Mobile Computing News

Photo: Google

Google recently announced it plans to provide at least 50,000 US homes with 1GB/sec broadband connectivity in a limited test. This number could soon swell up to 500,000, which has other broadband telecoms very concerned.

The implications of all this speed

The reason most telecoms are scared is because domestic speeds of this kind are unheard of in the home. The fastest broadband available in the US at present peaks at 50mb/sec, which is 20 times slower than Google’s proposed test. The average speed lingers at under 4mb/sec, which is 250 times slower than Google’s proposed offering. At 1GB/sec, consumers can download data at a rate of 100mb/sec. That means a full album in less than one second, the average 1080p HD movie in about 60 seconds and the equivalent of a terabyte worth of data – that’s 1000 gigabytes – in less than three hours.

Seattle indicate interest

In the wake of Google’s announcement, Seattle mayor Mike McGinn has indicated his city’s willingness to accept the offer as well as support Google’s engineers in this move. Other wealthy US cities like San Francisco, and Los Angeles are likely to avail themselves as a potential home for Google’s test run.

Why the competition is really afraid

Photo: Google

This interest at a city level, coupled with other factors, has the competition uneasy. Google, an exceptionally influential and flush company, often uses its excess cash on hand to experiment in – and upend – markets new to it. Google recently made a similar move in the GPS space, where it threw down the gauntlet on that market’s incumbents, and US broadband telecoms fear Google will do the same to their industry. In the GPS space, it appears the Silicon Valley giant plans to use broadband as a new platform for its search initiatives. This broadband initiative appears to be a means for Google to push their suite of web applications to consumers. Both of these strategies reinforce Google’s core business – search. This alternate business model – where Google transfers the costs of an offering from consumers to advertisers – is what undermines competitors, who charge their customers directly.

What it all means

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

For consumers, especially the lucky few who will get to participate in this test, this news is very encouraging. It is a long-held belief that with greater Internet speed, greater technological advancements in all industries – particularly the sciences and medical industry – will soon follow. Depending on what price Google is able to offer this service for, if it ever comes out of test mode it could have an unprecedented effect on the costs of broadband services, crushing prices and forcing several competing telecom companies out of the market completely.

The big question mark is related to privacy. Google, who already collect data on their users’ search habits, are often in the spotlight for how they should be able to use and collect this data. Now, being essentially an ISP in addition to being the world’s search engine of choice, the company will ostensibly be able to collect information on a user’s every move on the Internet, which is concerning to say the least. How much control is too much control? Or should the question be focused on the costs of technological advancements?