Google Plans 1 Gbps Trial Fibre-Optic Network Deployment

Following up on its surprise move into mobile phone retailing, Google has announced that it is to become a fixed-line carrier by building out an experimental fibre-optic network. Plans are still at early stages but would aim to lay fibre to the home offering speeds of more than 1 Gbps to between 50,000 and "potentially up to 500,000 people".

The move was announced through an official web blog post as mainly a call for interested communities in the United States, including both local government and residents, to contact Google between now and 26 March 2010. Those expressing their interest and requesting and providing further information will help Google decide where to build the network. Google will not be in the business of selling services directly to consumers, instead offering the network on an open access basis to multiple service providers with the network managed in an "open, non discriminatory and transparent way".

That is the first of three goals of the project. The second objective will be to use the deployment to test new ways to build out fibre networks, learning lessons that will be shared with other carriers around the world. Those end goals—those ultimately for Google's benefit—largely sit at the opposite end of the spectrum to the government-funded national broadband stimulus that has started to distribute funds with the aim of filling in the gaps in the national network (see United States: 21 December 2009: Eighteen Projects Gain First US$183 mil. of U.S. Broadband Stimulus Funds).

This project, rather, is likely to benefit the already well-wired by offering superlative, unfettered internet access. That will help prove Google's supported cause of net neutrality and illuminate the effect on innovation that essentially unlimited bandwidth can enable. Google notes that the project aims to see what application developers can do with the superlative speeds to create next-generation applications that the company cannot yet envision—although it does try, describing the like of live 3D medical imaging and collaborative 3D lectures and under five minute downloads of high-definition films. It will essentially work as a test bed for new services and show the direction in which rising availability of cheap bandwidth will take the internet.

Outlook and Implications

Innovation Test Bed

Google compares this with its Mountain View Wi-Fi project, which ended up covering the California city with a free W-Fi network (see World: 21 September 2005: Google Begins Wi-Fi Test). That is telling, as given the main aim of delivering innovation in services and applications, the home of the Google headquarters (Mountain View) and other Silicon Valley cities are the most likely beneficiaries of some of the fruits of the project. However, a network is only as valuable as its connections and offering this out to the wider world seems to have captured Google's eye for positive public relations.

Cost

Although Google will be able to cherry pick easy-to-deploy locations such as small but reasonably dense areas, the network would likely use active gigabit Ethernet technology all the way to each home. According to Calix Networks, in Verizon's deployment, cost per home passed in urban areas (using cheaper Passive optical Network Technology) has fallen to around US$700 per home passed, plus connection costs of around US$650 per home. A deployment to 50,000 homes therefore comes out at around US$67.5 million but Google will possibly need to build out all plant (having no existing infrastructure), and using active gigabit Ethernet would also add to costs and put greater demands on the regional middle mile and backbone networks.

International 1 Gbps Plans

1 Gbps services are available to business users although at a high cost, but there are several plans around the world to enable 1 Gbps services; In Singapore, the government-planned next-generation network aims to offer services by 2013 at regulated prices, sample wholesale price of S$21 (US$14.8) per month for a 100 Mbps residential end-user connection and S$121 for a 1 Gbps connection for residential users and from S$75 per month for a 100 Mbps connection to S$860 per month for a 1 Gbps connection for enterprise users (see Singapore: 6 April 2009: StarHub Selected to Operate Singapore's Next-Generation National Broadband Network). In Japan, NTT has launched 200 Mbps services while KDDI has offered a 1 Gbps service to some residences since October 2008 (see Japan: 30 September 2009: NTT to Boost Fibre-Optic Internet Access Speeds). South Korea has also promised 1 Gbps services in key metropolitan areas by 2012 and in China, Shanghai Telecom aims to hook individual buildings up to 1 Gbps connections, although these would likely be split among the housing units in each building (see China: 5 June 2009: Shanghai Telecom to Upgrade Broadband Speeds to 100 Mbps over Three Years).

The idea is to free up unlimited bandwidth, but 1 Gbps service is essentially offering little benefit over what is already becoming available to users: 100 Mbps connections can provide multiple high-definition and 3D video streams. However, the expectation is that unleashing additional bandwidth could move services in new and surprising directions.

Although Verizon is leading the bandwidth charge with its FiOS network in the United States, this is not an option in much of North America and still tops out at 50 Mbps. The objective of the project is to wire up leading high-tech communities to provide a North American counterpart to the Asian network deployment plans that will help to maintain the countries—and Google's edge in understanding the future development to the internet.