Olathe, Kansas approved an agreement to bring Google Fiber to their city.
Olathe has a population of 125000.
In the UK, Arkholme a village in rural Lancashire is a community that is working together to install gigabit internet. B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North) is a community fibre network offering fibre to every home providing 1000 megabit (1 gigabit) futureproof connection for £30 (US$45/month) a month.
Farmers in rural After installing the network on the property, which is estimated to be around $1,500 (much less than what ISPs would charge).
To further raise awareness of their efforts, B4RN has hosted a few open houses showing off super fast downloads (917 Mbps) and movie streaming to the media, business owners, and locals who are still on the fence. The plan is to continue to raise another 1.3 million pounds in order to roll out services to surrounding villages over the next seven years with the target of connecting 15,000 properties to the network.
To get the network built, locals invested their time and physical labor to dig trenches and lay fiber cables while raising half a million pounds.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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