The only news to pay attention to today in my world is Google’s announcement that they’ll be putting money into experimenting with open-access fiber-to-the-home 1Gps networks at some point soon. They’ll open up an RFI – they want to hear from mayors.
This is a truly significant announcement.
- We’ll learn so much about how much it really costs to bring high speeds to communities. We won’t have to rely on the carriers’ doomsaying about these expenses (“Hundreds of billions of dollars!”).
- We’ll learn what applications people want to use. Right now the network providers can say that the market isn’t clamoring for high speeds – but that may be because high speeds aren’t available.
- We’ll learn how easy it is to have competitive providers attach to these fiber networks. Until just a few years ago, all of our general purpose networks were required to allow this kind of attachment. Then the US abandoned this approach at the behest of our incumbents while other countries moved down this path with great success.
- We’ll see this model supported by a great brand. Several municipalities are doing this, but the Google move will get more attention.
- We’ll stop being content with minimal baseline speeds for America.
It’s a tremendous move. Even if Google ends up serving just 50,000 people, the game in the US will have been forever disruptively nudged.