted by: Ben Holder | May 01, 2014 at 03:32 PM