Google Fiber

[toinquire]

Wow!! Can't wait until I get this in my neighborhood.

"Google Fiber starts with a connection speed 100 times faster than today's average broadband. Instant downloads.
Crystal clear HD. And endless possibilities. It's not just TV. And it's not just Internet. It's Google Fiber. "

https://fiber.google.com/about/

[ilmartello]

Do you live in Kansas City?

[nonnie]

It's about time. US ISPs with their monopolies just bite not only in speed but in customer service.


Read the article and weep--
"Google is not alone in its concern. Last year, a study found that U.S. broadband speeds ranked 26th in the world, far behind South Korea, Romania and Bulgaria. Nearly one-third of U.S. residents, meanwhile, or 100 million Americans, don’t have high-speed Internet access at home, compared to Singapore and Korea where the adoption rates are over 90 percent, according to the Federal Communications Commission. What’s more, studies have shown that U.S. broadband service costs more than in other countries. Of course, it’s much easier to wire South Korea, with its relatively new infrastructure, than the U.S., which has a vast and often rugged geography. But that’s not the only reason U.S. service is slower and more expensive.

Lack of competition is also a problem. In many markets, there are only two options for broadband service, and without more competition, the companies that offer it have little incentive to improve service or lower prices.


Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/02/07/why ... z21mggVXM3"
http://business.time.com/2012/02/07/why ... -u-s-isps/

http://comcastmustdie.blogspot.com/

Nonnie
.

[BYUvol]

Wow!! Can't wait until I get this in my neighborhood.

"Google Fiber starts with a connection speed 100 times faster than today's average broadband. Instant downloads.
Crystal clear HD. And endless possibilities. It's not just TV. And it's not just Internet. It's Google Fiber. "

https://fiber.google.com/about/

I'm jealous, I actually requested a transfer to Kansas City today, no joke. I would uproot my family right now for $70 gigabit internet.

Unfortunately my company's only tie to kansas city is a colocation data center we use there, I so I'm probably not going to be able to move.

[heyyou]

In rural Arizona, we call the two satelite internet services, slow and slower, both with equally bad prices. The only upside is the low cost of living which suits my intentional early retirement.

[chaz]

A wonderful new development that should be welcome all over.

[ilmartello]

If there are any kansas city bogleheads that can keep us afloat of Google fiber experiences that would be great

[toinquire]

Do you live in Kansas City?

I'm not from Kansas City, I'm in the northeast.

Hopefully Google Fiber competition will provide incentive for existing cable companies to upgrade their service at a competitive price.

[linuxuser]

Hopefully Google Fiber competition will provide incentive for existing cable companies to upgrade their service at a competitive price.

That's what I am hoping too. Get a competitor with the deep pockets to compete with the likes of Verizon, Comcast, etc.

[mall0c]

I am living in Sofia, Bulgaria right now. I pay $37 per month for 150 Mbit/s. Mobile internet is 20 Mbit/s.

I had no idea how far behind the US was in its telecomm infrastructure until I came to eastern europe. It's embarrassing.

[simplesimon]

Any predictions about when this technology will hit most major metro areas?

[Muchtolearn]

I have intrinsically been biased against google (less so than facebook and general motors) but this is remarkable. They are saying that they will build it if they have orders to do so and if they don't, they won't. Note that one plan is free net access if one pays the $300 "construction fee". This allows them to get the pipe to the house and then be open for future service purchases. Very smart.

[HomerJ]

I live in Kansas City.

How do all you New York, California snobs like me now!?

[toinquire]

I have intrinsically been biased against google (less so than facebook and general motors) but this is remarkable. They are saying that they will build it if they have orders to do so and if they don't, they won't. Note that one plan is free net access if one pays the $300 "construction fee". This allows them to get the pipe to the house and then be open for future service purchases. Very smart.

The following article attempts to explain the strategy that Google is following (manufacture it's own equipment and infrastructure and "social engineering" $300 initial connection fee for frees internet reduces cost to the customers home)

http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/the-econom ... ign=gigaom

[htdrag11]

It's sad that I'm 2 blocks away from Verizon FIO which I've been waiting for 3 years. My sole provider is Cablevision.

Only our politicians will tell us that we're still Numero Uno in the world of technology and other chest-beating rhetoric.

Go Google.

[Frugaldude]

.....

