Until recently, America's major telecommunications firms always had plans on the drawing board for the next generation of Internet connectivity. In the 1990s, when most people connected to the Internet using modems with speeds of 56kbps or slower, phone and cable incumbents were working on cable and DSL services that would offer connectivity measured in megabits. As households upgraded to those first-generation broadband services during the aughts, incumbents were hard at work on technologies like FiOS, U-Verse, and DOCSIS 3.0 that would offer broadband connections in the tens of megabits.

But now, for the first time since the dawn of the commercial Internet, there are few plans in the works for major network upgrades. Most American households have no reason to expect that they'll see another order-of-magnitude increase in broadband speeds any time soon.

One man who is trying to change that is Blair Levin, an architect of the Obama Administration's National Broadband Plan and now the executive director of a consortium of universities called Gig.U. Levin hopes to demonstrate the potential of high-speed Internet service by promoting the construction of privately financed fiber networks in American college towns. Ars Technica talked to Levin by phone in late May.

Network of the future

"For the first time since the beginning of the Internet, we don't have a national provider saying, 'We're going to build a better network than the current best available network,'" Levin told us. He said he recently talked to a network engineer at a major telecom firm who told him, "'Nobody went to GM to engineer a used Chevy,' but that's what I'm being asked to do. I want to build the car of the future."

Unfortunately, after Verizon's FiOS project failed to produce big profits, incumbents seem to have drawn the lesson that major network upgrades don't pay for themselves. And Levin acknowledges that they might be right.

"I understand why neither cable or telcos want to upgrade," Levin said. "It would be a mistake for them to do so."

So rather than pushing for universal fiber, Levin is focusing on the low-hanging fruit. He cited Google's own gigabit fiber project as an inspiration. Numerous college towns applied to be Google's poster child for next-generation broadband service. But Google passed over all of them in favor of Kansas City.

The application process convinced Levin that college towns were particularly promising locations for next-generation broadband infrastructure. He began searching for private developers to build broadband networks in the neighborhoods around major universities.

"Google is trying to prove a different point than what I'm trying to prove," Levin told us. "What they're trying to demonstrate is that if they can build it and operate it in Kansas City we can do it anywhere. What I'm saying is I don't know if you can do it anywhere, but let's do it in the easiest place and see what happens."

Low-hanging fruit

College towns have several advantages that make them ideal locations for the nation's fastest broadband networks. The people who live near college towns tend to be relatively affluent professors and tech-savvy college kids: both desirable customers for a broadband network. In addition, the Internet began as an academic project, so universities themselves tend to have deep expertise in building and maintaining high-speed networks. And universities often have a lot of influence over local governments whose cooperation will be crucial to making the project cost-effective.

Levin's group put out a public call for information, seeking ideas for bringing faster broadband networks to college towns. And one submission stood out: a private firm called Gigabit Squared. Gig.U and Gigabit Squared began to collaborate, and in May, the latter announced it had raised $200 million in private capital to build new fiber networks.

The partnership has started announcing its first real-world projects: one at the University of Maine, and another near the University of Florida in Gainesville. While it's touted as a gigabit network, GigaOm reports that the Gainesville network will start at $99 for a 50Mbps connection, with higher speeds initially costing much more.

Levin told us that a key factor in the success of future Gigabit Squared projects will be municipal partners who are willing to streamline the installation process in order to keep costs down. Once again, he cited Google's agreement with Kansas City, MO, as a model. To woo the Mountain View giant, the city offered a number of perks, including a streamlined permitting process, a highly placed point of contact within the city bureaucracy, and free access to both public rights of way and city property itself. While Levin said no taxpayer dollars were spent on the Google Fiber project, Kansas City's contract does commit the city to provide free power and rent-free rack space in city-owned buildings—a kind of in-kind subsidy.

Levin declined to give specifics about the terms Gigabit Squared is seeking with municipal partners. Indeed, he said, Gig.U isn't directly involved with those negotiations. He introduces Gigabit Squared to interested universities and towns and then lets them work the details out among themselves. But he told us that concessions like those offered by Kansas City will be essential to making the networks Gigabit Squared builds financially viable.

Levin argued that it's good policy for cities to offer private developers favorable terms. "There are a number of beneficiaries when a network is upgraded," he told us. "But the benefits that count in the investment equation are those that go to the investor. It's a good thing for the community when a new network goes in, but that's irrelevant to the investor."

So, he said, cities need to make things as affordable as possible for a firm like Gigabit Squared that is putting up the capital. He argued the increased connectivity and competition will benefit consumers and taxpayer in that community for years to come.

Right now, there's a kind of chicken-and-egg problem with next-generation Internet services: there are few applications that can make use of gigabit network speeds, but no one wants to build those applications without an installed base of customers. Levin sees his project as a partial solution to this problem. He hopes Gigabit Squared will be able to "lead demand" for new high-speed Internet applications rather than merely following demand that already exists.

"One of the best things that occurred when the Internet went private—the universities kept control of the networks on their campuses," he told us. "The best networks are really the campus networks." Levin hopes to see high-speed connectivity spread outwards from the nation's universities to encompass the surrounding communities.