Just look to big blue to see how large corporate entities can fall when they are in a position where it takes 40 people to make one decision.

If Google is to make muni-wifi available they will need some strategic partenerships with other companies.
 

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Interesting article. It clarified nicely the terms of availability as they exist (or will exist) in both the SFO and MV locales. But I tell you what. It would be refreshing to read, even if only once, an article that actually refers to an verifiable source supporting the claims that Google is gobbling up dark fiber like it was going out of style, other than the January 2005 report cited and the now famous Cringely newsletter account. Every time I read those citations I’m reminded of weapons of mass destruction.

Any company with enough money can purchase a limited number of wavelengths or even dark strands of fiber and keep it a secret. But no one can buy up a supply of dark fiber that would be large enough to constitute national coverage for every city, town, village and hamlet and keep “that” a secret. Not with human nature being what it is, even if the company doing it is Google.

The dark fiber that is being acquired is for its internal backbone purposes. Google is not about to bring wireline facilities into every potential WiFi hot spot or hot zone. It is buying up optical capacity along the nation's rights of way, which does very little to directly support WiFi distribution networks to within the last 100 meters of homes (equivalent feeder and distribution plant) or access- and metro- area aggregation offices that accept backhaul from the deepest parts of the network.

Yes, the company is buying up optical transmission assets of all types - dark, lit and wavelengths - in support of its own enterprise and utility networks. It has no desire to compete for dumb transport in the access and metro spaces when existing service providers are more than capable of handling that part of the equation for them. And those destinations include residential areas, industrial parks and SMB zones where they wish to site and future WiFi access points, as well.

If and when the company throws off signs that it is actually engaged in cornering the market on dark fiber – which is what it would take to match what has been claimed – I should like to be the first to acknowledge it and report what I know. Til then? They’re just taking care of business.

Frank
 

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The article should remind the readers to use a VPN solution whenever they use a public ( = UNENCRYPTED) hotspot. Free solutions are OpenVPN (powerful, but complicated) or iPig (easy to use). Personally I use iPig
 

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