[ThatGuy]

How do all you New York, California snobs like me now!?

It's absolutely disgusting to me that the mecca of tech, in particular internet tech, has such poor speeds for consumers. The Bay Area, and the US in general, needs to get their rear end in gear and fix this horrid infrastructure issue.

[nonnie]

Don't put up with it! I don't know about the rest of the country but in No. California cities award the cable, telecom, cell and cell tower contracts to these monopolies. I used to try really hard to organize folks to lobby the city council to allow more infrastructure (new companies and competitors) especially new fiber optic cable, etc.--no one seemed to have the time or care and so I gave up.

I then decided to concentrate on an executive VP at Comcast and succeeded in getting an entire year at 50% because of demonstrated poor performance.

Nonnie

[serbeer]

I buy Comcast Blast that is "only" 25-30 Mbs download 15Mbs upload for $65/month and my employer pays for it. If employer did not pay, I'd be happy with standard Comcast for $55.

Could anyone of the people nearly ready to move to Kansas give me a few lines of explanation as to what I am missing exactly by not having this super-fast connection? I am in IT so know the meaning of bandwidth well, but I am not running extracts against large-capacity databases, and even if I did, bandwidth is not likely to be a bottleneck.

Streaming movies in real time is the only advantage I can think of on my own, but that's what buffering is for. I'd have to be routinely moving large amounts of data to benefit from super-fast connection. What am I missing?

[ilmartello]

I live in Kansas City.

How do all you New York, California snobs like me now!?

did you sign up

[ThatGuy]

Could anyone of the people nearly ready to move to Kansas give me a few lines of explanation as to what I am missing exactly by not having this super-fast connection? I am in IT so know the meaning of bandwidth well, but I am not running extracts against large-capacity databases, and even if I did, bandwidth is not likely to be a bottleneck.

I'm not a gamer, but many moons ago I was. Latency is a HUGE issue in online games, whether it be that MMPORG where you're trying to snag a dragon, or in a FPS where you try to get the drop on the other team. My two options are Comcast, and AT&T. AT&T DSL simply blows. When I tried them the streaming of Netflix didn't even approach DVD quality.

Comcast, while faster, still does not touch Blu-ray quality; and our video streaming needs will inevitably increase. What about when someone in the household wants to stream their own show in another room? Splitting that one pipe in two (or more) will degrade the quality even further.

I also do a fair bit of tinkering with Linux on my own time. Downloading packages/distros gets old when your internet is slow and capped.

Add to that the stupid caps Comcast puts on their service, and it's simply not worth the normal price to me. Especially when I try to transfer files from home to work, or the other way around.

I would commit many felonies to have Verizon FIOS offered, or even better this Google Fiber service. I would willing pay over $100 a month for internet access only if the latency, and bandwidth prove out.

Fiber is really the only way forward. Once you lay the line, you can upgrade the equipment at each end and 'magically' have a faster network. Nothing travels faster than light, so the limiting factor is how fast you can blink that light; and read that blinking light.

[Frugaldude]

......

[Jack]

Could anyone of the people nearly ready to move to Kansas give me a few lines of explanation as to what I am missing exactly by not having this super-fast connection? I am in IT so know the meaning of bandwidth well, but I am not running extracts against large-capacity databases, and even if I did, bandwidth is not likely to be a bottleneck.

I'm not a gamer, but many moons ago I was. Latency is a HUGE issue in online games, whether it be that MMPORG where you're trying to snag a dragon, or in a FPS where you try to get the drop on the other team. My two options are Comcast, and AT&T. AT&T DSL simply blows. When I tried them the streaming of Netflix didn't even approach DVD quality.

Comcast, while faster, still does not touch Blu-ray quality; and our video streaming needs will inevitably increase. What about when someone in the household wants to stream their own show in another room? Splitting that one pipe in two (or more) will degrade the quality even further.

Latency is a separate issue and generally has nothing to do with bandwidth. It has to do with the processing time and delay at the servers, not the width of the pipe connecting you to the server.

Hi-def video streaming requires about 10 Mbit/sec of bandwidth so you only need about 20 Mbit/sec to stream two movies simultaneously. This is about one-fiftieth or two percent of the gigabit bandwidth that you think you need.

This seems more about number envy than any real need for most people and current applications. This could change for future applications.

