Google to offer 'ultra high-speed' broadband in US

From now until March 26th, Google is asking for input from communities that might be interesting in taking part of this project.

From the official project overview

Google is planning to build, and test ultra-high speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the country. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000, and potentially up to 500,000 people.

As a first step, we're putting out a Request for Information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public.

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They've been building up to this for years, buying up lines that were run but not activated before the burst of the dotcom bubble. Submit to the GoogleNet, offering 1,984 Mbps access to everyone!

I will be interested to see what really happens if this actually happens. I think the first thing I would likely do is finally sign upfor netflix and just do download only.

I don't really see any significant benefits for normal use, multimedia should see a massive boost for the ondemand services, and working from home via vpn should also be much more enjoyable.

Depending on the uplink speeds, this will make cloud computing and online backups really shine.

That sort of speed is reaching the limits of what most consumer hard drives can do with peak sustained through put. Especially laptop hard drives with slower 5400rpm mechanisms.

I think most drives push a maximum of 140MB/s unless you are lucky and have a fast flash drive (not one of the cheap ones).

On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but being Google, I'd be concerned about privacy. I'm just not sure I'd want Google as my ISP.

While faster is great getting broadband to be as widespread as radio or TV coverage and eliminating the digital divide is a more important goal, IMO.


Lethal

Are Google finally learning and not being so Microsoft-ish in their strategy? This would be great for Google to do. The services they want to offer needs the type of speeds proposed by them. There was no point offering services that required ISPs to catch up with them, since ISPs are notoriously slow at upgrading their speeds.

1...Gbps?

Abstract said:

Are Google finally learning and not being so Microsoft-ish in their strategy? This would be great for Google to do. The services they want to offer needs the type of speeds proposed by them. There was no point offering services that required ISPs to catch up with them, since ISPs are notoriously slow at upgrading their speeds.

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Their is idea is getting close to Apple's closed ecosystem model.

Offer Google Chrome OS on a Google Tablet which connects to Google's Cloud though Google super high speed internet.

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dear google,

Please come to australia! You are our only hope! (quite literally).

This will hopefully bring down prices for those who are in the us - even though you already have it really good Haha.

yg17 said:

On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but being Google, I'd be concerned about privacy. I'm just not sure I'd want Google as my ISP.

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I also came to this thread to say that!

jbernie said:

I think the first thing I would likely do is finally sign upfor netflix and just do download only.

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You don't need that kind of ridiculous speed for good quality streaming from Netflix, plus you can't get the HD stream on a computer, yet.

DoFoT9 said:

This will hopefully bring down prices for those who are in the us - even though you already have it really good Haha.

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I was talking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago. He's currently living in Middle of Nowhere Japan, south-southeast of Osaka. You'd figure he would be on something like a cable line.

Nope, 100MBps, in the freaking mountains.

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Counterfit said:

jbernie said:

I think the first thing I would likely do is finally sign upfor netflix and just do download only.

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You don't need that kind of ridiculous speed for good quality streaming from Netflix, plus you can't get the HD stream on a computer, yet.

DoFoT9 said:

This will hopefully bring down prices for those who are in the us - even though you already have it really good Haha.

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I was talking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago. He's currently living in Middle of Nowhere Japan, south-southeast of Osaka. You'd figure he would be on something like a cable line.

Nope, 100MBps, in the freaking mountains.

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their infrastructure is amazing over there. And it can support it too! I guess they aren't very big area wise compared to australia and the US. Do you know how much he pays? Probably gets it for free

Don't their governments own/manage it all though? Where as companies do ours only for profit margins.

DoFoT9 said:

I guess they aren't very big area wise compared to australia and the US

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We're a small country as well, but our infrastructure is awful! Slow speeds are the norm!

AnDy

EDIT: We are the UK by the way!

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andylyon said:

DoFoT9 said:

I guess they aren't very big area wise compared to australia and the US

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We're a small country as well, but our infrastructure is awful! Slow speeds are the norm!

AnDy

EDIT: We are the UK by the way!

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Ahh the uk. I've heard things. Poor like quality and under par central servers don't make for efficient internet! Same situation over here.

Google has been pretty vocal about net neutrality. I wonder if they'll walk the walk on this one.

DoFoT9 said:

This will hopefully bring down prices for those who are in the us - even though you already have it really good Haha.

