At the US Conference of Mayors' Winter Meeting, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has voiced opinion for at least one "gigabit community" in all 50 states by 2015. The FCC Chairman wants a Google Fiber-like gigabit network across the US and believes that "establishing gigabit communities nationwide will accelerate the creation of a critical mass of markets and innovation hubs" enabled by the gigabit Internet connectivity.

At the moment, 42 communities in 14 states feature fiber optic Internet providers, but most of those installations aren't pushing gigabit speeds. In order to help out with the gigabit rollout, the FCC chairman has announced plans to create a new online and publicly accessable clearinghouse to collect and disseminate information about how to get the costs down, as well as increase the speed of broadband deployment across the United States.

We now have the problem of who would pay for it, as the current worldwide economy isn't strong to have the US government wholly fund the project. Could we see a telco or two step in, or Google possibly half finance the project? It looks like Internet access in the US is about to get interesting.