[nonnie]

I don't understand why Google chose KC as its city instead of one of the tons of cities that do not have a company like Surewest in them.

Apparently it was a contest of some sort: "Kansas City beat out more than 1,100 other cities to win the Google project. The company said the enthusiasm of residents won it over. The company is using a similar metric to decide who gets Fiber service first: neighborhoods that express the most interest by pre-registering will be the first to be wired."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/201 ... high-speed

Edit: Here's how to pre-register for Fiber service--in KC only:

https://fiber.google.com/about/

Nonnie

[upsydaisy]

Google Fiber

...Good for your cholesterol levels too! (sorry, couldn't help myself)

I live in Kansas City.

How do all you New York, California snobs like me now!?

I toast your good fortune!

In the Bay Area it's almost impossible to make a cell phone call without interruption anymore (at least on AT&T) ... all those iPhone wielding hipsters yelping every store they visit and tweeting about their lives all day long.

[ThatGuy]

Latency is a separate issue and generally has nothing to do with bandwidth. It has to do with the processing time and delay at the servers, not the width of the pipe connecting you to the server.

Yes, it is. I guess I didn't do a go job of separating the two issues, but I was trying to say that there are two basic requirements for home users, and current options suck for both.

Hi-def video streaming requires about 10 Mbit/sec of bandwidth so you only need about 20 Mbit/sec to stream two movies simultaneously. This is about one-fiftieth or two percent of the gigabit bandwidth that you think you need.

This seems more about number envy than any real need for most people and current applications. This could change for future applications.

Only if you're satisfied with the current poor video encoding (and even worse audio encoding) of streaming options. I'm not.

[Eric]

Superfast connection speed puts cloud storage on a par with your own hard drive. Note that Google is providing a massive amount of online storage with this offering.

[interplanetjanet]

Latency is a separate issue and generally has nothing to do with bandwidth.

Latency can have rather a lot to do with physical characteristics of a network, and bandwidth - if a link between two endpoints is saturated (or traffic is compressed in flight) then latency can rise. Depending on how your networks are backhauled you can face significant latency even to other endpoints in your same geographic area. Last mile infrastructure that is a shared broadcast medium (such as most 1 to N wireless connections) will necessarily introduce additional latency.

It has to do with the processing time and delay at the servers, not the width of the pipe connecting you to the server.

I think anyone referring to latency in this discussion is talking about network latency, rather than server. Distance is what puts the ultimate lower bound on latency, annoyingly so - you can't beat the speed of light (and if you can do better than about 20% of it after including all overhead, you're doing really well).

-janet

[Jack]

Latency is a separate issue and generally has nothing to do with bandwidth.

Latency can have rather a lot to do with physical characteristics of a network, and bandwidth - if a link between two endpoints is saturated (or traffic is compressed in flight) then latency can rise. Depending on how your networks are backhauled you can face significant latency even to other endpoints in your same geographic area. Last mile infrastructure that is a shared broadcast medium (such as most 1 to N wireless connections) will necessarily introduce additional latency.

It has to do with the processing time and delay at the servers, not the width of the pipe connecting you to the server.

I think anyone referring to latency in this discussion is talking about network latency, rather than server. Distance is what puts the ultimate lower bound on latency, annoyingly so - you can't beat the speed of light (and if you can do better than about 20% of it after including all overhead, you're doing really well).

-janet

Making gigabit connections for the last mile to your house does nothing for network latency because the bottleneck is the network, not the last mile. The bottleneck is wherever all of these gigabit houses connect to the internet backbone. Typical backbone connections are OC48 which is 2.5 gigabits which means you and 2.5 of your neighbors can saturate it. There is a future move to OC192 for the backbone which is 10 gigabits and would serve only 10 in your neighborhood before saturation. You can do a traceroute and see that the delays aren't between you and your ISP -- it is between your ISP and the ultimate destination including the switches in between. Even if you were to have an infinite bandwidth connection from the ISP to your house, you aren't going to reduce latency by any significant amount.

And network latency isn't the whole picture. What does it matter if you reduce network latency if server latency is 90% or more of the total?

[AlohaJoe]

Any predictions about when this technology will hit most major metro areas?

They first announced it in March 2010. They currently expect to have 50% of the neighborhoods done by mid-2013. In a city with a population of 150,000.

