Comments on: Google Building Its Own FTTH Network, Wants Community Volunteers

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:46:07 +0000

Same here rozell. Bad link for the RFI… Strange for a company like Google to make such a mistake.

By: UTOPIA Wants GoogleNet | Telecompetitor

UTOPIA Wants GoogleNet | Telecompetitor — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:32:16 +0000

[...] sense that UTOPIA is now making a bid to bring Google to town. Google’s recently announced FTTH initiative makes sense to UTOPIA’s leaders. “Few communities are poised like the cities of UTOPIA to [...]

By: Cities Start Lining Up for Google Fiber Network, Seattle to Make a Bid | Telecompetitor

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:28:37 +0000

[...] the wooing begin. Google’s approach to select locations for its new FTTH initiative should be interesting to watch. They are asking localities (including their respective citizens) to [...]

By: Bernie

Bernie — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:42:38 +0000

My sense is the municipal broadband network movement will be ripe for this initiative. Communities that are candidates for municipally owned broadband networks, like the many that have sprouted up in the past few years, seem like potential fits. I could be wrong, but I don't see Google overbuilding communities where decent broadband is already available.

Then again, that's conventional thinking. There's a lot of chatter about Google using this initiative to push the open broadband concept. Maybe they go into comuunities where good broadband is present, just to try to prove a point about open broadband networks. Wherever they go, they will want to make a big splash. Regardless, it should be interesting to watch…

By: rozell

rozell — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:26:46 +0000

Neither of these links worked for me, but it may be a firefox thing. However, it will be interesting to see if this actually comes to pass. After all, they have hit big headlines before with promises to buy huge blocks of spectrum for broadband to provide free or low cost wireless services supported by ads. While they are not making that claim here, it is difficult to justify to shareholders the spending of a portion of their $79 B in revenues on a wholesale fiber network that isn't highly probable to give a return of (much less a return on) their investment.

By: qthrul

qthrul — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:37:42 +0000

Agreed. I expect Google to follow the tenants of structural unbundling to provide a multi-operator model similar to the experiences highlighted by Derek Slater of the Google Policy team on the topics of fiber tails [1].

The full movie is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEaXsnnSc48

[1] see page 24 http://www.slideshare.net/qthrul/2010-a-service-p...

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:47:15 +0000

I signed up for my rural area but have serious doubts they'll move into that market, even though it's badly needed

By: Bernie

Bernie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:28:22 +0000

Funny point Sandy and unfortunately true. But my initial impression of what Google is doing with this is to operate an 'open' network and allow multiple service providers to deliver services through it. In other words, Google doesn't have any retail end customer relationships. They wholesale the network to other carriers who are responsible for customer support.

But then again – it's real early and many details have not been finalized.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:30:23 +0000

That's great. Can't wait until they explain to their customers that they only offer tech support via email.