Mountain View, California — Trying to speed up Internet service across the nation, Google on Wednesday unveiled plans to develop and test an experimental fibre optic broadband network in several communities that would be 100 times faster than what is available for many users today with one-gigabit-per-second connections.
Google anticipates to offer the fiber service at a reasonable price to between 50,000 and 500,000 people in several cities.
Google product managers Minny Ingersoll and James Kelly depicted several occurrences for the ultrafast connections in a company blog post. In one, they ask readers to 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.
“Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make internet access better and faster for everyone,” two Google product managers, Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, wrote in the blog post.
They indicated that Google intends to develop and test the network on a trial basis in communities around the country starting later this year and that the tests could encompass as many as 500,000 people.
“We are doing this because we want to make the web better and faster to everyone,” said Kelly, who also promised that the network would operate on open access network, in which users could choose various internet providers and which would not give preference to any one kind of content. Kelly appealed to local officials who were interested in having their community participate in the trial to contact the internet giant.
But the Mountain View search titan, while stressing that it is merely testing a limited system and has no intention of becoming a major broadband service provider, the company has long campaigned for wider access to the Internet as a way to spur more searches and thus more revenues.
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.”
“This is an interesting experiment. The idea of Google getting into the ISP when they are in so many other businesses is, I guess, not that much of a stretch,” said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret. “It will be interesting to see who they target initially to get the service, how much they charge for it, and what type of disruption this creates in the market.”
While broadband industry officials may worry over the entry by Google, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski welcomed the move, the Washington Post reported.
“Big broadband creates big opportunities,” he said in a statement. “This significant trial will provide an American testbed for the next generation of innovative, high-speed internet apps, devices and services.”
Google said it would accept proposals from communities interested in the service until March 26. Google will work with contractors to build the fiber-optic network, Ingersoll said.
Jeffrey Silva, an analyst with Medley Global Advisors, said Google’s Internet project was not expected to make an immediate difference to the average consumer. But, he said, “10 years from now it could make all the difference in the world.”