We’ve been talking a lot about Google Fiber. We especially want Google Fiber to come to our city, right? Who wouldn’t want a 1GB connection? Many of us, okay probably all of us, want to see Google expand Google Fiber to cover the entire US. Especially with carriers charging us like crazy to use their data. Just to put things in perspective, LTE tops at 300mbps theoretically. Which would make Google Fiber still 3 times faster than LTE. You could download a Blu-ray movie in just minutes. Now that’s pretty darn fast, right?
Today, Business Insider is pointing to new research from Goldman Sachs which is estimating that it would cost Google about $140 billion to make Google Fiber more available and accessible to the rest of the US. Now we have to take into account that Google has only $45 billion on hand (I love how they say “only” like $45 billion is a small number), and its annual CAPEX budget is about $4.5 billion. Making it very unlikely that Google Fiber will be hitting everyone’s neighborhoods in the near future.
Goldman is also stating that to cover 50 million households, which is a little less than 50% of the US, would cost Google about $70 billion. Which would force Google to take out a pretty hefty loan just to get Google Fiber in most of the major markets. So while it would be pretty awesome to see Google Fiber across the US very soon, it’s starting to look unlikely to happen anytime soon. But Google has already spent quite a bit on Fiber, so i don’t see them dropping it anytime soon. So it may take Google years to get it built out through out the entire US, but it’ll be worth the wait, I think.
And to those that live Kansas City, you are some extremely lucky people! I think most of us would want to live there right now so we could get some Fiber. Not only does Google Fiber feature 1gbps internet speeds, but it also has TV service coming from Google. Which we’ve heard is very beta, and even YouTube doesn’t work for Google Fiber yet. So while this is sad news for those of us hoping for Google Fiber, Google has been known to surprise us before. So we’ll see what Google has up its’ sleeves for Fiber.