Based on that, let's say maybe 2020 for any major metro but they'd have to announce plans in the next 24-months or so, with the chances being smaller for whatever major metro you personally live in

Australia's National Broadband Network is on a 10-year roll-out. It started in September 2009 and my neighborhood (in Sydney) is currently scheduled to "start construction within 1 year". Services are expected to be available within 1 year of construction starting. So let's say 2 years from today. 2009-2014. Five years from the start of roll-out and that still won't even cover all of Sydney.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't new technology. Verizon rolled out FIOS in 2005 and basically Americans haven't shown that much interest. There's a less than 50% uptake in areas where Verizon FIOS is available (5 million customers out of a possible 13.7 million). Demand was so low that Verizon has basically decided to cancel the service. (They stopped new deployments in 2010, IIRC.)

[SP-diceman]

Fiber is really the only way forward. Once you lay the line, you can upgrade the equipment at each end and 'magically' have a faster network. Nothing travels faster than light, so the limiting factor is how fast you can blink that light; and read that blinking light.

This doesn’t sound good, I wouldn’t want my movies messed up with blueshift.
(sorry, I couldn’t resist)



Thanks
SP-diceman

[Jack]

Nothing travels faster than light, so the limiting factor is how fast you can blink that light; and read that blinking light.

Well, only half true. Light propagating down an optic fiber and electrical signals on Cat5 copper wire both propagate at about the same speed, 65% of the speed of light in a vacuum. Signals actually propagate faster in plain old coax cable, about 85% of the speed of light in a vacuum.

What determines bandwidth is not the speed of propagation but the frequency of the signal, regardless of medium. After all, both light and electrical signals in a wire are both electromagnetic waves, just with different frequencies. Light is a higher frequency than the waves you can generate in copper wires, so light has a higher bandwidth for carrying information. It has nothing to do with propagation velocity.

[sscritic]

I live in Kansas City.

How do all you New York, California snobs like me now!?

We have a brand new type of snob, the Kansas City snob. Just don't ask him about his city's public school system.

Kansas City Public Schools or KCPS (formerly Kansas City, Missouri School District, or KCMSD) is an unaccredited school district headquartered at 1211 McGee Street in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri. This entire school district officially lost accreditation on January 1st, 2012.

[dumbmoney]

It's worth pointing out that this isn't new technology. Verizon rolled out FIOS in 2005 and basically Americans haven't shown that much interest. There's a less than 50% uptake in areas where Verizon FIOS is available (5 million customers out of a possible 13.7 million). Demand was so low that Verizon has basically decided to cancel the service. (They stopped new deployments in 2010, IIRC.)

As far as I know, there isn't a demand for super speed anywhere in the world, in the sense of lots of people being willing to pay a high price for it. In areas where super speed is common, it's basically a free feature. So the speed is determined by technology and competition, not demand.

[rec7]

How does this come into the house? Phone line or over the air?

[interplanetjanet]

Making gigabit connections for the last mile to your house does nothing for network latency because the bottleneck is the network, not the last mile.

It depends on technology (and the depth of the backhaul). With older DSL installations, a RTT of 20-25ms for the last mile is not unusual - modern fibre gear improves on this considerably.

The bottleneck is wherever all of these gigabit houses connect to the internet backbone.

Yes, things will definitely bottleneck at that point.

There is a future move to OC192 for the backbone which is 10 gigabits and would serve only 10 in your neighborhood before saturation.

One of my coworkers developed the first OC768 interface hardware - we are finally seeing an uptick in usage, though it's taken a long time!

And network latency isn't the whole picture. What does it matter if you reduce network latency if server latency is 90% or more of the total?

If server latency dominates, whoever is running the servers is going to be aware that it's a potential issue for everyone - this will restrict the scope of what's attempted or supported. The situation you don't want to be in is where your own latency is noticeably higher than average - in this case you are more likely to run into decreased performance or the lack of ability to support an application.

My own perspective is biased - I work with WAN optimization and geography (speed of light issues) tends to dominate latency for us. When server latency is high we either work out how to live with it or throw people and equipment at it until it improves enough.

-janet

[ilmartello]

Any predictions about when this technology will hit most major metro areas?

They first announced it in March 2010. They currently expect to have 50% of the neighborhoods done by mid-2013. In a city with a population of 150,000.

