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Is Google Planning To Fibre Britain?
Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Google has emerged as a surprise contender to invest in Britain's fibre broadband network. The search giant yesterday announced plans to build a gigabit fibre broadband network in the US. The test network will see Google deliver fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections to up to half a million US homes. The move raises the possibility that Google is behind the Conservative Party's ambitious plans to deliver nationwide 100Mbits/sec connections by 2017. Parliamentary sources have told PC Pro that the Tories' plans were based on foreign investment in the UK broadband network."
Someone has to do it... When they are done in Britain they should come and lay fibre all around New Zealand.
Google have tried network infrastructure before - they even made it free to use: http://www.google.com/tisp/
Yes! I'll finally be able to download the Internet.
you really mean the NSA's little brother
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Is Google Planning To Fibre Britain?
No, because there is no such verb as fibre (nor fiber, for that matter).
At the bottom of the
Great, kick the ISPs with some heavy competition.
But I'm getting a little scared of Google.....To many fingers in to many pies. We are meant to use a Google Thin Client, to access Google Services, over Google Fibre....
They make their money by gathering data about us from our data. Shouldn't that make us question them owning so much of our data? They could have us by the short and curlies. Maybe "don't be evil" makes that safe for now, but who knows what the future holds? Even if Google can for ever be trusted, and don't give the data to those who can't be trusted, it's them who decide who to trust! We can not trust the markets to resolve this. Consumers will just blindly sleep walk into this if it makes for a easy life now. Which they might with Windows being so bad for malware, virus etc etc (because of the nature of Windows and it's users). "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin - 1775
So at every juncture Google will be connected to everything?
Potentially access the interner via a Goggle ISP, accessing Google DNS, using Google search, communicating via Google email, using Goole chat and Google Buzz with my friends.
Am I being paranoid or will my privacy become a moot point?
I do use Google search and gmail on a regular basis and it's also free of charge. In return they use my data - cannot complain about that.
If it really bothered me I can use alternatives.
I think it is commendable that Google are willing to roll-out fibre (in the USA only at the moment) and improve the technology.
But "holy crap" that is an expensive undertaking!
I read about this somewhere else and I think Google were going to charge a "competitive" fee for access.
Broadband in the UK now largely sucks arse because the cost of improving/replacing existing lines is very expensive. No company is willing to take the risk so Google stepping forward ideally is a "good thing".
However, if they can guarantee the same rights some other ISPs in the UK then great and I am willing to pay for it. If Google want to analyse all my packets of data and use it to advertise stuff to me then I'm not so sure I will like this development.
Entities like Phorm, BT, Virgin & Tiscali (Talk Talk) are more than happy to follow the UK Government's / music industry's lead on intrusive surveillance. That's why I refuse to use thier services.
If Google want to lay down infrastructure then that's fine - as long as I have a choice to do otherwise.
This is mainly due to Eric Schmidt's comments on your expected privacy.
I still want the freedom to choose while I have it.
(with credit to Calvin and Hobbes).
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
You still haven't delivered the algorithms you promised to open 12 years ago. Your top executives believe that no-one online is entitled to privacy (unless he is a top Google exec, who will deny press information to journalists who publish information about him). You require NSA clearance for any significant technical positions.
Only an idiot today would think you "do no evil". You're just like any nasty group in its early years - start off promising the world, slowly reneging on promises which matter, and one by one revealing your true intentions. You give people the sense of security they'll so easily swallow until it's too late to clamour for alternatives.
We don't want you in the UK. BT is a heap of steaming shit, but at least their gross incompetence limits their ability to cooperate effectively with the Crown Estate of Mandelson.
That extra speed, and the saving in subscription (should it be cheaper than my rubbish ADSL) means I can run a VPN out of the country and not worry about the privacy implications!
Win/win for the nerdy.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Enfibre? Befibre? Fiberize? Fibrate?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Please stop verbing nouns.
That corporate whores enjoy fucking with language is no good reason for us to bend over and spread ’em.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I only hope that they roll out to the places even virgin media doesn't reach. There is nothing worse than living in a house which only option is a flaky 1mb connection thanks to the ancient BT copper wiring :/
We are the Google, we will assimilate your data and process it in some "non-evil way".
It would take a company with the clout of Google to lay down new infrastructure here to give an option to the duopoly we have. I wish they would do that
I guess i'll just keep dreaming then...
Tom...
