G-Unit, G-Force, G-Strings, and now G-Fiber

Google has recently announced their FTTH (Fiber To The Home) effort. With 1Gbps super-broadband service to your home you could serve up all your questionable Anime content in lickedy-split fashion. Google hasn’t specifically said where they plan to trial this new service but expects it to be available in a small number of locations in the U.S..

It looks as if Google is planning this rollout as an experiment into their giant lab (AKA America). I guess this isn’t really new, most of their products are released in sand-box fashion. Google is no stranger to throwing the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Remember their WiFi trials? Maybe not, that pasta didn’t stick.

Not many companies have the ability to trial cool new things without a business case as Google is. So from this perspective, I am grateful for their innovation attempts.

Business Week posted a story guesstimating the costs of this roll-out. Below is a quote from the story (full story linked to the left):

Google wants to offer 1 gigabit-per-second speeds to some 50,000 to 500,000 people. At 2.6 people per household, that roughly translates to 20,000 to 200,000 homes. Our friend Ben Schachter, Internet analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, estimates that it will cost Google between $3,000 and $8,000 per home, or roughly $60 million to $1.6 billion, depending on the final size and footprint of the network. If Google reaches, say, 100,000 homes, it would cost the company about half a billion dollars.

Interesting. We know that Google has about 25 Billion in cash so this effort is well within their means. But don’t expect this to happen anytime soon. Just look at how long Verizon has taken to lay down FiOS, and AT&T U-Verse, which isn’t even FTTH (AT&T took a FTTC (C=Curb) approach which reduces the cost and decreases roll-out times).

I’m still a little fuzzy on their model. Maybe they are looking to take their control of data to a lower layer? Should the MSOs and LECs be scared? Maybe. Everyone is (or should be) aware that the residential digital service anchor is broadband. Both voice and video are slowly but surely converting to data-based Internet-driven technologies (VoIP, Hulu, etc..). In the next decade it will be all about robust broadband to the home. Hey…that’s what this story is about! Ahhhhhh, maybe Google is on to something here.