Based on that, let's say maybe 2020 for any major metro but they'd have to announce plans in the next 24-months or so, with the chances being smaller for whatever major metro you personally live in

Australia's National Broadband Network is on a 10-year roll-out. It started in September 2009 and my neighborhood (in Sydney) is currently scheduled to "start construction within 1 year". Services are expected to be available within 1 year of construction starting. So let's say 2 years from today. 2009-2014. Five years from the start of roll-out and that still won't even cover all of Sydney.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't new technology. Verizon rolled out FIOS in 2005 and basically Americans haven't shown that much interest. There's a less than 50% uptake in areas where Verizon FIOS is available (5 million customers out of a possible 13.7 million). Demand was so low that Verizon has basically decided to cancel the service. (They stopped new deployments in 2010, IIRC.)

IMO, I bet Verizon was hurt by the fact that most people's experiences with Verizon is through their cell service. Since they have a effective duopoly. they can afford to have poor customer service., and they certainly live up to that.

I wouldn't really be gung-ho about FIOS Service if it were available in my area for that reason.

[ilmartello]

For some perspective, in my area, suburbs of Los Angeles, the two main internet providers are time warner cable and att.

Both offer high speed internet through fiber optics, ATT's top speed is 24 Mbps ($63), and through TWC it is 50 Mbps ($79). So what Google is claiming to deliver is 20 times faster than even TWC.

That's mind-blowing.

[ataloss]

I live in Kansas City.

How do all you New York, California snobs like me now!?

So Will Parker was right.

[AlohaJoe]

It's worth pointing out that this isn't new technology. Verizon rolled out FIOS in 2005 and basically Americans haven't shown that much interest. There's a less than 50% uptake in areas where Verizon FIOS is available (5 million customers out of a possible 13.7 million). Demand was so low that Verizon has basically decided to cancel the service. (They stopped new deployments in 2010, IIRC.)

As far as I know, there isn't a demand for super speed anywhere in the world, in the sense of lots of people being willing to pay a high price for it. In areas where super speed is common, it's basically a free feature. So the speed is determined by technology and competition, not demand.

This is absolutely true. Google Fiber is going to be $120/month if you want TV. Verizon's FIOS is $105 with TV. Yes, Google is faster (at least on sticker speeds, I don't know how it'll compare in real world performance) but if people weren't willing to pay for Verizon FIOS I don't really see the argument for why they're going to pay the price premium for Google Fiber. It's not like Google Fiber is the same price as a Cable Modem. You're looking at something that is ~40% more expensive than most cable modem plans.

Would you pay $70/month just for your internet? Nothing else. Just internet? Netflix, etc, etc, all on top of that?

[Higman]

toinquire,

Google Fiber is a good start but don’t be too disappointed if your expected boost in performance doesn’t live up to your expectations. Network performance is has many facets such as bandwidth, latency, link utilization, packet drops and application design to name a few. I have taken some liberties to simplify the concepts below so forgive me if I oversimplify. Also I am addressing this to PC users at home on the Internet and not commercial users who can use WAN optimization equipment and other techniques not available to the homeowner.

1. Bandwidth is gated by the “slowest” link in the path between your PC and the server it is talking to. If you upgrade your 20Mbps ISP link to 1000Mbps but your remote servers are running on a 20Mbps link from their ISP then you will not see any improvement at all. We normally are not concerned with the long distance carriers that connect the ISPs since they have adequate bandwidth but the “last mile” at both ends of a conversation does matter. And don’t overlook your Ethernet card. Google Fiber runs at 1Gbps (gigabits/second) but if your Ethernet card is only Fast Ethernet it will only run at 100Mbps. Be sure also to upgrade your router to one that has gigabit ports. However if you use wi-fi then you will only be able to use a fraction of the Google fiber bandwidth available perhaps about 300Mbps on 802.11n and only 54Mbps on 802.11g.

