Chapel Hill’s Town Council authorized the town manager Monday night to proceed with a bidding process for building a high-speed community Internet network.
The decision does not mean Chapel Hill will contract with a broadband service provider for the Gig-U project – part of the regional North Carolina Next Generation Networks initiative.
A contract would depend on the cost, whether the provider could meet the community’s goals, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, and if the deal could be enforced under state law.
The town will start accepting bids Feb. 1 from service providers that could design, build, install, operate and manage a complete network. A decision tentatively is scheduled for October.
The town has several incentives that could sweeten the deal, including a lease for use of the town’s existing fiber network.
Chapel Hill and Carrboro have installed 46 miles of fiber-optic cable that loop around the towns. Most of that is not being used yet.
Chapel Hill’s partners in the Gig-U project are Carrboro, UNC and UNC Health Care, Durham, Cary, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Duke University, N.C. State University and Wake Forest University and Medical Center.

Google's selection today of Kansas City, Kansas, to host a super-fast Internet meant that nearly 50 North Carolina communities lost out on their bid to claim the technology prize.

The Triangle alone accounted for nine contenders to host the Google network that's 100 times faster than the high-speed Internet available to most people today. In all, some 1,100 communities around the country vied for the prestige of getting rewired by Google and for the validation attached to becoming a Google host city.

Public officials preened, pranced and bragged about their technology geeks and their love of affair with all things Google. In the end, most knew that their application was a technological lottery, a statistical long shot that could not be improved with publicity stunts.

"There's no shock. Anytime there's 1,100 communities across the country, the competition is very keen," said Bruce Radford, town manager in Apex. "We didn't rename the town Google for a month, we didn't have a Google day. We did ours straight up, purely on the merits."

The Raleigh nonprofit that provides high-speed Internet access for educational use is seeking $28.1 million in financial aid from the federal stimulus package.

MCNC plans to use the money to add more than 600 miles of fiber-optic cable in rural areas that include portions of Wake County and Johnston County. Formed in 1980, MCNC provides communications services for public schools, community colleges and universities.

The additional networks will improve Internet access for schools and colleges that already have access, said MCNC chief executive Joe Freddoso. It's needed because in large part because more and more students rely on distance learning that increasingly requires video transmissions.

"They have access, they need more capacity," Freddoso said. "We need to deliver to these schools in the next three to four years, basically, unlimited bandwidth."