Google Getting Into Broadband, What It Means To You
Google recently announced that it intends to shake up yet another market by providing “Google Fiber for Communities” in limited markets from 50,000 to up to 500,000 individual households. This focus intends to bring incredibly fast speeds by today’s standards to businesses and households in the US and potentially disrupt the incumbent providers of broadband services today.
The speeds that Google is looking to provide to the end user are over 1 gigabit per second, or in rough terms is approximately 100 times faster than what users typically see today. Think about that for a second – 100 times! The driving force behind such a push are varied but as PC World put it,
“From a user perspective, satisfaction with Internet connection speed is relative. Long after DSL and cable broadband were available, many users were still happily dialing in with 56k modems. Happy, that is, until they visited a friend or relative with broadband and saw what was possible.
Business customers may be perfectly satisfied with current mid-range offerings from Comcast and AT&T. Broadband speeds of 6 Mbps, or 12 Mbps are just fine for many business purposes. However, needs change and technology evolves. Businesses that need to transfer large files or perform real-time video streaming might be frustrated with speeds twice that fast.”
The takeaway it would seem is that next generation applications potentially have greater appeal to be built and adopted by businesses and consumers with an increased amount of bandwidth if available to the end user. Additionally, you don’t know what you’re missing and what’s possible until you have literally no restrictions on the speed of the data communications. This starts to make even more sense as Google is trying to elevate their cloud-based computer offerings to the general public and businesses meaning services that you run currently ON your computer could be hosted on the cloud. Google recently announced their Chrome Operating System that will rely more on applications that are hosted on servers rather than use the processing power and hard drive of your computer today. Google may have their eyes on pushing those services and potentially have a need to develop faster speeds and shove their competitors to do the same.
Regardless, you should keep your eyes peeled on what’s happening regarding Google’s broadband initiative, if you’re interested in getting your community involved or learning more, go here to sign up.
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Benny Carreon is the President and CEO of GrayBear Resources Group. GBR is a next-generation telecommunications consulting firm. We aren't a telephone company's vendor disguising itself as a consultant. We don't sell carrier products that would conflict with out mission - our goal is to work for our clients by reducing costs, streamlining services, eliminating waste and fraud while providing the least disruption to your business.
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