It's been a while since we last heard about Google's Google Fiber project. The company's aim to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States was first announced way back in February. At the time, Google called for communities interested in being a pilot town to submit their applications before March 26. The search giant said that once this date had passed, it would evaluate the responses and announce its target communities "later in the year."
Now, we don't need to tell you that the end of the year is creeping up on us at what appears to be an alarmingly fast rate. With just over two weeks left of 2010, we had yet to heard anything about whom Google had chosen for the pilot. Would it be Topeka, Kansas, which changed its name to Google, Kansas, in honor of the internet giant? Or how about Duluth, Minnesota? The mayor of that particular city went for an ice-cold swim in an effort to get Google's attention. Surely they had earned themselves some piping hot fiber action?
Unfortunately it seems we'll have to wait a little longer to find out which community Google has chosen. The company said in a blog post published earlier this week that it's pushing the announcement into early 2011.
"We had planned to announce our selected community or communities by the end of this year, but the level of interest was incredible—nearly 1,100 communities across the country responded to our announcement—and exceeded our expectations," wrote Milo Medin, Vice President of Access Services at Google. "While we’re moving ahead full steam on this project, we’re not quite ready to make that announcement," he continued.
Medin goes on to clarify that while they need more time to make their decision, the 'selection process' has not been re-opened. So no last ditch effort polar bear swims, okay Don Ness?
I'm sure that is likely the end game plan however fiber optics isn't cheap.
One of the main reasons why no one has made the switch yet despite the costs
is the fact that the main broadband providers tend to be monopolies in the areas
No competition means no reason to improve service even more so when its
as costly as going to fiber optics. The game requires a new player to
make such a thing happen and Google does have the resources behind it
to do such.
Also: keep in mind that the US already has MAJOR backbones of fiber already laid. The emails and messages you see are already moving along fiber for 95% of their journey. There's so much fiber laid that there is a lot of fiber that is not being used, its dark.
Fiber is a funny thing, you can push a lot of data across it. Each year they keep finding new ways to increase the bandwidth between single fiber links. So the only weak point is in switching, but we're even there breaking records too.
No, the real cost is in putting new switchboxes and running fiber to each house along with a fiber drop point, then running it into the house. Large diverse topographical areas are already solved.
The big problem is they wouldn't be able to charge companies through the nose for their tiddly T1/T3 links they used to make money on back in the 90s. Much of their business is being the slow dumb creature that has money shoveled up to it without it doing a damn thing.