West U and Bellaire on the Google Fiber bandwagon

The deadline for submitting an application for a city to be a part of Google’s experimental fiber network was last Friday, the 26th. The cities of West University Place and Bellaire got theirs in before the deadline.

Cindy Siegel and Bob Kelly won’t be making any photo-op leaps to promote their respective cities’ cases for bring Google’s fiber to Bellaire or West University Place. Both cities are taking low-key approaches to their responses to Google’s bid requests, and both municipalities have something few other cities can boast; high-density entities with relatively low square mileage, with great proximity to one of the most tech-savvy large cities in the country.

Can Bellaire and West U compete against the others?

“We’re taking a more straightforward, practical approach,” said Bellaire City Manager Bernie Satterwhite. “If you look at what some of the other cities are doing, and look at some of the institutions that would benefit from this, I would think it might diminish our chances somewhat.”

In the same breath, though, Satterwhite told the Examiner: “But, it’s worth our while to pursue this.”

West University Place City Manager Michael Ross, however, thinks his city’s conservative, under-the-radar set of sales pitches to Google, will play to an advantage for his municipality.

“I feel our chances are extremely high,” said Ross. “It’s been proven time and time again that West University Place is a community that is very desirable for technology. We do everything we can with our current provider—what we’d really like is what, in this case, is a ‘supreme’ provider.”

They join Sugar Land in submitting an application, and we know all about Austin. Does anyone know if the city of Houston ever did anything about this? My guess would be No, since I’ve not seen any indication of it. But in the event I just missed it, leave a comment if you know what happened.

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