Time for the other so-called broadband providers to shake in their boots.<p>I like companies that have no respect for established business models. In this perspective, despite its size, I think it's fair to call Google a start-up.
Worth noting: We had something quite inspirational up in the Lakeland fells recently. One villiage (Alston Moor[1]) was so sick of constantly being set back by ISPs, that they organised a community action group to lay their own fibre optic cable during some planned roadworks. Everyone pitched in, cloudsourced infrastructure if you will, and with just enough people they look set to have 100Mb broadband before a lot of places.<p>The guys who got it off the ground set up www.cybermoor.org and are encouraging similar grass roots development for other remote areas. I like that.<p>[1:<a href="http://www.cybermoor.org/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=viewlink&link_id=874&Itemid=10" rel="nofollow">http://www.cybermoor.org/index.php?option=com_mtree&task...</a>]
<i>Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes.</i><p>Did you hear that? It sounded as if millions of hollywood executives suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
This will shake up the broadband industry the same way ebook readers are transforming the publishing industry. This is HUGE.<p>I am in NY and I am waiting for years for fios in my area. Hopefully this adoption will move faster than FIOS.
This may be paranoia, but I'm actually worried about this much bandwidth being the hands of ordinary people. My reasoning: super-botnets. This has the potential to very easily create a several 100Gbit DDOS network, which is essentially unstoppable. I understand the need and potential for high speed networks, but I think gigabit might be taking it a bit too far. It's a "with great power comes great responsibility" sort of thing. But perhaps I'm just being overly paranoid.
Owning your net access, owning the DNS, routing through their backbone. These guys have all your bases covered.<p>How do you form an underground internet that bypasses the big players?
This is more than just kinda great, this is definitively awesomely great. Words can not describe how crappy Time Warner is in NYC.<p>Bonus points for doing this in a recession when traditional companies are running for the hills and laying off people left and right. Google continues to innovate and crush competition in multiple industries. I have no doubt that if they want to become an ISP or even pretend to become one to force traditional ISP's to innovate then good for them and better for us.
I think Google would be better off partnering with existing service providers for this project. It's a hugely complex process to start from scratch. Getting the pole rights alone to build infrastructure is going to take them years. In some area's within the span of a mile you might pass poles owned by half a dozen different entities. Most of them owned by incumbent Internet service providers who will tell you the pole is already at capacity and if you want to put up your fiber they need to replace 50 poles to cover one new street of infrastructure build out. In many places they'll have to dig trenches for new construction. In cold areas that means you lose at least 5 months a year of actual work time or you spend a fortune digging into the frozen ground. They're going to need to hire a small army of contractors to build plant and splice fiber or make the investment in man power, bucket trucks, gear, etc to do it in house. They're going to need warehouses and office space all over the country. And of course they'll need customer & technical support staff. I'd be shocked if Google makes any real progress on this outside of extremely limited deployments. The whole system is setup to make it <i>very</i> hard for any outside force to compete with incumbents.
I'm not sure this will have the effect on competition some around here think it will. The only way this will cause traditional providers to lower their rates and increase their capacity is if they actually feel threatened by Google's offering. 50,000 - 500,000 people is just not going to be enough to impact any of the big player's bottom lines. Comcast has 15 million Internet customers. Are they really going to mis 50,000 of them?
Interesting 2007 Cringley article predicting something like this, except more focused on providing the backbone. <a href="http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_001510.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070119_0015...</a> He also claims Google "controls more network fiber than any other organization."
Linking this news to what i read an year ago about google criticizing the router manufacturer for their lousy equipments(performance and both hw/sw quality) i just wonder from who they will buy their optical equipments...
Sadly they are not an hw company, so no google router anytime soon.
There seem to be a large number of comments on the possible effects, motives, and general thoughts about Google's effort, but I'm intrigued with what it's going to take to get them to consider a particular community or city. Will they be partial to urban or rural neighborhoods? Densely- or openly-developed communities? Newer or older cities? Will demographics play a role?<p>I'm sure they're going to be considering all of these, but short of keeping my fingers crossed and filling out an application I hope some part of Austin, TX gets on the map.
Google needs to sell access to entrepreneurs/large entities who want to get into the ISP business. Doing this will create a market over the monopoly/oligopoly we have here in the US.
I don't understand why the go for the 1gbit fiber to the home. it would be more helpfull to their business if everybody in the u.s would have 2 or 5 or 10mbit/sec in a short time , then if everybody has 1gbit/sec in a much longer time.<p>Also , does anybody know mass market applications that require more then 10mbit up/10mbit down?
Comcast is slowly getting into enterprise fiber-based bandwidth for business; my guess is that they will use the enterprise to grow their installed base, then eventually go wholly into fiber based delivery. Of course, at a price... whether this will spur Comcast into a faster rollout is the question.
<i>We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers.</i><p>I'm confused. Won't Google be the sole service provider of its own network?
I for one welcome google as an fiber based internet service provider. Especially if its better than the competitors
I wonder if they will do analytics on the packets or information
This is a very - 1 GIGABIT/SEC - interesting development on part of Google. They've successfully - 1 GIGABIT/SEC - established unified control of - 1 GIGABIT/SEC - their entire chain of service without strangling competition. Where Google goes - 1 GIGABIT/SEC - so does everybody else, it seems - and I, for one, fully welcome our thoroughly broadbanded - 1 GIGABIT/SEC - future.<p>There seems to be a lot to look forward to. Say, the INCREDIBLE 1 GIGABIT/SEC SPEED AHAHAHAHAAYES