Where do I sign up?
People have wondered for years what Google might be up to with all that dark fiber it had bought up around the country. Now, we may have an answer: delivery of open-access, fiber-to-the-home Internet service at speeds of 1Gbps. That's right: 1Gbps.
via Your new ISP? Google launches 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home trial.
This is good news, as the US has been falling behind in the speed, penetration and cost of broadband. Our geography is partly to blame. We’re larger with large swaths of empty space compared to some of the European countries we’ve fallen behind. It’s more difficult and expensive here.
The other reason is I’ve yet to see anything resembling a cohesive national broadband strategy. If Washington wants to stimulate the economy by spening money on projects, accelerating the roll out of fiber to the home would be a great idea. It get construction types, who’ve been hard hit by by the economic downturn, back to work doing something useful that doesn’t lay the groundwork for another real estate bubble.
A third problem is a lack of real competition. I have exactly two broadband providers to choose from. Their prices are within pennies of being identical. One of them blocks inbound port 80, which prevents me from running my little web server. So I go with the one I’ve always had. Some choice there.
The open access part is important. The Comcasts, Cablevisions and Time-Warners of the world really want to be able to control what you have access to over the internet. They want their content to get priority and competitors content to be slowed or stopped entirely. I am a fan of net neutrality. It should be at the heart of a national broadband strategy.
I really believe that the fiber backbone should be a public resource, like the interstate highways, and free from mucking about by ISPs who want to raise their profits by controlling access. I really don’t know if Google is really committed to net neutrality, or if this is part of their master plan to rule the world.
In my lifetime I’ve seen a revolution in information. I can’t wait to see what becomes possible with 1Gbps fiber to home. What new apps and services can be built on that? I dunno, but I’d sure like to see.
As a T-mo subscriber, I can say they had (past tense) a reasonable wi-fi enabled cellphone and a matching service called T-Mobile@home. It basically let you use your wi-fi router has your very own mini cellular tower without consuming your plan minutes. Free cell service when at home! I used it for a while until I shut down the line with the wi-fi enabled Blackberry Curve. My employer provided an iPhone and I was past expiry on my contract.
BTW, cell service provided by employers isn’t exactly Nirvana. They want to use it squeeze unpaid overtime out of employees. I went from covering nights and weekends for extra pay, plus overtime (about 20% of base, all told) to covering it anyway for free. So I took an effective pay cut and have work impinging on my life more than ever before. But I digress…
Anyway it’s sort of been done, and seems like not much of stretch to add the bits above.
I kinda like Google’s “Don’t be evil” policy, even if they’ve been a bit too cooperative with censorship efforts by repressive regimes around the world. I hope it’s considered with this new business they’ve entered. I suppose it’s more aspirational, than operational. At the end of the day all corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to return value to shareholders, not warm and fuzzy feelings.
Here’s hoping they make something useful from all the unused fiber links they’ve been gobbling up like tic tacs.
Totally agree about net neutrality.
This is a bit wild, but consider this Googly scenario:
* google buys time on some cell provider’s system. Tmo or someone.
* google makes a cellphone w/wifi. Now you have cheap mobile service on the road and free over your wifi.
* The google broadband/wifi router has a kind of mesh functionality that allows it to talk to anyone’s google phone. Maybe the phones mesh, too.
In this model you get cheap broadband and mobile phone service in exchange for letting others use your google router when they are near.
So anyone who plays gets free phone/internet anytime they are near another player.
Just talking out loud,