Google’s announcement yesterday that it is launching a fibre to the home (FTTH) trial should not be viewed as a move by the Internet giant to become a major transport player in the US ultra-high-speed broadband market – at least not for the foreseeable future.
According to Rupert Wood, Principal Analyst at Analysys Mason, the move shows that Google is determined to influence US telecoms policy by showing how user and service provider behaviour could change under radically different conditions from those that currently prevail in the USA, and at the same time to understand how it can monetise those changes.
“Google has dabbled in access before. Its municipal Wi-Fi in Mountain View, California, has been a flop, and its joint bid with EarthLink to provide a city-wide wireless access network in San Francisco didn’t work out.
"The location of these FTTH networks (serving anything between 50 000 and 500 000 households, according to Google) has not yet been decided. We expect Google will want to experiment with a variety of predominantly urban areas,” explains Wood.
In two key respects, Google will be offering something new with these trials.
- 1Gbit/s symmetrical access is a step change from what telcos and cablecos currently offer. It is 20 times faster than Verizon’s FiOS service, for example.
- It will provide a fully open access model to service providers, the opposite of the model used by US cable and major telcos.
“Of course, there is more than a little politicking and PR in the announcement and the trials. Google has long wanted a more open access approach from the incumbent players in the broadband market. And much remains unclear: how much end-user and service provider access is likely to cost, Google’s retail role and the extent to which the networks will be co-funded with interested parties (such as communities, municipalities, real estate owners and service providers),” states Wood.
But the shapelessness of what is proposed is the key point, adds Wood.
“The trials are really about understanding how the market’s structure would evolve if broadband usage is no longer shaped by the cable and telco giants. Anecdotal information from FTTH builds outside the USA show that user behaviour can change dramatically when users are given fully open access FTTH. For example, the Dutch FTTH builder Reggefiber reports that its networks are net uploaders to the Internet, and that symmetrical services are a significant factor in attracting customers off DOCSIS3.0-enabled cable networks.
“Showing the potential of cloud computing on 1Gbit/s symmetrical networks is a particularly important aspect of the trial. Testing how far the current desktop application experience can be replicated and extended using a network-based tool is of far-reaching importance, and not just because it makes a player like Google a gatekeeper for the application providers.
"Google’s net-centric model also serves to lessen the threat from disruptive CPE vendors, which continue to pile ever more intelligence into the device and, as a result, are key challengers to Google in securing value from the provision of broadband services.”