Williamsburg, Virginia, just applied to become the "first permanent Google settlement in America," as part of the search giant's new foray into providing communities with super high-speed broadband internet service (over 1 gigabit per second!).
That, Google, would be the wrong Williamsburg!
Here, in Brooklyn, you have a vibrant community of creative types, assholes, and tech enthusiasts suffering under the maniacally slow service that Time Warner Cable "provides." It's terrible! I know I'm an asshole for writing this, based on all the problems a community like ours has, but I get really pissed when I can't play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live while my girlfriend is streaming Netflix and uploading photos. It's ridiculous.
And I know a majority of you out there are with me. I posted a few months back about the slow service affecting Williamsburg and I got a heck of a lot of responses.
I wrote to Time Warner, and was told, "The current issue is something our engineering department is aware of but will take time to resolve. There is nothing our office can do to expedite the situation." It was a problem with the node, they said, meaning there's just too much bandwidth being requested by too many people with computers in such a small area.
(Funny anecdote: my wonderful on-the-phone rep was comfortingly named George Lopez.)
Christy wrote: "the internet here is totally unreliable, it's always going in and out."
Caralyn wrote: "I'm in greenpoint and our time warner has been out for 2 days doing the same thing. Ach! So frustrating! Any news on a fix soon?"
Michael wrote: "My Time Warner service has been terrible for the last couple months since I moved to my new apartment on S.4th. Really, terribly slow for "high speed" and it kind of goes in and out between decent and nearly nonexistent. Lets go straight to Albany with this one and get us some legislation. Or just ask TW to stop ignoring our downloading and streaming video needs."
Allen wrote: "My Time Warner internet is so bad that I have to steal other peoples sometimes to check my email. Last night I had no internet at ALL… Im so pissed. And they say nothing is wrong…"
You get the idea. So I dunno, but maybe it's worth us all nominating our community for Google to at least give it a shot? I'm sure TWC has some dystopian lock-down on all of Brooklyn, but you never know. Click here if "you'd like a Google fiber optic trial in your community." The company is "asking local governments and residents to express their interest in the fiber optic trial, and to provide information about their community by completing our request for information," so hey, why not us?
Pass this link along to your friends and get them to sign up too! Viva la Googles!