But will this service be HTTP-only like the Wifi Google provides at some airports? After all protocols other than HTTP and maybe XMPP don't really fit into Google's way of doing business.
There are lots of places as little as 2 miles from the town center that have piss-poor broadband because of the way telephone exchanges are located. Fiber to the Home/Fiber to the Cabinet is the obvious solution, but British Telecom have a monopoly on last-mile wiring in the UK*, and have very little incentive to deliver high-speed broadband to homes. And let's not even talk about exchange capacity, or their traffic-shaping practices. So yeah, if Google or anyone else is going to get involved, more power to them. Britain's positively stick-in-the-mud compared to Scandinavia, Korea and Japan**, and it'll take a lot of doin' to bring it into the 21st century.
*except for Hull and some cabled areas (and I think Virgin's cable ducts were dug by BT)
**though to be fair, most of the high-speed internet in these places is to be found only in densely populated urban areas. Anyone know what broadband in lightly populated small towns/villages is like in Scandinavia/Korea/Japan?
PS. There's a great site for UK Slashdot readers -- Broadband Notspots UK, it's worth a visit if you're checking out what a particular place is like broadband-wise.
Go somewhere random
This is the industry that twisted "architect" into a verb. Presumably "build" or "code" weren't pompous enough.
Okey, where do I apply for Google Citizenship? Are there any invites available?
Seriously, at this pace, some decades later we'll have Google Phone with Google Voice, and Google Netbook with Google OS, connected to Google ISP, Google Work, Google Home, Google VR (on a base of Google Earth), Google Church and Google Transport, working on some green Google Energy. What will it be in all, Google Benefaction? Unnerving, but still much better than M$ Empire, Apple Khalifat, or GNU/Anarchy to my taste.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
From the article: "Parliamentary sources have told PC Pro that the Tories' plans were based on foreign investment in the UK broadband network. Google is one of the few companies with the necessary capital and motivation to invest in British broadband" so this story is based soley on the fact that Google is a foreign Internet company with money?
Now I have to wait 7 years for 100MB? Ouch.
If this is true, then I'll accept the other consequences of voting Tory (we haven't forgotten the 80s) and have the high speed Internet please.
My 7MBit/s line has been delivering 300kbit/s for three months due to 'VP congestion' even though I am within sight of the local exchange, which is also the BT area office. I've grown so use to not being able to do anything online except for email that I've decided it would be acceptable to move to rural village (though with population >1,000) which has no broadband due to being 7km away from the three nearest exchanges.
Despite the obvious logical problems with this statement, I do sometimes think that Internet access in the UK outside of London is positively medieval.
If BT are waiting for government handouts to get fibre to rural not-spots and the irrelevant cable companies are not even operating in the same country, then bring on Google. When Google turns into Microsoft, we'll take action. But for now, we need Google. They've been nothing but a force for good so far.
Well my fkn broadband connection is (UK South Coast). I hope Google do step in and do this because BT sure as hell take little interest in my little village (that's assuming Google will!)
AT&ROFLMAO
Actually, London is a problem - it is spaghetti under the streets and a lot of areas have poor connectivity.
However, you really do need to reconsider your voting. The Party that wants us out of the EU (civil liberties, human rights) seems to want to allow us to be bought by the US. Energy privatisation under Thatcher just worked so well, didn't it? So well that we pay the Germans and the French for the privilege of supplying us with energy, and then they nearly run out of gas because they have emptied our tanks to be sure their home markets are OK in a cold spell. And we have to be bailed out by the Russians. And now the idea is to get the US to pay for our broadband infrastructure so that for the rest of time our money can be exported to US companies, who will naturally bend over backwards to supply our data to the US and avoid European data protection laws.
