Be afraid, be very afraid...

Jeez mate, you Aussies will fall for anything! Can’t help thinking this is one of those perennial Google shots across the bows like their supposed WiMax roll-out designed to rattle telcos into action. Google absolutely needs there to be high speed access , both fixed and mobile but are worried that telcos will drag their feet (not surprisingly since its all upside for Google, mostly downside for telcos.

The issue about fiber roll-out is not really the cost of deploying the fiber, its the civil engineering that goes with it - digging up streets unless you own the underground ducts or get a government somewhere to force open ducts. In fact the aspirant UK government, the conservatives, have already told BT that is what they will do - but then they also said they wouold outsource our personal  heath records managment  to Google !!

And anyway, even if you get into the ducts, the real problem is the last 100 yards ( or metres!) which is ususally buried cable or overhead cable.

Google has a big enough market cap to do almost anything it wants but I'll take a bet with you that digging up the streets is not going to be one of them.

The last 100 meters is a big hurdle for Google but what if they have something else in mind other than laying cable? Couldn't this be an experiment in localized wireless delivery? They've already rolled out municipal wifi service in Mountain View... Admittedly that was a very small scale experiment, but what if they used some combination of cable and wireless to solve the delivery issue?

Oooo

Big bad Google is going to bring mega bandwidth to 50,000 people.  That‘s nothing. Heck, most major college football stadiums hold twice that many folks.  This is a bluff of the highest order.

It’s one thing to manage thousands of servers.  But networks are a totally different animal.  They’re not contained in nice, comfy air-conditioned buildings. Networks are out amongst the rain, sleet and earthquakes.  And if that doesn’t cause a problem or 2, there’s always a backhoe waiting to dig and bust your cables.

And just how does Google plan to do this?  They can’t afford to dig up streets and you can bet the incumbent players won’t let them into their conduit.  This means they’ll have to lease dark fiber from someone else.  But that only gets them to within maybe a mile or so of the customer?  How do they actually traverse the last 100 yards?  Are they really prepared for the cost of trucks and installers?

This might work – maybe – in a dense metro area where you can serve a lot of people in a high-rise environment.  But if you live on Maple Street, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

I will say this – if their puffery manages to get the current crop of ISPs and Telecoms providers to up their game then I’m all for it. Because one thing about the Google announcement is true – bandwidth is a national resource and a competitive edge.  So to that end, I tip my hat to them sparking the debate.  But other than that, methinks they’re trying to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.

Why would Google dilute a high-margin, global footprint business with a geographically limited, low margin infrastructure business?  Putting POPs and strategic long-haul network routes aside, I think Google's forays into regional and local networks are experiments for data collection, government policy influence, and PR.

That said, CSPs and network operators still have every reason to be afraid.  But not because Google going to challenge them on moving bits.  That battle is in business models, deals, and OSI Layer 7+ of the network.

You guys can hypothesize all you like. Let me quote from an article published in VOIP News in May 2007 (yes 2007!):

"Starting a few years ago, Google began buying thousands of miles of so-called “dark fiber”--fiberoptic communications wiring that was installed in the ground but going unused. The fiber was historically cheap thanks to a fiberoptic building boom that had gone bust, allowing the Mountain View search giant to acquire large amounts of it for pennies on the dollar.

All this wiring represents more high-speed bandwidth than even Google can use right now, generating speculation about what the company will do with it, and theories range from innocent internal-data transport to world domination. Following are Google’s official story and three alternate theories about how the company might light up its cache of dark fiber."

Hmmm, what do you think now?

A report released this week by Arbor Networks states that Google now boasts a network bigger than all

Remember the last time the global economy crashed, after all the telecoms too...