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Many of Greensboro’s big businesses, universities and medical providers have already spent millions for some of the fastest data networks anywhere.

But many of the rest of us — small businesses, homeowners, students and small health care operations — make do with slower download speeds.

That mismatch keeps small and large Internet users from trading ideas, information and services that could make this city smarter, healthier and richer.

Now Internet search company Google wants to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for an entire community. It wants to use its Google Fiber for Communities project to test what happens when everybody in a community has affordable Internet access that’s 100 times faster than what most consumers use today.

Greensboro is one of hundreds of cities scrambling to meet the late March deadline to make its best pitch for the project.

In its application request, Google is asking every city what such a network would do for the community. Based on interviews, here are some ways it could help Greensboro:

Improve health care

Such major providers as Greensboro Radiology have large fiber transmission systems allowing them to send big computer files of CT scans and other complex images between physicians and Moses Cone Health System.

But smaller medical practices — even those a few blocks away — can’t afford the thousands of dollars for fiber-optic cable and high-speed service that would allow them to see computer images in real time, said Stephen Willis, Greensboro Radiology’s chief information officer.

So they wait for tedious downloads a new system could process instantly as patients and doctors confer in real time.

Even nurses and doctors who specialize in home care could get access to complex images at a patient’s bedside.

Affordability would make this more than just another high-priced medical toy. It could reduce the cost of better diagnosis and treatment without forcing a patient back to the hospital.

Home businesses

Bringing ultra-high-speed Internet home: That’s the key to Google’s proposed Fiber project. That means bringing opportunity that home businesses never could have considered before.

A home-based software developer could send massive files of computer code through a fiber-optic cable that would be nearly impossible through conventional cable.

Small businesses could find many other ways to benefit from high-speed Internet service, said Sam Funchess, president and CEO of the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship.

As an entrepreneur himself, Funchess once operated an Internet radio station and digital music-download service. But he had to rent space in a data center at $1,000 a month because he could not get high bandwidth at his office. He predicts that small-scale movie and music downloading services could blossom with universal access to high-speed broadband.

Sell homes faster

About 70 percent of home buyers use the Internet to scout their potential purchases, said Bill Guill, president of the Greensboro Regional Realtors Association.

Keeping customers focused is key, he said, and slow download speeds are deadly for short attention spans.

“We could provide people a whole lot more information in terms of video, but right now the speed of the download prohibits that,” Guill said. “There are things coming online all the time that we could use. I feel like that could be a huge asset.”

Although the real estate industry is ravaged by recession, builders will someday be planning for new developments again.

And super-fast Internet could speed their interaction with city and county governments as never before, said Rob Bencini, a consultant who as a former Guilford County government executive once managed the inspection and planning process here.

Blueprints and development plans are large documents that developers must hand-carry to inspectors. It’s a cumbersome process to inspect, request changes, then repeat the process over weeks or even months.

Such a file is too large for the system to handle on the current network. But the Google system would allow a developer to send complete plans nearly as easily as an e-mail and the process could be wrapped up in days.

“The submission of online plans can become commonplace,” Bencini said. “That can make a huge difference in the world of builders and developers. Governments are going to have to adjust to this.”

Expand education

North Carolina’s public universities are already connected by high-speed Internet, as are its independent colleges and universities.

Still, as educators note, the opportunity to reach people and students in the greater community can bring untold benefits.

“It can bring people very close who are physically quite far away,” said Hope Williams, president of N.C. Independent Colleges and Universities. “The better access and higher speed access we have for everybody, the better.”

Expanding outreach at a low cost could surely improve education in many ways, said Howard Katz, a professor at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro.

Teleconference classes between universities, for example, are possible right now, Katz said. But faster speeds make everything easier.

“If you have that capacity,” he said, “the ability to do it more seamlessly where you’re seeing the speaker in real time, where you’re able to participate more readily without that delay ... is one way where that could come into play.”

When bad weather strands students at their apartments, affordable Internet could keep them tuned in to class.

And when Elon students help local people with their taxes or legal issues through regular community outreach programs, for example, they could set up high speed links with retirement communities and spare elderly people the inconvenience of traveling to the school for assistance.

Hurry the future

The miraculous becomes commonplace — that’s how many experts describe what could happen a decade from now as Internet users come to expect speeds 100 times faster than today’s consumer data transmission speeds.

Some say the Google project would be “transformative” for Greensboro. And there’s no doubt the corporate name alone would attract scores of other companies curious about what made Greensboro special.

But for many residents the transformation will come in a hundred small ways that will seem commonplace someday.

“In the short run,” Katz said, “I would imagine you wouldn’t wake up one day and the world in Greensboro would be absolutely transformed. But it is going to happen, and the sooner it happens in Greensboro it will give us the opportunity to do things that 10 years from now would be universal. It’s impossible to predict.”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com