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I'm in the camp that worries slightly that Google might be becoming a little bit too omnipresent; fitting this into their general business strategy pretty much leads me to think that they're going to be doing some pretty heavy behavioural/keyword monitoring of the people they're supplying connections to.

On the other hand, I'm quite eager to see the results of this experiment, mainly so when BT try (and charge a crazy amount for a sub-standard service) it will be clear to everyone that it's not because the problem is hard to solve, or expensive - just that they have no expertise at all.

(This is certainly more interesting than Google Buzz, which allows me to "follow" precisely none of my contacts at the moment...)

This will never happen in Hull.

I think there should be no limit to Google's ambition in this regard. Monopolies generally make me nervous, precisely because their default business strategy or mission *becomes* to stifle all competiton as a means to lock-in their no.1 position. For all Google's forays into other tenuously linked businesses, can you say the effect has been to stifle (or invigorate) the competition? The obvious comparison here is Microsoft in the 90s.
Many of Google's projects have flopped but I don't think they will mind too much because that is not their core business.
I'm just saying an analysis of their actions need to be taken in context of their mission.

Steve Wrote > "leads me to think that they're going to be doing some pretty heavy behavioural/keyword monitoring of the people they're supplying connections to."

I am thinking exactly the same thing.

Targeted adverts, limited privacy in regards to surfing and silly little widgets streamed down to you because "Google think it's cool"

I think Google is akin to a runaway train, no-one knows when and how it's going to stop - if at all!

I can't see the benefit of digging up roads and laying fibre anywhere. 4G and WiMAX will be mature before they've finished the cabling - and so it will be obsolete from day 1.

@James Rigby

They shouldn't be doing all that much road digging, they purchased a lot of "dark fibre" a little while back. They'll basically be lighting this up!

The thing I wonder about all the increased speed is what are the bandwidth caps going to be? At the moment, my (monopoly) ADSL ISP provides 3M/384K for roughly $45 a month, the alternative is a monopoly cable provider who charge about the same for 7M/256k but with a bandwidth cap of 50GB/month. Do the sums and work out how long that actually means you can use your 7Mbits down for each month! At least my ADSL is still uncapped, but for how long is anybody's guess. What use is it Google giving you a gigabit fibre if you can only use it for a few minutes a day due to bandwidth caps?

I personally think that Rory is an extraordinarily unlikely 'leading' technology correspondent. Compare his bumbling dad-isms, lack of deep knowledge, whether technical or historical, and above his lack of perspicacity in this complex industry, and you have to ask: where do they find such people? Wouldn't just a comments forum without articles do better?

Google fibre: the glaring issue here is why Google would want to do this. It doesn't give it any more power over users, just adds another cost - apparently. But the fast is they simply hate the throttling of content by ISPs, not just through variable speeds, but just by ISPs being rubbish and capturing huge, illegitimate 'rents' from their cartel hold offer bandwidth.

Google, my analysis, is just breaking up the cartel because it can and it wants to: it will hope others will follow, and built up national competition. Bandwidth should have a variable cost of zero, and the only reason it does not is loser companies that refuse to let go of legacy advantage.

A good experiment for sure, but we are seeing the new microsoft in action here.

They like a lot of people see the Telcos and Government policy (spectrum auction fees, taxes on fibre) as folk who take an abundant resource and create scarcity. A huge proportion of the costs are the engines and overheads that count calls, call attempts, setups, and messages and then micro-bill each event, a throw back to sending telegrams from the post office.

The proliferation of wifi proves the point, 50Mbps around every home. P2P communications means we do not need all these central servers, just good quality data transport, and let the edge devices and software do the rest.

BT abandoned their mass migration of PSTN (Hurrah!) to IP and switched investment to delivering better access (hurrah!). It is a shame Ofcom and industry saw this as a problem, they should really be setting s sunset date for the legacy PSTN service, and pump the cost savings into better paths and make better use of the available spectrum, our devices will do the rest.

Google are putting some salt in the system, the proposed Next Generation Fund needs to do the same in the UK.

Focusing on fibre only is wrong, its just connectivity. Using DSM to create 100Mbps synch on Copper pairs is not too far away. The ability to manage crosstalk between copper pairs means we are just beginning to understand coppers potential, or rather good radio engineers are having a field day working it all out.

It's not a 4G v Copper v Fiber. Its £20 to have 50-100mbps radio pool(connected to a cable) at home/work, and its another £10 to step from you home cell to a macrocell (also connected with a cable) to share whatever bits per htz the radio waves can carry. Better still to stroll onto your neighbours connectivity and use the macrocells only when traveling quickly and needing to maintain connectivity.

The current state of UK connectivity is in breech of Moor's law, and that's not a fibre issue but one of low expectations and a legal regulatory framework that cannot cope with the potential.

Sorry for the rant, reading too many Ofcom consultations documents which actively avoid the chanages we need.

Contrary to some of the previous comments, I don't think wireless communication is capable of providing high bandwidth any time in the near future. The problem with the wireless communication is that most of the spectrum is used for God knows what. Only a small fraction of the spectrum is used for "last mile" communication, that is to connect the end user to the system. Worst of all, the available spectrum is shared among all the users and the effective bandwidth per user is pretty low.

Wired communication is still a form of time, frequency, or wavelength sharing the spectrum. However, the fibreoptics can support data rates in the magnitude of gigabits.

I'm trying to look at this blog in a positive way. Reading between the lines, I can see that the objective of this experiment is to find a cheaper way of bringing gigahertz networks to the general public.