A University of Adelaide Blog

Chattanooga is the first city in the Western Hemisphere to offer 1 Gigabit per second fibre internet service to all of its residents and businesses. The fibre network that permits Gig service was installed by Chattanooga’s publicly-owned electric power system, EPB, to support the most advanced Smart Grid system in the nation. The Smart Grid is the first killer app for Chattanooga’s Gig network, one of many that the community wants to deploy to take advantage of “the Gig.”

At 20-200 times the maximum speed available in other communities, the Gig opens the door to unimagined ways to learn, play and conduct business. So Chattanooga is launching a series of competitions in the Gig Tank – part incubator, part think tank – through the summer of 2012 for students and entrepreneurs to launch future uses of this amazing speed.

The effort is underwritten by local and national corporations, foundations and organizations. Sponsorship opportunities remain for corporate, venture capital and foundation sponsors, especially prizes for seven application sectors chosen for the competition:

• Advanced Manufacturing – Rapid design-to-manufacture, cut-to-measure fashion, parallel CAD,
  3D printing, robotics
• Cloud Computing – Artificial Intelligence, internet security, business continuity & recovery, data
  mining/analysis, real-time language translation, smart transportation
• Digital Media – Streaming and portable media, crowdsourced gaming, IPTV, virtual events, multilanguage
  digital media distribution (movies, games)
• Education – Global educational access, participatory and distance learning, interactive multimedia,
  3-D technical training, learning assessment & personalized education
• Energy – Automation to improve reliability, asset management tools, new consumer products,
  renewable energy grid integration, vehicle-to-grid support, self-healing distribution automation
• Healthcare – Electronic medical/health records, distance team robotic surgery, vital sign
  monitoring, accelerated global clinical trials, medical image archiving/retrieval, nanobots and
  biological sensors
• Public Safety & Emergency Response  – ‘big data’ challenges, disaster prediction, simulation &
  response management

At stake in these competitions is up to $300,000 in cash prizes and seed capital named the Gig Prizes. The largest award will bring $100,000 to the entrepreneurial team with the most viable business plan built during a 14-week business accelerator in the Gig Tank.

Ten startup teams will be offered $15,000 seed investments along with mentoring and business plan help to prototype their businesses. They will develop and test applications on the gigabit fibre with thousands of  fibre-wired EPB residential, business, and industrial customers.

A $50,000 cash prize will also go to the winning student idea launched in the Gig Tank. Students will pitch their ideas to entrepreneurs, angels and VCs as they build their first prototypes along with launching businesses.

The internet will also host the first Geek Hunt for the world’s smartest geeks to bring their big ideas to the Gig Tank summer programs. Geek Hunt will fire up the tech community with $1,000 cash bounties to lucky students who use Facebook and Twitter to tag the geeks with bold ideas that are ultimately chosen to participate in Gig Tank.

Deadline: 1 March 2012

See Gig Tank  for details.