Google selects Kansas City, Kansas. The Dot marks the spot.

Kansas may have lost the NCAA Tournament, but Kansas City, Kansas, won the national competition to be Google’s first site for a high-speed broadband network. Nicknamed “The Dot” after Wyandotte County, Kansas City, Kansas beat out over 1100 cities across the country.

How fast will the connection be, you ask? We’re talking 1 gigabit per second, which is over 100 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. If that’s hard to grasp, look at in ways that will blow your mind.

It’s like going from dial up to broadband.
It’s like going from a rotary-dial phone to a cell phone.
It’s like going from black-n-white TV to color.
It’s like going from high school to college.

At PlattForm, we’re stoked. Just down the road from us is the epicenter of future things. All eyes will be focused there to see what new thing is being developed and tested.

Forget Cloud Computing. This is Cloud 9 Computing.

Imagine software developers flocking to the area to develop and test their most innovative, bandwidth hogging mobile apps. Imagine the possibilities for online video. You could download a feature film in seconds. Mobile phones with fold out screens and tablets would play videos without buffering or delay.

The applications for entrepreneurs, healthcare, government, schools and more will be breathtaking. It’s hard to imagine what a world with 100 times faster broadband will be like. Few have experienced it let alone made it possible for every school, business, library and person in Kansas City, Kansas to have it as common and reliable as turning on the faucet for water.

Online education 2.0

With our focus on post-secondary education, PlattForm Advertising has been on the front lines of helping colleges and universities market their online programs.

What if an online program took advantage of students’ 100 times faster connection? Video lessons, live video conferencing, monitored video testing, the possibilities are endless.

What’s to keep a university or college from relocating their online program to Kansas City, Kansas? Location doesn’t matter. Bandwidth does. And doesn’t it make sense to pilot online education advances? Develop and refine it here and then roll it out as Google rolls its service out.

Yes, yesterday, the day the news was announced, was stunning and exciting. But what’s even more stunning and exciting is the future that is about to unfold right around us.