In the next couple of weeks, Google will announce the winners of the Google Fiber for Communities applications (we covered the initiative previously).  Wired has a good article on what communities that don’t get into the fiber project should do: contact a fiber provider, go out for bonds, and build it yourselves:

Wilson, North Carolina, runs a city-owned network called Greenlight that offers an unbundled 20 Mbps up and 20 Mbps down connection for $60 a month. Cable subscribers can get 10 Mbps up and down for $35 — and those who need even faster connections can go all the way up to 100 Mbps.

But there are lots of ways for cities to start a network without committing to building everything at once — which often requires a bond measure.

Settles points to Santa Monica, California, which started with a fiber-optic line serving the government, then expanded it slowly as the city worked on projects like street renovation and sewer-main installations. In March, it launched the Santa Monica City Net, a 10-Gpbs open-access network that Santa Monica businesses can use — which includes Google and some top hospitals using it for tele-medicine. That network is 10 times faster than what the FCC calls for as a goal in 2020.

We all know that it isn’t as easy as deciding to put broadband in our communities, but this has to be a better option than changing the name of your city (Topeka, aka Google, Kansas) or jumping into a shark tank.