Google begins rollout of ultrafast open network

The first location for Google's project to build open fibre networks has been announced and the winner thus far is Stanford, conveniently located in Palo Alto.  

The company will be installing the first 1GBps fibre network at Stanford University's Residential Subdivision, a group of approximately 850 faculty and staff-owned homes. Google said that it will begin breaking ground early next year.

Officially this isn't part of the Google Fiber project, announced in February, which is looking at setting up much larger networks.

"Our ultimate goal is to build to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people, and we still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year," said James Kelly, product manager at Google, in a blog posting.

"Stanford's Residential Subdivision - our first "beta" deployment to real customers - will be a key step towards that goal. We'll be able to take what we learn from this small deployment to help scale our project more effectively and efficiently to much larger communities."

Those larger communities are competing very hard to be the recipients of Google's largess. Topeka in Kansas even changed its name to Google, a favour the company returned.

Kelly said a key factor in the decision was Stanford's willingness to allow "new fibre technology on its streets," which strikes Sleuth as disconcertingly vague. On or in the street is going to make a big difference to residents and construction costs.

He did also point out that having Google headquarters just down the road was also a pretty good incentive for the pick.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this develops, but I suspect the location might be more trouble than it's worth in one regard. Putting students on a 1GBps network pretty much guarantees an orgy of filesharing will ensue and the RIAA is waiting in the wings.