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Nationwide Google Fiber Deployment Would Cost $140 Billion
An anonymous reader writes "For a lot of U.S. internet users, Google Fiber sounds too good to be true — 1Gbps speeds for prices similar to much slower plans from current providers. Google is testing the service now in Kansas City, but what would it take for them to roll it out to the rest of the country? Well, according to a new report from Goldman Sachs, the price tag would be over $140 billion. Not even Google has that kind of cash laying around. From the report: '... if Google devoted 25% of its $4.5bn annual capex to this project, it could equip 830K homes per year, or 0.7% of US households. As such, even a 50mn household build out, which would represent less than half of all U.S. homes, could cost as much as $70bn. We note that Jason Armstrong estimates Verizon has spent roughly $15bn to date building out its FiOS fiber network covering an area of approximately 17mn homes.' Meanwhile, ISPs like Time Warner aren't sure the demand exists for 1Gbps internet, so it's unlikely they'll leap to invest in their own build-out."
sorry, verizon is way ahead of google
and the only way google did it in kansas city was by paying off local officials to allow them to put their fiber on the poles at lower rates than everyone else's lines. not going to work everywhere. ISP's and others are already suing kansas city for allowing this
It is more like $500. Still ridiculously cheap.
Only governments can do this sort of thing properly. Pity Americans don't trust their government.
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Property values are up. Jobs are up. KC is in the national spotlight in a good way. Every local official that got behind this is a local hero who just amplified his political opportunities. Those folks are assured reelection in perpetuity. They didn't have to be bribed to let Google hang fiber: they had to beg Google to come hang the fiber. They were changing the honorary name of the city to "Google". They were promising the name of every first-born son...
Seeing how this is working out, Google won't lack for cities to beg them to come hang fiber for quite some time.
Over 1,000 cities competed for the opportunity to be first. And over 1,000 cities were disappointed to lose the chance.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You might want to read this article. This is an article about what happens when private industry takes money from people to built faster broadband infrastructure. Executive summary: they pocket the money, and don't build the infrastructure.
It may be that government would do the same, but this is an unsubstantiated assertion on your part. How's about you provide some citations to support your claim? Because as far as I know, there have been a lot of successes with municipal broadband, and very few failures (indeed, I know of only one).
Here you go.
Google was charging $300 per house for the installation, or waiving that if you pay for a two-year contract.
It does cost Google a lot to build out the infrastructure, but they'll pass some of that cost on to consumers to make it viable.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
How you want the world to work.
Google really wants is for Verizon/comcast/AT&T/etc. to pull the finger out and start upgrading their own infrastructure. A bit of competition never hurt.
How the world works
Verizon/comcast/AT&T/etc. start upgrading their lawyers and politicians to fight Google at every step of the way, costing billions of dollars
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-02-01/broadband-telecom-lafayette/52920278/1
Cox has spent millions fighting the city, and finally has lost.
1GBps Wireless, 1GB Cap, finish your month in 1 second.
B-b-but that would take 8 seconds!