Clinical Professor Brad Bernthal and Research Fellow Kaleb Sieh worked with the city of Boulder to attract Google’s proposed experimental, affordable, ultra high-speed broadband network. Google’s network will provide a municipality with 1Gb/second internet service, which is roughly 100 times faster than current internet speeds.Professor Bernthal convened a public/private ad hoc committee in February comprised of CU-Boulder representatives, Boulder city government officials, and local entrepreneurs and business people to spur Boulder’s efforts. The committee supported the work of Don Ingle, Boulder’s Director of IT, and Liz Hansen, Boulder’s Economic Vitality Coordinator.The committee created the Boulder Fiber Forever website, which attracted more than 20,000 hits and 3,000 community submissions in the four weeks between being started and the end of Google’s submission time on March 26. Professor Bernthal and Sieh also helped draft and edit portions of the City’s formal response to Google. Boulder hopes that the Google network will provide jobs, economic vitality, and enhanced communication services to all sectors of the local community. “Boulder would be a natural location given the terrific entrepreneurship scene and CU,” said Professor Bernthal. “And the Silicon Flatirons Center would be an ideal laboratory to study the network and identify policy implications for broadband in the future.” Google plans to announce the cities that will receive the new network later in 2010.