The Conservatives went wrong when they appointed a PR man with media connections to run the Party rather than an old fashioned English patriot. I can't see how David Davis (who understands civil liberties) would have gone along with this. It would be funny if it was not so sick that the Conservatives are run by the man who did PR for the channel that puts on Big Brother.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
too much power
i don't care how benevolent it is now, it is laying a groundwork that can potentially be abused with a change in attitude later
and with so much focus on insinuating itself into how so much of the web works, disengaging from google won't be that easy
google is pursuing a sound business strategy for growth, and those toiling away at google are doing so in the most noble of intentions: making the web a better place for all of us
i just wish there were a way to chop google in half, or into dozens of bits, so those brilliant people toiling away at google were competing against each other. rather than being focused on building one overwhelming colossus whose future benevolence is not guaranteed and cannot be guaranteed by anyone
i don't want all that data that they admit they are keeping about us in the fat little fingers of some future successor to harmless wonks brin and page who is not so interested in simply making the web an easier place to navigate
something is being built right now that we all cheerfully accept that we may someday gnash our teeth about: why didn't we worry about this juggernaut being built in front of our very eyes? why were we so distracted by the colorful baubles not to see the edifice that can be so easily abused?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In case anyone doesn't realise, there's going to be an general election in a couple of months or so. The current extremely unpopular party is likely to be replaced by another slightly less unpopular one with broadly similar policies, the main difference being that instead of being fronted by a dour Scotsman they have a posh ex-PR bloke with a nice smile. At this time politicians on all sides are more likely than ever to say stuff and not mean it.
What the Tories actually said was this:
http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/01/Conservatives_to_deliver_nationwide_superfast_broadband_by_2017.aspx
The key weasel words there are "up to 100mbps" and "the majority of homes". Roughly 50% of UK homes have cable available now, and Virgin Media are already offering headline speeds up to half that. 100Mbps by 2017 is hardly flying car territory.
They were actually responding to a Labour suggestion of universal (i.e. 100% not 50%) of UK homes getting 2Mb coverage by 2012:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7858498.stm
The Labour plan sounds less exciting but would actually be much harder to achieve (not that they'll have to - they're unlikely to get reelected and have been careful to say it only in an "interim report").
As to what orifice the PCPro writer pulled Google out of, your guess is as good as mine.
if you use microsoft windows, aren't you trusting them and their proprietary code with much more of your life, given the amount of personal information like taxes and family photos people store on their hard drives?
perhaps your concern is misplaced, look where most of the info is stored locally, first. given the number of remote exploits in windows even to this day, what say you?
Soon Google will be the object of hate. It is inevitable as it grows and gains more control of the internet.
in every way, except in our minds: we don't have the wariness towards it that we have towards microsoft
i am asking for that wariness
microsoft has proved to be a basket case in the smartphone arena, while google has moved muscularly into the mobile arena. google will know everything you search, everywhere you walk, and keep track of it all. ok, microsoft has my photo album and my tax returns. meanwhile, google has my deepest desires and fears (searches) and knows everywhere i go
but you apparently are saying "don't worry about google, worry about microsoft"
listen to me: i am saying "in the way you worry about microsoft, you should also worry about google"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hope they do too, although I find it unlikelly it will reach my house any time this side of 2050 (I live in the country - with literally me and about 3 other houses and a farm, then the nearest place is 3 miles away). Possible, but unlikelly *crosses fingers*. It would definitelly be better than the ~1mbps I get at the moment (although ADSL2+ could get that to ~4mbps).
The search giant yesterday announced plans to build a gigabit fibre broadband network in the US. The test network will see Google deliver fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections to up to half a million US homes.
...all outside of flyover country as usual. By the time it reaches flyover country, the provider ends up acting like Comcast on you.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
We will control the pipes, but we will not inspect your data packets.
Well, maybe we will, but only for advertisement purposes.
Yeah right.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
and you can use linux instead of windows, but that's not the point
we're not talking about the best practices of paranoid schizophrenic open source gurus
we're talking about the lives of average people, who are using windows and google, naive and naked. the next fallacy you might try to foist on this thread would be to hold their naivete and technical nakedness against them: "its your fault for not acting like a paranoid schizophrenic and a technological astute and going to obscene amounts of effort. and so you deserve to be raped by microsoft and google"
pffft
the real moral argument: the behavior of google and microsoft must be altered. not my behavior, not yours, not the average joe's
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My old company had an offshore dev team in New Zealand and one morning (in 2004) I came into work to find that they couldn't access our UK based SVN server. While discussing it I browsed onto Slashdot and found a link to an article hosted in NZ (I think it was the guy who built his own jet engines and claimed he could build a Tomahawk cruise missile equivalent for 75k).
Anyway, it turned out that the Slashdot effect didn't bring down the server, it brought down NZ's pipe to the outside wall.
I for one welcomed our new nerd overlords.
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
For the benefit of people in the US, let me tell them a few things about the UK Conservative party.
The UK Conservative party is so far right that it has difficulty in finding allies in other European countries.The only groups available are banned because of Godwins Law. They are, however quite able to deal with US all mainstream parties.
