The Dark Lords Of Dark Fiber

by Gregory Sullivan — Wednesday, July 04, 2007, 11:00 AM EDT

Google has been purchasing unused fiber-optic capacity from cable and telephone companies for several years. How much is unknown, but it appears to experts that they have much, much, more than they could ever use to simply connect all their data centers together. What's it all for? Canada's Financial Post thinks they may be preparing to become their own broadband, phone, or Internet Service provider.

Google has publicly denied plans to get into the lucrative business, valued at US$1.3-trillion globally, but industry experts say it is inevitable. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company already has its toes in it with offerings such as Google Talk and the hugely popular YouTube video service. A major splash is only a matter of time, and when Google -- with its mammoth US$163-billion market capitalization -- does dive in, phone company takeovers and Apple gizmos will look like quaint curiosities.

"It's not an if, it's a when," says California-based technology analyst Rob Enderle. "Different parts of this are coming in at different speeds, but once they're done what they plan to do is offer comprehensive services through their own backbone and effectively lock a lot of the traditional players out of the market. A lot of them don't even see it coming."

The likeliest scenario is for Google to simply move their traffic onto their own network, and keep the money they currently fork over to others for network usage. Whatever they're doing, Google is certainly playing chess while the telecoms are playing checkers.

Tags: DS, fiber, AR, K

The Dark Lords Of Dark Fiber

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