Does Google want to be your next ISP?

While everything else slept under three feet of snow in DC, the Internet world was abuzz with the latest announcement from Google that they were going to venture into the mega broadband network business. Whatever their intent, their timing is great.

There are two big developments in Internet policy that are currently underway. First, agreeing that broadband is necessary infrastructure for our future economic growth, government is trying to develop a plan that will help facilitate network expansion and improvement. This includes the broadband stimulus grant programs (designed to serve double duty as job programs), and the National Broadband Plan currently being drafted at the FCC (due out in mid-March). The second is a proposed rulemaking, also at the FCC, known as the net neutrality proceeding, which will dictate what rules should apply to broadband networks. Both are an attempt to address the basic question of how do we get broadband access that is fast enough, cheap enough, and appealing enough to get people to subscribe. Network owners have their ideas; content providers such as Google have theirs. Both stand to win if we get it right.

This is where Google’s ISP plans come in. For over five years we have been hearing rumors about Google quietly preparing to become the “third” broadband provider, providing much needed competition and perhaps the “innovative” viewpoint that is lacking in the incumbent providers. What they have also been doing, not so quietly, is helping define the debate on what should be built, how it should be run, and what role the government should play in all this. They have been advocates of big broadband networks that have open access not only in the ISP market but in the content market as well (i.e. net neutrality).

Does Google want to be your next ISP? That is the real question. My guess is that they have very carefully calculated this move to help win their political arguments… in other words, they are putting “their money where their mouth is” while being careful to try and compliment, not undermine, what the FCC is trying to accomplish.  They want to show, through pilot projects, that gigabit speeds on a public Internet are feasible and that by providing open access they can stimulate competition in the ISP market and lower prices. They also want to prove, once and for all, that net neutrality rules will not stifle investment and slow down broadband development. My guess is that they have little interest in being your next broadband provider… they just want to show us how it’s done.

Read more about Google's program at Google Fiber for Communitites:Think Big with a Gig.