CEA’s Shapiro Hails Google Plans for Ultra-High-Speed Broadband Testbed

Shapiro thinks the Google plans are “exciting, although absent acquisitions, probably a more modest undertaking than the headlines infer,” he told us in an e-mail. “For over a decade, CEA has pushed for competition in the broadband market. The more competition, the better for the consumer and the less need for government regulation."

In a statement, Google said it’s “too early” to say how much it will spend on the project because “countless factors will play a role in determining an estimated cost. Right now our focus is on finding the right community partners.” Google projects it will offer the high-speed service to up to 500,000 people. The company will collect responses until March 26, and expects to announce the target communities later this year.

The trial will provide a testbed “for the next generation of innovative, high-speed Internet apps, devices, and services,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said. The broadband plan “will build upon such private-sector initiatives and will include recommendations for facilitating and accelerating greater investment in broadband, creating jobs and increasing America’s global competitiveness."

The networks built by Google will deliver Internet speeds of more than 1 Gbps, more than 100 times faster than speeds available to most Americans, the company said. To start the project, the company will request information from interested local governments and determine where to build. “We're excited to see how consumers, small businesses, anchor institutions, and local governments will take advantage of ultra high-speed access to the net,” it said. In building broadband testbeds, Google also plans to incorporate the policies it has advocated in areas like net neutrality and privacy protection, it said: “While it’s unlikely that our experiment will be the silver bullet that delivers ultra high-speed Internet access to the rest of America, our engineers hope to learn some important things from this project."

"The promise that this new Internet capability would operate committed to robust net neutrality and open access rules is significant,” Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said. “We're optimistic this proposal can help break through the lengthy debate over broadband deployment and offer new ways to get high speed broadband to unserved and poorly served areas more quickly and economically.” The Internet is “dynamic and competitive,” said Verizon spokesman David Fish. “Google’s expansion of its networks to enter the access market is another new paragraph in this exciting story.”

The FCC should use the examples of Google and Verizon’s FiOS network “to set forward-looking goals for the future of broadband throughout the United States,” said Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott. “We are years behind in the race to create a national infrastructure that can support the next generation of e-commerce, e-government, health and education technologies, and much more."

"Google’s decision to build high-speed networks that offer symmetry in speed, meaning users get an equal amount of bandwidth to download and upload, is critical in spurring adoption and innovation,” Media and Democracy Coalition Executive Director Beth McConnell said. “Most networks in the U.S. offer paltry upload speeds.” Google’s fiber-to-the-home network prototype could be a valuable resource for scientific researchers and policy makers, the New America Foundation said. It “sets a new standard for speed and technology,” said Sascha Meinrath, the group’s Open Technology Initiative director. “The network should have open, symmetrical architecture that facilitates high-speed communication for users within the network.” Because bottlenecks are built into most broadband deployments, and prevent users from communicating quickly and efficiently, the project could reverse this trend and “create a true high-speed local communications infrastructure that serves as platform for tele-health, education, government services, local media, and community organizing and empowerment,” the foundation said.

In showing support for the testbed, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and others highlighted the project’s potential to boost competition. “Google is not the only company with the know-how and capacity to build this kind of network, but somebody had to go first,” and maybe other network providers with different ideas will step up as well, he said. “I believe in the power of big broadband pipes over which people are free to innovate and deliberate and will be watching this experiment carefully.” The project offers “the prospect of bringing meaningful competition to the limited choice in wired services presently available to most Americans, and presents the occasion for new entrants, including minority-owned ISPs, to enter the market,” said Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman.