There’s not a lot to report here – except to say I admire any city that’s going for top dog status! According to CED…

Chicago wants to be the city with the greatest availability of ultra-high-speed broadband in the United States.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office on Monday announced that the city is launching the Chicago Broadband Challenge.

I also admire any city that opens the challenge up to the people. According to the City of Chicago website…

The Chicago Broadband Challenge will be facilitated by a website at http://www.cityofchicago.org/broadband and will invite the public to participate with ideas and insight as to how the city can best make use of its existing broadband infrastructure and potential uses for a future expansion of broadband access. The conversation will inform the way the City moves forward with its broadband development.  Any individual, company, student, non-profit organization or community group is welcome to respond to the Broadband challenge, either informally through the website, or as part of the formal responses the city will be soliciting through a request for information.

The City of Chicago is releasing a Request for Information (RFI) today, that seeks to engage private companies, universities, and other organizations to accomplish three main goals: building world-class broadband infrastructure for the city; extending broadband service into underserved areas; and providing free Wi-Fi access in public spaces throughout Chicago.

It will be fun to see what happens. It’s an interesting approach.