Google Now Laying Fiber for Super-Fast Internet
Kansas City is receiving the first dose of Google Fiber, the search engine giant's 1 Gbps fiber optic network.
Monday in a blog, Google said that it is finally installing "thousands of miles of" fiber optic cable for its super-fast "Google Fiber" network. The lines will be installed between Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, creating a solid backbone which later will branch out to all Kansas City consumers on both sides of the state line, providing download speeds more than 100 times faster than current broadband solutions.
"Each cable contains many thin glass fibers, each about the width of a human hair," Kevin Lo, the Google executive heading up the project. "We’ll be taking these cables and weaving them into a fiber backbone -- a completely new high speed infrastructure."
The Kansas City Star reports that the project was stalled by the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities over issues about where Google would attach the fiber optic cables to their poles. The BPU is owned by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County who penned the original agreement that gave the Google Fiber project a green light.
The agreement, according to the paper, said that Google would install its cable in the upper portion of the utility pole, a reserved space normally used by electrical lines. This space is free to use, but would cost Google extra to pay for more specialized and highly paid linemen to install the lines. Google was also faced with costlier engineering work by mounting its network in the upper region.
But typically telephone and cable companies attach their lines on the lower end and pay fees for using that space. These fees help defray the cost of erecting and maintaining the poles. Google eventually chose to take this route and pay the fees instead of sticking with the original agreement. The estimated difference in cost between the two regions was not provided.
When officially launched, Google's network will provide speeds of 1 Gbps -- about 100 times faster than existing broadband services currently providing Internet access to homes nationwide. Uploads of data to the Internet will move at the same speed, or 1000 times that of the current U.S. residential average.
"We’ve measured utility poles; we’ve studied maps and surveyed neighborhoods; we’ve come up with a comprehensive set of detailed engineering plans; and we’ve eaten way too much barbecue. Now, starting today, we’re ready to lay fiber," Kevin Lo said.
Time to move to Kansas City.
- Google,
- Business,
- Kansas-City ,
- Google-Fiber ,
- 1-Gbps ,
- fiber-optics ,
- gigabit
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...and theoretically 10x faster than my LAN connection of 100Mbps. So it download movies faster than transferring it to my other computer.
*Moves to Kansas-City*
@digiex
Buy a gigabit ethernet card
*Moves to Kansas-City*
Right behind you
It's about time Google started laying the cables. There were articles about this project months ago, maybe even earlier.
Google needs to start laying lines in PA... How much is this gonna cost a month?
Time to pack my bags....oh wait, im already here
I'm going to Kansas.....
Here I thought I wanted to move to Texas for reasons like: bigger steaks/burgers, big events, bigger curves, bigger everything,... I never thought that would include something like bigger/better internet.
No one on these forums have said it yet so I will: everything's bigger in Texas.
I can get 100 Mbps cable internet where I live in Australia, so this is only 10 times faster. Of course, none of that speed is actually usable so why bother?
oh noes, the *cough* competition *cough* will sue Google for too low a price at too good a product that will eliminate the competition and then Google might rise the prices or stop innovation,,, wait, this is already happening with all the BS caps and stuff like that...
Eliminate them all Google!!!
Include in there that french company that offers inferior maps to your free ones for a price.
Here I thought I wanted to move to Texas for reasons like: bigger steaks/burgers, big events, bigger curves, bigger everything,... I never thought that would include something like bigger/better internet. No one on these forums have said it yet so I will: everything's bigger in Texas.
Yeeeaaaaah, this article has nothing to do with Texas. At all.
It's odd they would lay these lines above ground, it's cheaper than going in ground of course, but much more prone to damage from just about anything from car crash to tornadoes.
Is Google just laying the infrastructure to lease out to existing ISP's, or will they also be the ISP? If the latter, that would be great. Go Google!
A company actually doing something good with their money? That's unusual. Internet providers are busy fixing prices usually. I hope this will force some sense in their businesses, as well.
Good for Google, I hope they expand this real soon.
Remains to be seen if Google will extend this service all the way to the consumer (like a regular ISP, only better), or they will end up leasing this "highway" to the usual perpetrators. I for one hope for the former.
Is Google just laying the infrastructure to lease out to existing ISP's, or will they also be the ISP? If the latter, that would be great. Go Google!
Thats what I was hoping I'd see in this article. The former sounds more likely though, sadly.
Finally Fiber optic.
I have used fiber optic between two PCs 4km apart on a network of fiber optic. I had no latency. It felt like i was using the computer right infront of me using the windows login. I wish that they would lay fiber optic in the country areas where there is a lack of internet.
*Moves to Kansas-City*
You Dumd a$$, could have gotten the same connection if you had moved to Korea a year ago
@burnley14: Didn't you know? Texas has bigger suburbs, too. Like Kansas. And Oklahoma.
There is a pratical limit to bandwidth long before you hit gigabit speeds; Web servers cannot pump out anywhere near that kind of data. I have a decent 30Mbps connection (of which I get a consistent 25Mbps most of the time), but when it comes to streaming movies, and browsing web pages my connection is faster than Netflix and other sources can move. the nice thing though is that you can have a ton of users all downloading HD content at the same time, but the point remains the same; Anything faster than 20-30Mbps is wasted bandwidth right now for 'home use'. Now, if you are doing dedicated WAN networks where you want to do video editing and have your file server on the other side of town while you do the editing at home... sure... that will eat 1000Mbps (120MB/s) easily enough
#caedenv
), gibabit internet is a very good step in the right direction.
There are torrents, and future streaming options to match demand and supply and put the stress on the networks when absolutely needed, like streaming from multiple sources, as in each user gets that streamed video and is still holding it in memory and uploading it for the neighbour who is watching the same show but came home half a hour later.
Just because it is of not that beneficial now (and torrents are now
Caps on bandwidth are the very exact opposite.
As soon as SOPA/ACTA will be voted the high speed internet will be pointless
So, when is Google going to implement this in their own backyard? I live in Silicon Valley, and yet AT&T U-verse is my only fiber option, and the speeds don't come anywhere close to this...
Hey let's at least give Google some credit for doing this. The other internet clowns have always been too scared of the cable and telephone companies to take them on directly. Hopefully, this spells the end of the line for Comcast and its crap service.
The town I live was one of the finalists for Google lines. We're a northern California town and it came down to us and Kansas City. It was Kansas City that ended up getting the nod. Too bad for us because we're stuck with Comcast now.
Also, some people are asking why it took so long for Google to get this rolled out. This isn't the fault of Google but instead the fault of the cities where they're working. Like any government institution, lots of red tape has to be cut in order to get things started.
So they are running a dedicated 1Gb line to each home, or a 1Gb backbone? If the latter, it does not give 1Gb to each home - it is shared bandwidth. If you have a network switch with a Gb uplink and 40 clients connected to it all trying to transfer files at the same time, no clients get Gb speed.
"This isn't Kansas anymore."
So they will get fast internet, but still get promised speeds that consumers will never actually see and charge 1 arm and 1 leg for service. Awesome!!! :-P
Don't worry it'll be capped bandwidth at 40gb a month.
While it sounds awesome , this has conglomerate written all over it.
first google competed with yahoo and ask jeeves (Search Engine)
then they competed with apple and Microsoft (Chrome)
then they competed with Bell Labs and Intel (Google Lab X [Unconfirmed])
Now they are competing with Verizon and Cox (Data Services / Data Storage [Data Centers])
Did I miss any?
waiting for Google to take the fight to MSI , ASUS , and AMD.
Meanwhile in Bulgaria, unmetered 500Mbps connections for 40 Euros a month...