Imagine Internet access reaching to new heights and meeting higher expectations.  Imagine visits from your doctor or classes from UH being brought into your living room via life-size HD streaming video.  Imagine Internet connectivity hundreds of times faster than what we currently have.  If you imagined it, you share the same vision as Daniel Leuck and his team at Ikayzo, an interactive design and software development agency.  Their vision? For one or more communities in Hawaii to be selected by Google for their visionary ultra-high speed broadband project.

The Gigabit Network Project allows the lucky communities that Google chooses to experience a much improved Internet speeds by installing fiber optics in those communities.  This is one of the many reasons why Leuck and Ikayzo felt the need for Google to pick Hawaii as one of the vanguard communities for their high speed project, which will reach up to 500,000 people in select communities across the country.  Another reason?  “Given our unique geographic isolation, we have a particular need for high speed internet connectivity,” Leuck explains, “including quality of life applications.” Life applications include using the project for telemedicine, using hi-resolution and hi-definition videos for neighbor islands.  Another use is distance learning, also in hi-definition and in 3D, for students who are remote.  Other uses for the Gigabit Network Project that Leuck had in mind were “the fun stuff, like gaming and movies.”

Ikayzo first heard about the project through Google’s Blog and Google News, then came up with the idea for the Gigabit Broadband Initiative for Hawaii campaign. The process of campaigning for recognition by both Google and the people of Hawaii, Leuck admitted, was slow-moving at first. Most of the success of the campaigning is credited to social media.  “It started out through social media.  We encouraged people to tweet and [post it] on Facebook,” Leuck says.  With publicity help from Scott Foster and Bruce Campbell, who set up the organization's website, HI-Google.org, the campaign began picking up more attention within the last few weeks.  Says Leuck, “After Hawaii News Now did a report on us, we got calls from other news outlets.” 

In fact, after four days of having a steady number of 10,000 signatures supporting the Initiative on the HI-Google website two weeks ago, the number increased last week to almost 16,800 people.  The number spiked up once again, hitting a little over 17,000 signatures. This sign is hopeful for Leuck and everyone at the Initiative, as they were hoping for at least 10,000 signatures.   Leuck also credits the success of the Initiative to the government, who was instrumental in bringing together the four counties of Hawaii to work together for this project. 

The petition is still open to those interested in getting involved. There are two ways to sign the petition: One is through Facebook, by becoming a fan of the Gigabit Hawaii page, and the other through Gigabit Hawaii's Petition Spot page.  For more information, you can visit HI-Google.org or Gigabit Hawaii's page on Techhui.com.