A consortium of universities and municipalities representing the Triangle and Winston-Salem will publish a request for proposals on Friday that could lead to a project similar to Google Fiber to North Carolina.

Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff who was a lawyer for a decade in North Carolina, and the national organization he leads, Gig.U., is supporting the effort.

The North Carolina Next Generation Network, chaired by Duke University Chief Information Officer Tracy Futhey, spelled outs its plans and strategy around a visit by Levin to the Triangle on Monday. The two briefed reporters about the project at the headquarters for MCNC, which operates the growing North Carolina Education and Research Network.

The RFP will be published through the Triangle J Council of Governments. It is being written under the direction of former Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, who has returned to private law practice Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein in Raleigh.

The group includes Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State and Wake Forest University as well as six municipalities: Raleigh, Durham. Chapel Hill, Cary, Carrboro and Winston-Salem.

Its members are hoping to find broadband providers who would be interested in working with the region to deploy an ultra-fast broadband network capable of delivering 1 gigabit speeds to businesses as well as consumers similar to the project search giant Google has launched in Kansas City called Google Fiber.

While Gig.U has been involved in several smaller projects, Levin said the North Carolina effort is the first launched on a regional business. 

“I’m sure Google and others will be interested in this RFP,” said Levin, who helped shape national broadband policy while at the FCC.

A host of North Carolina communities submitted proposals for the Google project three years ago with Kansas City prevailing. The network is in the process of being deployed with prices of $70 per month for 1 gigabit access down to a $300 one-time fee for 5 megabit access covering seven years.

The universities were among the first to join the Gig.U group that launched in July 2011 after being encouraged by the huge response to Google’s proposal. More than 1,000 communities applied.

Gig.U, which at its core includes some three dozen universities, put out a “request for information” to see if companies other than Google might be interested in similar projects. The fact several dozen companies responded encouraged the North Carolina group to formulate its own RFP, Futhey explained.

“Is this something they might be interested in right now,” Futhey said of a 1 gigabit network. “We had very good responses.”

City and tax dollars are not involved in the RFP or the NC NGN proposal, Futhey explained. Rather, the universities can offer the incentive of potential business and the municipalities can work with a provider or providers to assist with such cost-cutting measures as zoning, engineering, right of ways and other government regulatory support. Such cooperation in the Kansas City area was an essential factor in Google’s selection of the Kansas City metro area for its first broadband deployment, both Futhey and Levin stressed. 

Companies responding to the RFP will be asked to deliver information withing 60 days, Futhey said. The RFPs will be reviewed over a month’s time.

“Once we review the RFPs, we can determine our options and proceed with negotiations,” Futhey explained.

The group has an aggressive timetable.

“By late summer,” Futhey said, “we could be talking very specific information with the municipalities.”