There is sometimes a perception that better educated and technically aware individuals do not vote for them much. I certainly don't. I don't know if that is true but it may be part of the reason for this story. They want to persuade us to forget about having a fair society so that we can have better broadband speed. I would rather have a modem!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I can get FTTP if I want to, but why should I when I can get a 20/2 megabit ADSL for half the price.
Ok, I can see the geeky coolness in having a 50/50 or even 100/100 megabit internet connection. But it the real world I have no use for it. In reality I did almost fine on a 4 megabit, it was a little on the slow side for HD streaming, but the few hours between work and sleep I hardly had time to notice.
(the fact that the fiber was coming to my town was the reason the phone company a micro DSLAM in my neighborhood, before that the maximum waa 4 megabit and they had no plans to upgrade. But that is another story)
Verbing wierds the langauge.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
There's a typo in the posting. it should be fiber not fibre. No need to thank me! :)
To be honest, everyone in power says that. Show me a politician who thinks you're entitled to privacy AND votes that way.
It's always "think of the children" or "this will combat terrorism" or "we need to find the thieves".
Now that's what I call outsourcing run amok. :(
Regards;
Is that the British term for "incumbents?"
];)
Regards;
PC Pro is taking a number of fairly tenuous ideas and building a spaceship with them. Lets list them:
- Google announces that they're going to trial fibre in the _US_
- The Tories announce that they will support fibre roll out if they win
- There are rumours that the Torie fibre roll out could be supported by foreign investment
- BT has said they'll share their ducts
- Google and the Tories have close links
SHAZAM Google must be investing in UK fibre.
I work quite closely with Openreach. They're very keen to roll out fibre beyond the 10 million homes by 2012 and they're really set up to do it.
Sure, Google _could_ do it and may be considering it but either PC Pro is making this up or they know more than they're telling.
Verbing words weirds language.
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
would make a lot of stuff easier.
For example, you would not have to use Gmail, Google Voice or Chrome anymore in order to get an optimzed web experience.
They will happily evaluate whatever other service you use, thus improving your life by not being evil.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Their government loves to spy on the people, Google will be their new mistress.
In Soviet Russia Britain fibres YOU!
Can't get too much fibre.
Do you have ESP?
Given Google's initial eagerness to China, it wouldn't be a problem.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
what everyone conveniently forgets about BT is that they have a government-levied "maximum" installation charge for phone lines. From that they have to provide you a line whether it's up a mountain or whatever when costs could go into thousands of pounds to give you that line, then you want cheap ADSL on top of it. The likes of Sky etc use the infrastructure for broadband and pay little in exchange so BT still foots the majority of operating costs for PSTN and ADSL services. The exception of course is when new equipment is needed at the exchange and people complain to the Daily Mail because they don't want to pay for a new DSLAM or 5 miles of copper or whatever.
So from these costs they have to make decisions about who gets lovely "super fast" (or whatever it's called) broadband and who gets the bare minimum. Having worked in the industry it's hard to find people that "take little interest" it's sadly about the bigger picture.
Personally having grown up in a rural area I still have fresh and painful memories of dialup, but that's another story...
...would love for Google to deploy an exhaustively complete fiber optic network throughout all of Britain, connecting every home and business with an extreme high speed and capacity network... as long as the government gets to exploit that network for even further increased surveillance of its citizens^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H subjects.
On one hand, I really hope Google want to give me ultrafast fibre access. I'm fed up with this rubbish 1.5mbit BT ASDL already. I mean, come on, it's 2010, we were supposed to have flying cars by now [and Terrafugia is only just getting somewhere]. It's not as if either BT or the current government (with their oh-so-ambitious plans of 2mbit for most people by some date in the distant future, and their other set of plans to remove anyone that large companies don't like from the net) are going to do anything vaguely intelligent.
On the other, I really hope they aren't partnered with the Tories, who annoy me. Intensely.
But still, compromises...
:/
Why does an international service company require NSA clearance unless it serves to some American intelligence purpose and/or holds American secrets?
Portugal has 1 Gb internet in the bigger cities, will have 10 Gb this year, and fiber to the home in the whole country in two years. without Google's investment.
so no country should complain about fiber coverage or rely on Google's investment when we (.pt) don't need to ;)
We're going to get more fibre? Oh fookin' great. I've got so much fibre in my diet now that ther's a solid pipeline from my mouth to my arse. Food goes in, shite comes out.
What's that you say? Not that kind of fibre?
Never mind, bring it on.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.