In the pictured tweet, Phil Downer at Manifest Creative in Bozeman asks if Bozeman should have a plan for high-speed Internet cabling.
His question stems from recommendations Google has posted to its Fiber for Communities page, calling in local governments to require that broadband conduit be installed every time a project requires a street or sidewalk to be torn up.
You might recall that a few months ago, Bozeman applied to be a test site for Google’s ultra-high-speed gigabit Internet service. Google has, so far, not made any decisions about which city or cities will be chosen for its experiment.
Phil’s question is a good one. Should Bozeman require broadband conduit to be installed every time a sidewalk or street has to be torn up? It certainly would lay some (literal) groundwork for greater access to broadband in the future, but is it worth the extra cost?