Google still hasn’t made a decision on which city (or communities) it would pick to build its one-gigabit-per-second broadband network (announced earlier this year), but the company is moving forward and setting up an experimental network on the Stanford University Campus. Nearly 850 members of the “residential subdivision” are going to get access to this superfast network, which will begin deployment next year. This network will be used to try out some of the technologies that Google has been experimenting with.
To be clear, this trial is completely separate from our community selection process for Google Fiber, which is still ongoing. As we’ve said, our ultimate goal is to build to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people, and we still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year.
Stanford’s Residential Subdivision—our first “beta” deployment to real customers—will be a key step towards that goal. The layout of the residential neighborhoods and small number of homes make it a good fit for a beta deployment. (Google Blog)
Well, lucky for the residents of this community. I am fairly happy with my 100 Mbps connection!
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Questions come to mind about this (and the Chattanooga 1Gig network they’ve rolled out).
1 Gig between what two points? Is this an “up-to” 1 Gig/s or a dedicated connection? If dedicated, can anything outside the last mile network handle those speeds? 850 homes x 1 Gig/s?
Finally, 1 Gig of lit backbone from a tier 1 carrier on the open market costs around $1 to $3 per Mb/s. The economics don’t make sense. What am I missing?
That sounds really interesting. I think some day everything will get to be instant. I hope I will still be alive.
If any company can make something that works at even a fraction of a 1 GB speed on my isolated farm in Hicksville, Ohio, then I would say we’ve finally taken ourselves out of the Pliocene epoch and finally reached the Pleistocene epoch. I’ve tried accessing the web via satellite (highly unsuccessful), I’m now on a microwave uplink that works okay. Okay, but vastly slower than much of America.
Verizon wouldn’t wire my 1/4 mile driveway (taking FIOS off of the table), no other options have presented themselves and basically, I’m in a fixed ‘position’ here. ANY news of advances, however futuristic and far-away they seem, are welcome for me.
If any company wants to seed a pilot test program in true rural, isolated farm-lands, start here with us. Start in Hicksville, Ohio. Contrary to public sentiment – we DO want what this Stanford group is going to get – and it seems to me to be a game-changer if any company can step forward and bring this dream to life.
The speed of the wire to your house and the throughput you actually get are two different things. You can have an eight lane concrete driveway which turns onto a one lane dirt road and you will never be able to get eight lanes of throughput out of your house.
My real reason for writing is the comment the author makes about being “fairly happy with my 100Mbps connection.” Fairly happy??? Come down from your ivory tower and you will realize most of the world does not come close to having a 100 Mbps circuit for their Internet. Some people still can only get dial-up Internet (and others not at all) and you are just “fairly happy” with 100 Mbps?
Wow, I’m glad this is a blog site and not real journalism.
I agree with you, 100mbps is something that anybody should be very excited about. A lot of people in my area that are still on dial up have turned to satellite internet as their only solution for high-speed internet. I read something recently that said that satellite internet networks in Japan are capable of carrying well over 100mbps. I just wish we could get that kind of performance in the US through Satellite. I actually have an entire blog dedicated to this subject and would love for you to check it out at mybluedish.com/blog.