MARCH 9, 2010 Tough Road for Google's Network Plan to Build High-Speed Internet Faces Infrastructure Hurdles, Lack of Content
By BEN WORTHEN Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575109911233889350.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews Google Inc. last month said it would provide ultrahigh-speed Internet connections for up to 500,000 people in the U.S. Now the search giant must deal with the challenging part: building the network and making sure there are services available to take advantage of it. Since its ultrahigh-speed announcement last month, Google has reached out for advice to several communities such as Cleveland that have already embarked on such projects. Among other things, Google asked about the need to have online programs that prove the benefits of an ultrahigh-speed service, says Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In an email Mr. Gonick received from a Google contact last month about the project, he recalls the company said "we have a lot to learn." Mr. Gonick is currently leading a Cleveland initiative that would connect 104 houses, several hospitals and Case Western Reserve University to a 1-gigabit per second ultrahigh-speed Internet service. The service, expected to go live this month, is about 100 times faster than the top speed available to most Americans. "We know that other companies have been in this business a long time," says a Google spokesman. "We're not pretending to have all the answers." Google's outreach comes as it confronts the hurdles in building its ultrahigh-speed Internet network and services to go along with it. The company plans to target a very small number of communities and says it may target as few as 50,000 households or as many as 500,000. But regardless, building such a network is a giant construction problem, with the cost potentially surpassing $1 billion if Google pursues the higher number, say people who have embarked on similar efforts. In addition, there isn't online content designed for people with such high-speed Internet connections, which could make the completed network underwhelming. "Beyond the cost issues and economic challenges in terms of what it takes to develop the infrastructure, to me one of the most significant barriers is that we don't have a vision of what we're missing and what [ultrahigh-speed Internet connections] will enable us to do," says Jim Baller, a Washington lawyer who is consulting with Google on the project. Google's decision to build an ultrahigh-speed network comes amid increased attention to Internet access. The Federal Communications Commission is getting ready to unveil next week a comprehensive broadband plan that is expected to call for higher-speed service. And Internet-equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. is expected Tuesday to announce its new technology that facilitates ultrahigh-speed Internet connections, although the details aren't clear. In an interview in February, Google product manager Minnie Ingersoll said that Google will likely partner with a contractor to help build the network, which it will manage. The builder must first connect fiber-optic cable to individual homes and install special electronics that can send and receive data at a rate of 1-gigabit per second. Then it must connect the fiber from the houses to larger cables running through neighborhoods. This in turn connects to a larger cable ring that circles entire cities. Putting this infrastructure in place is a time-consuming construction job that often requires digging up roads, says Herman Wagter, one of the leaders of a 1-gigabit project in Amsterdam. A Google spokesman says it doesn't have a project price tag in mind yet and that it is exploring new deployment techniques that could lower costs. A key part of Google's plan is to have cities and towns apply to be one of the locations that will receive the ultrahigh-speed Internet service, the company has said. Getting community leaders on board early should help Google gain the right of way to lay all the fiber-optic cable needed to complete the project. But even if Google builds such a network, leaders of ultrahigh-speed Internet projects in other cities say they have found there often isn't a market demand for it. In Amsterdam, private sector companies are allowed to sell service on the 1-gigabit network but so far no one is offering speeds faster than 200 megabits per second because there isn't yet a demand for it, says Mr. Wagter. Even if there was demand, there are technical reasons why a 1-gigabit connection wouldn't mean someone can download material on the Internet at that rate. Traffic on the Internet passes through several different networks in order to get to its destination and can only travel as fast as the slowest link in its chain. So someone with a gigabit connection likely wouldn't be able to download videos or other content appreciably faster than someone with a slower connection because that content will almost always go through slower hops along the way. That's the case in Pulaski, Tenn., where a network capable of delivering 1-gigabit connections is currently capped at 50 megabits. Pulaski, about 75 miles south of Nashville, doesn't have a large enough connection to the rest of the Internet to make 1 gigabit to the home viable. Because of that, "traffic in our little town can fly around at the speed of light," but viewing a YouTube video isn't any faster than in other parts of the country, says Wes Kelley, chief executive of Pulaski Energy Systems, which operates the network there. In Cleveland, Mr. Gonick is trying to get around the lack of services for ultrahigh-speed Internet by encouraging local organizations connected to the gigabit network to develop ones for other people on the network. "We've held a number of brainstorming sessions" trying to come up with services, he says. "We don't have a cookbook for it." ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
