Google Fiber must succeed

A few weeks ago, I discussed how the United States is haunted by the specter of metered and tiered Internet. Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, and others are crying foul over unlimited Internet, and they’re complaining bitterly about how very difficult it is for them to provide Internet access — even when they’re often the only provider in their service areas and it’s never been cheaper to ship bits around the world. In short, while their services should be getting faster and cheaper, they’re lobbying for slower, metered, and more expensive. 

In that discussion, I mentioned how Time Warner is apparently very nervous about Google’s aspirations to provide fiber to Kansas City, KS, and Kansas City, MO. They’re right to be nervous. Google Fiber has landed, and anyone in Kansas City who wants an Internet connection would be insane not to sign up. If the word gets out and the service performs as promised, Google could drive the existing Kansas City ISPs out of town.

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For starters, Google is offering free Internet. Pay a $300 installation fee, and you get 5Mbit/1Mbit service guaranteed for seven years with no data caps or tiering. You also get Google’s Network Box, which is presumably a router/firewall/wireless access point. You can even amortize the $300 over the first 12 months. It’s very hard to compete with free.

Options galore

Alternatively, for no setup fee and $70 a month, you get 1Gbit — that’s gigabit — bidirectional network access, the aforementioned Network Box, and 1TB storage on Google Drive. That’s on par with what some providers are charging for 10Mbit/1Mbit access in some areas in the United States right now.

Or for $120 a month, you get the whole package with gigabit Internet and television. Google will even throw in the set-top boxes, a 2TB PVR for recording TV shows, and a Nexus 7 tablet. That’s again in the ballpark for TV/Internet deals from all other ISPs, but with exponentially faster network speeds.

The privacy question

One potential downside is that some big channels (such as HBO and ESPN) are missing from the lineup, but that could change. Also, there’s the question of whether Google will be monitoring Internet usage on these links, considering the company has a long history of collecting data on its users. According to the privacy statement:

Technical information collected from the use of Google Fiber Internet for network management, security or maintenance may be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, but such information associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber will not be used by other Google properties without your consent. Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.

The answer is yes, Google might collect some data, but it won’t be linked to your Google account unless you want it to be. Or something — it’s not terribly clear. However, it’s not much different from what any other ISP does or might do. Elsewhere, Google says it will not perform deep packet inspection or any form of throttling or prioritization.

As you might expect, Google is not just dropping fiber all over the place and hoping people buy it. It’s doing this by encouraging people in the planned service areas to recruit their neighbors into the program. Once a “fiberhood” has enough pre-orders, the Google Fiber trucks will presumably roll in and light it up.

It’s a great plan for a variety of reasons. First, it allows Google to roll fiber only where it’ll have a significant customer base. Second, it’s virtually guaranteed that each fiberhood will have at least one or two alpha-geek types who will move heaven and Earth to get this service, evangelizing Google Fiber to their neighbors until they’ve reached the goal. I firmly believe that the number of private citizens marching around their neighborhoods with pamphlets containing information about Google Fiber will outnumber the Jehovah’s Witnesses five to one.

A forecast for Google Fiber

It remains to be seen how this service performs, how well the hardware functions, and how smoothly the transition goes, but the fact this is moving forward and will shortly become a reality had better ring some bells with the major ISPs. Not only is Google promising speeds 100 times faster than median broadband in the area, it’s doing so at an amazingly competitive price and even offering free service. That’s the definition of a better mousetrap.

It stands to reason that Google would want to serve businesses as well, but there’s no information or firm discussion of commercial fiber service, as far as I can tell. If Google can offer the same level of service with fixed subnet addressing and SLAs, it’ll get business-class customers by the truckload — baby steps, I suppose.

Granted, this project is currently limited to residential customers in one area in the United States, but Google owns a massive amount of dark fiber, waiting to be used. Should this pilot go as planned, I’m certain Google will put in place similar plans in other cities and states. Again, those bells had better be ringing long and loud at Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner.

In an ideal world, we won’t have to rely on Google to ride into our town to free us from the shackles of our incumbent ISPs. The fact that Google can do this might provide the shakedown the industry desperately needs. Anything that breeds some form of real competition among carriers can only bring faster service, better pricing, and banishment of this nonsense talk about tiering and metering.

There you have the broadband disparity in a nutshell: At the same time that some ISPs are “experimenting” with data caps, metered Internet access, and tiering plans, Google is “experimenting” with absurdly fast access with no restrictions and offering it for free. It’s not hard to see who wins that battle.

This story, “Google Fiber must succeed,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.