Google to offer fiber to end users

Charles N Wyble charles at knownelement.com
Wed Feb 10 22:49:28 UTC 2010


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Jared Mauch wrote:
> On Feb 10, 2010, at 4:57 PM, Charles N Wyble wrote:
> 
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>> Jared Mauch wrote:
>>> I think it's great!
>>>
>>> I've been preparing to float a similar idea locally.
>>>
>>> If this is how they use their market cap, I would love for them to do it in my local market, which does seem to hold a near-and-dear place in the heart of some google C* types.
>>>
>>> - Jared
>>>
>>> * Local details/breakdown: http://puck.nether.net/~jared/blog/?p=84
>> Awesome write up.
>>
>> Has anyone in the NANOG community been approached by google? I mean
>> presumably this would require a massive coordination effort with
>> existing exchange points etc. Or is google going to simply build an
>> entire long haul network as well? Perhaps combine this with the containers?
> 
> 
> Thanks.  I want to codify it to something more (average) human-readable before I socialize it in the local community.

Sure thing. Make sure to blog it up so folks can contribute feedback :)

> 
> This sort of investment could have some immediate payback, esp if you have local utility (water, power) buy-in. 

Indeed. I was surprised to find how much utility fiber networks exist. I
was in a meet me room in down town Los Angeles, and both So Cal Edison
and DWP had a presence. I knew that DWP had a fiber network, but wasn't
aware SoCal Edison did. Also the city of Burbank power company maintains
a fiber network, which links all the studios together. Unfortunately you
can't bring dark fiber into the major colo there (Qwest IIRC). However
it's quite easy to link any facilities together, and this is heavily
utilized by the studios (most of whom have several sites).

 The challenge I see is having the political will to undertake the project.

Hah. Right. Especially with telcos being large campaign contributers.

  If you adjust rates up over the first few years until the principal is
paid off, the payoff could happen in short-order and remain competitive.

Mmhmm. And quite frankly, this wouldn't really be necessary if the
telcos actually did last mile build outs of fiber at a decent pace.
People are very willing to pay for this stuff. It's been proven time and
time again. Otherwise the muni folks wouldn't have passed bond measures,
started build out and been sued into oblivion by the telcos. That was
treated as a last resort, after lack of action by the incumbents.

> 
> Deploying microcell/picocell technology would be easy and could save people like AT&T Mobility/Cingular part of their billions they look to pay for network upgrades.

Yep. They should become partners in these efforts and help guide the
overall design/requirements etc. Jump in and discuss things like
CoS/QoS/e911 etc etc etc. Not to mention considerable expertise in the
construction of large scale networks. Alas they won't see it that way :)

  A large scale project here could possibly be done (on-poles) for as
low as $44m, and possibly lower as economies of scale come in to play.

Exactly. Especially if the various utility companies can realize the
benefit. Smart grid etc. I have no problem with certain amounts of
bandwidth being reserved for uses by city governments/ utility
corporations who help shoulder the initial build out costs.

> 
> I'm hoping someone here reading from GOOG will suggest to any local Ann Arbor Alum (eg: Larry Page) that this would be a chump-change investment that would revolutionize telecommunication in the US.

It sure could. Far more attractive from a CAPex and OPex perspective.

> 
> I scaled my model up to Michigan-size (for fun) and came up with a cost somewhere around 1 Billion to run fiber down every public roadway.  Taking the GOOG market cap of ~170Bln, and if I consider Michigan average (don't know, but please stick with me), this could be done for a small part of their market cap, and ROI could be at a reasonable speed.  GE and 10GE optics that can do 70km are cheap, sometimes lower cost than that HDTV you just bought, this would make life very interesting...

Quite. :)


- --
Charles N Wyble
Linux Systems Engineer
charles at knownelement.com
http://www.knownelement.com
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