Trying to speed up Internet service across the nation, Google said Wednesday that it plans to develop an experimental broadband system in one or more communities that would stream Web-based content more than 100 times faster than what is commonly available to Americans today.
The company was vague about many details of the plan, including when it might be built and how much a customer might have to pay, saying only that "we plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people."
But the Mountain View search giant, while emphasizing that it is merely testing a limited system and has no intention of becoming a major broadband service provider, has long pushed for
Despite the lack of specifics, the idea drew praise from advocates for Internet access.
"Local governments have been creatively and actively trying to meet their urban, suburban and rural communities' broadband needs for more than 15 years," said Tonya Rideout, acting executive director of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, in a statement. "We welcome collaboration with Google."
However, Scott Cleland, a telecommunications analyst and frequent Google critic, said the vagueness of Google's plan raises a number of questions. Among them, he said, "will Google decide to build in the community that offers the most tax breaks and public subsidies?" Minnie Ingersoll, a Google product manager, said many details about the network will be worked out later. "Some of that will depend on the communities we end up partnering with," she said, adding that it could be one or several communities. Santa Clara might be interested, said Assistant City Manager Carol McCarthy. "We were talking about it at the staff level today," added San Carlos Assistant City Manager Brian Moura. "I think it's an intriguing idea." He noted that several local residents had called the city to say they already had nominated it for the experiment. Although Ingersoll said Google "will be funding the deployment of the network" and "would probably be laying some fiber as part of this," the cost to the company also remains uncertain because, she said, Google may work with other Internet providers to set up the system. She said Google's motivation "is to experiment and learn" and that the company intends to share what it learns with others. "We don't have plans to expand beyond the test-bed we're going to build with this." Google's blog said the system will be an open-access network, "giving users the choice of multiple service providers" and "Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York," said Google's blog. "Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible." At 1-gigabit-per-second, downloading a typical movie would take about 30 seconds. By contrast, it would take about 35 minutes via some cable services, nearly six hours with DSL and more than six days via some dial-up Web connections. Given the growing popularity of Web video and other content that is hard to download without high-speed broadband, some analysts said Google has a good chance of using its experiment to prompt other Internet providers to offer speedier access. "The winds of change are kind of blowing in the direction they want them to," said Mike Jude, a consumer communications specialist with Stratecast, a division of research firm Frost & Sullivan. So Google will give other Internet operators an incentive "to at least do something along the same lines." Google has had mixed results with its previous efforts to provide communitywide Internet access. In 2006, the company launched a Wi-Fi network in its hometown of Mountain View, calling the move at the time "a way for us to give back to and engage with the community." But Google's efforts to provide free wireless Internet access throughout San Francisco fell apart in 2007, when Google's partner, EarthLink, backed out of the deal. Analysts differed on how much Google might eventually profit from the experiment. By prompting wide adoption of superfast Internet access, some said, more people might be encouraged to use Google and its services, such as YouTube. But in a note to its clients, research firm Broadpoint AmTech said, "we do not fully understand the rationale," adding that some Google investors "do NOT want to see (the company) going in this direction."
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