‘Game of Gigs’ Organization Aims to Expand Bloomington Broadband

For Bloomington (IN), citywide broadband should be less a question of if and more a question of how, local and national experts said.

“Today is a beginning, not an ending,” Mayor John Hamilton said at the end of a four-hour symposium focusing on the benefits of high-speed network connectivity for economic development and quality of life in Bloomington. “My head is buzzing ... in a good way.” Mayor Hamilton repeatedly has pushed for the creation of a citywide, community-controlled broadband network since his campaign. This week, experts told him and other community leaders and residents that the city’s making the right move.

“It does not take a genius ... to realize that the networks of today are not going to be sufficient for tomorrow,” Blair Levin said. Levin, executive director of Gig.U, an organization dedicated to accelerating the deployment of world-leading, next generation digital networks across the country, said a boom in network upgrades since 2010 has led to something his organization calls the “Game of Gigs.” A play on “Game of Thrones,” this game is one in which “You upgrade or you die.” That’s something that isn’t yet true, Levin said, but advocates hope it soon will be true that providers have to upgrade their speeds to survive. “It will eventually be true,” he said. “You will need better networks to survive.” That same argument is true for cities, he said — “(People) don’t want to have second-class networks in their cities.” Local experts and an analyst with a firm the city has hired as a consultant agreed that connectivity quickly is becoming a must for cities.