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Google Says It's Very 'Serious' About Gigabit Wireless

Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt told shareholders during the company's annual meeting on Wednesday that Google Fiber is extremely "serious" about using fiber as an additional avenue to deliver additional broadband competition to stagnant markets. "To give you an idea of how serious this is," Schmidt stated the executive had a "lengthy" meeting on Tuesday with Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat to discuss the company's wireless ambitions.

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Those ambitions include testing the viability of millimeter wave technologies and 3.5 GHz wireless broadband as part of an ongoing trial in Kansas City.

"There appears to be a wireless solutions that are point to point that are inexpensive now because of the improvements in semiconductors," Schmidt said. "These point to point solutions are now cheaper than digging up your garden and so forth."

Like companies such as Verizon, Google says wireless will be a less expensive complement to digging up customer flower beds in order to deliver fiber to the home.

"One of the things that is intriguing about wireless is that it allows you reach houses and users that are in lower density settings — where fiber becomes too expensive. So providing fixed wireless services using some of the technologies we think are ways of accelerating our deployments," Google Fiber boss Craig Barratt said last April.

"We think, over time, there will be a sort of heterogeneous mix of technologies that we can use, depending upon the type of problem we’re trying to solve. But I want to make it clear that our focus on wireless technologies is really around fixed — so providing fixed wireless broadband."

Barratt was previously CEO Of Atheros Communications, now part of Qualcomm. Under Barratt's guidance Google has filed applications with the FCC to conduct trials in the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz millimeter wave bands, and is also conducting a variety of different tests in the 3.5 GHz band, the 5.8 GHz band and the 24 GHz band. Obviously some of this will be used for the last mile, and some will be used deeper in the network.

"In the cities where we are providing service — and the cities where we’re doing construction — we’re very serious about creating a service that customers will really love," Barratt says. "Our initial experience, where we are serving customers in those cities, is really positive. Customers really view us as best in class. So we’re very serious about providing a very competitive service — in the markets that we’re serving."

Google's giving no timeline on when its wireless broadband ambitions will be fully cooked, but it should provide another welcome avenue to bring competition to some notably over-comfortable industry incumbents.

Most recommended from 52 comments



GlennLouEarl
3 brothers, 1 gone
Premium Member
join:2002-11-17
Richmond, VA

12 recommendations

GlennLouEarl

Premium Member

When ISPs close the door,

Google opens a window (of opportunity).
grabacon9
join:2013-08-21
Newark, OH

5 recommendations

grabacon9

Member

Nice

Competition is always good.
biochemistry
Premium Member
join:2003-05-09
92361

3 recommendations

biochemistry

Premium Member

Fiber

Just spend the money on fiber now. No more bridging technologies based on wireless.