The Future of Internet
By DREW METZ
(Defiance, Oh) The revolution began last November, with almost no one to witness it. A technician in a small home in Kansas City, Kansas, plugged a fiber-optic cable from the street into his white wall jack and history was made. The small blue light indicating that there is connection, the first Google Fiber hookup-an ultrahigh-speed gigabit internet service and TV network that runs 100 times faster than garden-variety broadband.
A feature that should have created uproar in most tech companies, but not Google, Google stayed quiet and away from most national media. Google insisted that its investment to make the Kansas City the first fiber-wired zone in the country is nothing more than an experiment rather than an enormous business opportunity.
It wasn’t until a couple months had went by that Executive Chairman Officer of Google, Eric Schmidt, would announce that there would be an expansion. This isn’t the first revolution of technology Google has kept under the rug. Android debuted as an open-source operating system for smartphone developers and Chrome was said to be an in-house experiment to test a more streamlined web browser. The Android and Chrome are now the most widely adopted mobile platform and web browser in the world.
“Fiberhoods”, the name given by the locals for these revolutionized neighborhoods of Kansas City. Each neighborhood brings high speeds to local libraries and schools, causing more locals to sign-up with the overwhelming impact its having over the city.
Fiber moves at about 1,000 MB per second, embarrassing the average speed from your everyday provider at a usual 20 MB. With these speeds you can download 10 years’ worth of the New England Journal of Medicine audio files in 5.2 seconds, The Encyclopedia Britannica (iPad edition) in 0.047 seconds, and 4,000 photos in 8 seconds.
The campaign headquarters is located off State Line Road, the dividing line between Kansas and Missouri, where Google took an abandoned gym and transformed it into a community clubhouse. Lines were built up outside the doors of people waiting to get a glimpse at what this internet can do.
“A modern-day version of 1940s residents standing in front of the department store downtown to see television for the first time” said Ben Paynter, author of – FOR ADDING FIBER TO OUR INTERNET DIET. The internet was meant for residential use, so once the popularity grew business’ started renting out homes in these “fiberhoods” to use the internet.
A program called Homes for Hackers offers three months of rent-free living for entrepreneurs who want to set up shop in a Fiber-connected home. There’s no doubt that Google can take this to every city considering the large list of competitor cities who tried to host the experiment.
It was cost Google a staggering amount, possibly billions, to push this technology across the country, but when Google causes their competitors to experiment with the same technology, we could be creating an end to the internet we’re using today.
