New Orleans is uniquely situated to enable this project to reach its fullest potential. From Louisiana’s Digital Media Tax Credits that allow for up to 35% return on application development costs to the great story it would be for Google to put the capstone in New Orleans’ rebuilding, the reasons are many. Here are a few:

• The global community identifies with New Orleans more than any other American city within Google’s specified community size of 50-500,000 people. Because of our unique heritage and hundreds of years as a port city, we have particularly close ties with parts of Central and South America, Europe, and Asia.
• We are a major tourist destination, so people from all over the world will be able to experience our fiber and bring the word back to their communities. In 2013, we will be hosting the Superbowl, and the potential exists for fiber to facilitate a mass media experience unlike anything we’ve seen before.
• We are in a uniquely flexible state of reinvention, having proven ourselves willing to undertake large-scale changes in our school, hospital, and transportation systems in the last few years.
• We are under a federal mandate to update our sewer system in 2010, which obviously provides the perfect opportunity to run fiber underground.
• Eight companies are running fiber locally for businesses, meaning the precedents for permitting have been established and experienced local partners are available to work with Google on the project.
• We love local culture. Our local newspaper has the highest subscription rate in the country. Discussions between local media organizations and content creators have been leading towards the development of an online, independent media distribution channel. Like WWOZ, our independently run local radio station, an independent video channel on fiber could be a great way for content creators to get their work out to a local audience and beyond, and could help find the answer to the enormous question of how to monetize web content.
• Our Digital Media Tax Credits allow companies to recoup 35% of their expenditure on a project in transferrable tax credits when using local workforce, allowing for dramatically cheaper development of apps.
• Our active, well-organized tech and entrepreneurial communities have proven records of gaining national attention and donating time to projects within the city. These communities would make great ambassadors for the project on the national stage and within the community, encouraging all communities within New Orleans to take advantage of the fiber and working with them to help them put it to use.
• It’s the best place in the country for creative types to live. Why, despite all our recent hardships, were we ranked the happiest state in the country? Because we understand what life is about.
• Our sense of community is unparalleled. We can’t get enough of it.
• We have a flourishing film industry happening here with the unique quality of having producers usually in other cities. The opportunities for fiber to make it easier for producers anywhere in New Orleans to see high def footage coming in live from the set makes the setup of film shoots dramatically easier. The potential for fiber to facilitate online backup of video footage and easy sharing of footage with producers in other cities is also a potentially game-changing infrastructural improvement.
• Entergy, our regional energy company, has a $10 million project in the pipeline to develop a smarter energy grid, a great potential area for fiber to play a role.
• Who wants to be technologically behind New Orleans? There are some cities people expect to get technological improvements first, but New Orleans isn’t usually on the list. The perceptions of New Orleans as behind-the-times, however inaccurate those perceptions may be, will drive more change throughout the country than in a more expected city.
• We have a large creative class.  FTTH will be a breakthrough technology that will enable users to collaborate on content production.  Artists, chefs, musicians, film makers, sound engineers, all using commodity computing resources from home. This creative class is as likely to produce media as consume it, so this makes New Orleans a great place to beta test bleeding-edge apps designed for producing and sharing content.
• True telepresence will empower remote workers and make it easier for startups to succeed with minimal upfront capital outlay.  We have far more potential to be an innovation hub than your average midsize city, given the tax incentives, the creative class and reconstruction momentum, funding and investment.
• If the service is affordable enough, Google has the opportunity to
  provide unprecedented access to low / moderate income communities, and to bring a new generation of users and customers online in the best way possible.  Even if not all individual households were able to afford the service, we’ll see more community centers, internet cafes, faith-based facilities, etc offering community access.
• Homes connected to fiber will appraise at a higher value. This is
  meaningful to homeowners in struggling areas.
• Installing fiber trunks in neighborhoods still struggling to rebuild
  after Katrina would create a large incentive for additional investment
  and development in those areas.  Wouldn’t you consider buying a newly
  renovated home in a hard-hit neighborhood if the investment trend was
  positive and the home prices were low compared to other already fully
  developed areas?
• New Orleans musicians are known worldwide for having a particular flavor that is highly sought after. Fiber to the home would enable our local musicians to play from their homes or the smallest of recording studios and be session musicians for recording going on all over the world. This is huge, especially for the potential of our musicians to be on recordings done in France, Japan, and other countries where our kind of jazz is hugely popular.