[Infowarrior] - Google Becomes an ISP: Plans to Deliver 1 Gigabit Connections to 50, 000 Homes

[Richard Forno]

Google Becomes an ISP: Plans to Deliver 1 Gigabit Connections to  
50,000 Homes
Written by Frederic Lardinois / February 10, 2010 8:09 AM / 1 Comments

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_becomes_an_isp_plans_to_deliver_1_gigabit_c.php
Google just announced that it will beginning to build and test an  
ultra high-speed broadband network in a small number of locations in  
the United States. The company wants to offer fiber-to-the-home  
connections that will reach 1 gigabit per second. For now, Google  
plans to first roll out these connections to around 50,000 people,  
with the potential to reach over 500,000 people at a later stage.

According to Google, this will be an experiment. The company hasn't  
decided on where to build this network yet, but you can nominate your  
own neighborhood here. The nomination process will end on March 26 and  
Google plans to announce where it will deploy this network by the end  
of the year.

According to today's announcement, Google plans to offer these  
connections at "competitive prices" and wants the networks to be open  
to competitors. Google current operates a free WiFi network in its  
hometown of Mountain View.

Finding Killer Apps
According to Google, this effort will help the company to experiment  
with "new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for  
everyone." Specifically, Google wants to see what the "killer apps"  
for these kind of connections are and test how to build better fiber  
networks.

U.S. is Lagging Behind - Will this Help?
The U.S. has been lagging behind with regards too broadband speeds and  
adoption. Just last year, the average broadband speed in the U.S.  
actually declined. With Chrome and the Chrome OS, Google has recently  
tackled a number of problems where it feels like the company is more  
interested in pushing technology forward than becoming a market  
leader. Nobody has really pushed broadband speeds in the U.S. forward  
and given that there are a lot of places where the incumbent cable  
providers don't even have competition, there has been relatively  
little incentive for these ISPs to provide higher speeds.