In the late 1990’s, Yahoo paid little attention to a new search company called Google. Fast forward 12 years and…well, you know the story.

Looks like Google is at it again, but this time in the world of broadband. Google unveiled plans to connect U.S. homes to the internet with lightning-fast service.

How fast you ask?

Try 1 Gigabyte per second fast.  A full ten times faster than Cablevision’s top speed of 100 megabytes per second.

But alas,  the telecommunications world gave but a passing glance to Google’s ambitious plan.  Industry executives were quick to point out that Google has no experience in the slow and labor intensive process of upgrading networks. “If this were easy, everybody would be doing it,”quipped one industry executive.

The key to Google’s plan is replacing what is referred to as the “last mile”, (the copper connection from home to the network) with fiber optics. This task has been daunting for other carriers, however. Verizon has been replacing its copper network with faster fiber-optic cable for the last several years and it is far from completion - even after spending a whopping $23 billion.  Other telecommunications companies are also upgrading their networks, but in a more limited fashion.

Google’s plan is to work with local governments, although a Google spokesman noted that is was too early for the company to “get into the specifics of our deployment techniques.”

Only time will tell whether Google will emerge as a threat to broadband behemoths such as Verizon and AT&T. Judging from Google’s success, (and stock price) over the last decade or so, it might be wise not to bet against them.

Submitted by: TelCon Associates