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The US broadband infrastructure isn't wonderful. If you live in a large city, your broadband options are good. If you live in a smaller town, you probably have at least one option for broadband (cable or DSL), albeit expensive. I lived in a small town and they charged something like $80/month for a 5mbps cable line because they could, they had no competition. And if you're out in a rural area outside of a town or city, likely your only option is dial up or satellite (which is expensive, slow and capped).

I think people see things like Comcast advertising speeds such as 100mbps and think that it's like that all over the US; it's not.

DoFoT9 said:

dear google,

Please come to australia! You are our only hope! (quite literally).

This will hopefully bring down prices for those who are in the us - even though you already have it really good Haha.

Click to expand...

Ok so Australia doesn't have the perfect setup, granted, but at the same time you also don't have it bad.

Australia has one big benefit in that a full roll out to 8 cities/metro areas covers a pretty large% of the populaion. The downside is that it is excessively expensive to cover the remainder when there is little demand.

Also, don't forget that Australia has location issues in the sense that alot of internet traffic goes out of the country and laying a few thousand km/miles of cable in the ocean to boost speeds is no simple task.

yg17 said:

The US broadband infrastructure isn't wonderful. If you live in a large city, your broadband options are good. If you live in a smaller town, you probably have at least one option for broadband (cable or DSL), albeit expensive. I lived in a small town and they charged something like $80/month for a 5mbps cable line because they could, they had no competition. And if you're out in a rural area outside of a town or city, likely your only option is dial up or satellite (which is expensive, slow and capped).

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same sort of situation over here. there is tons of competition in the cities where other companies have access to the exchange. the problem is that in the rural areas, there is one company that owns basically every exchange (Telstra) - they used to be a government owned company but now are private. they are purely after profits, as any business is, which i understand. but it sholdnt be allowed for an internet company.

we can get ADSL2+ in our area (the fastest in the country basically), but we can only go on a Telstra plan, or a company that has made a deal with Telstra (prices are the same though). $100 a month for 25GB of data - downloads AND uploads included. its a RIP.

i should also point out that companies dont have volatile pricing, if its $100/mon in the city, its $100/mon in the country (if you can get it)!

I think people see things like Comcast advertising speeds such as 100mbps and think that it's like that all over the US; it's not.

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never seen that advertised, but i personally know that its not going to be the deal. im not stupid

jbernie said:

Ok so Australia doesn't have the perfect setup, granted, but at the same time you also don't have it bad.

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$100 a month for 25GB usage? seems bad to me when a lot of people in the US dont even have caps! im not even going to compare to South Korea, Thailand, China, Japan etc because it just gets depressing

Australia has one big benefit in that a full roll out to 8 cities/metro areas covers a pretty large% of the populaion. The downside is that it is excessively expensive to cover the remainder when there is little demand.

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what they SHOULD have done, was plan FTTH for all the metrol/semi-regional areas (thats me hehe) - then give the rural areas VDSL2. FTTH can go infinitely high (>300mbps) and the VDSL2 hits around 100mbps. great! id be fine with that! but i think they are trying to do fibre everywhere for now. meh who knows what they are doing, i dont even think they know!

anyway, the result is going to be MASSIVELY high prices. an estimation by an independent reviewer said that if 80% of current broadband switchers trade to this new network, $200 a month will be the basic price! f*ck that, seriously.

Also, don't forget that Australia has location issues in the sense that alot of internet traffic goes out of the country and laying a few thousand km/miles of cable in the ocean to boost speeds is no simple task.

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they have already been laid of course, but it probably wont be enough. one of the newest, faster lines has about 2tb/s. but imagine if everybody had +100mbps, that line would be overloaded by a large street! let alone another 20,000,000 people.

i cant wait for 4G, its already 5x faster then the fastest plans you can get on ADSL. pathetic.

this will the equivlant of your macbook going 0-60MPH in 2.3 seconds with a bugatti veyron 10.4....

a full 1080p HDTV movie can be downloaded in less than 5 minutes. w/ these speeds.

wow...this means we could download a full 700mb movie in less than a minute ?

thats awesome...google FTW

pukifloyd said:

wow...this means we could download a full 700mb movie in less than a minute ?

thats awesome...google FTW

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5.6 seconds actually theoretically of course.