2. The higher the bandwidth the more importance network latency has related to response time. Network latency can be defined as the time it takes for the last bit of an IP packet leaving your PC to when it arrives at the remote server. This time is comprised of propagation delays (about 60% the speed of light in fiber) which is a function of distance between your PC and remote server, queuing delays getting on connecting links and router and switch delays as the packet gets passed from network component to network component, each adding some additional delay. Assume your Google Link is the slowest link in the path and that your PC has a Gigabit Ethernet card connected to a gigabit port on a router. The time it takes for your PC to serialize the packet onto the network is the time attributed to bandwidth. So a 1500 byte packet on a 1000Mbps Google Fiber link would take 1500x8/1,000,000,000 = 12 microseconds. Now the packet travels through the network and when the last bit of the packet arrives into the remote server that completes the network latency time measurement. A good proxy for latency measurements is to PING the remote server and take half of the minimum round trip time (RTT). So for instance if we PING a server from NYC to Los Angeles it may show an 80 millisecond round trip time. So the network latency is about 40 MILLI-seconds. Compare this with the 12 MICRO-second time due to bandwidth! Latency is a major contributor to response time. Suppose we sent a packet stream of 43 packets each 1500 bytes. It would take only about one half of a millisecond to get them on the Google link but still take 40 milliseconds in flight.

3. Some applications are very sensitive to latency. These are applications that are chatty – comprised of many small packets requiring individual acknowledgements. In the commercial world Citrix would be an example. Others, such as file transfers, while not chatty are impacted by latency but can be tuned. I would suggest anyone on Google Fiber still using Windows XP to tune their TCP Receive Window Size otherwise most of the time spent downloading will be waiting on responses and not doing anything. TCP is a windowing protocol which only sends so much data at a time then waits for an acknowledgment before sending more. On XP it defaults to a 64KB window. So the server will send out a stream of packets (typically 43 x 1,500 byte packets) and wait for permission to send more from your PC. Due to the effect of latency on very high bandwidth connections the sender stops sending when it still has the capacity to continue if only it had permission. The packet train is still in-flight and has to be received and the acknowledgment packet has to travel all the way back to the server for it to continue. One solution is to use much bigger TCP Receive window sizes per RFC1323. This is called windows scaling. The formula to use is the bandwidth delay product for TCP window sizes. Take the RTT from the ping and multiply it by the bandwidth of the slowest link in the path and then divide by eight. So assume Google Fiber is the slowest link at 1Gbps and assume RTT between NYC and LA is 80 ms then the TCP receive window size should be 1,000,000,000*80/8 = 10MB. This will allow for non-stop file transfers and the server should never have to wait for an acknowledgment. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have TCP auto tuning feature which does this for you, although many people disabled it in Vista for other reasons. If you only have XP then registry changes must be made. Even if you don’t optimize on 10MB window sizes, any increase over the default 64KB will help. Perhaps even a 1MB window size will be adequate. Another solution is to do many parallel TCP transfers. Each TCP connection will have its own windowing mechanism active.

So the bottom line is don’t expect miracles from a dramatic bandwidth increase on one end. And don’t overlook the brick wall you will run into due to latency.

[interplanetjanet]

Would you pay $70/month just for your internet? Nothing else. Just internet? Netflix, etc, etc, all on top of that?

I do that now - at times in the past I've paid much more. I wish I got more but I do feel that I'm getting my money's worth.

-janet (sonic.net)

[cjackson0]

I used to be a bit skeptical of the benefits of Google Fiber as well. After all, what's the point of downloading youtube videos at 1Gbps when you still have to take the time to watch it. Downloading Linux ISO's is already very quick and even downloading Movies and TV through Bit Torrent is at lightning fast speeds on a 5 or 10Mbps connection.

But then I read one of Google's press releases that made a lot of sense to me. They made the point that they aren't doing this to make your current applications faster (they really won't be much faster), they're doing it to open the door to all the things that you could someday do once everyone has this type of connection. 20 years ago when people connected to the internet with 9600bps modems, could they have imagined some of the things we use the internet for?
[*]Watching your favorite TV shows legally from the TV network's website? (CBS.com, others)
[*]Using a user-edited encyclopedia as the most trusted source of casual information (wikipedia.org)
[*]Using an application to not only download music legally (iTunes, amazon.com) but also identify a song just based on hearing a few seconds of it (the shazam app).
[*]Instead of buying software pre-loaded on your computer or from a box at a store, you can download totally free programs that the developers just give away with even the source code (the Linux OS, gimp, too many to mention)
[*]500 million user social networks where friends can easily share their thoughts, pictures, and even videos with minimal effort.
[*]An extension of the social networks: millions of oppressed citizens can organize protests and coordinate to overthrow entire regimes.
[*]Thousands of workers around the world telecommute to their jobs each day and beyond that, "If all Federal employees who are eligible to telework full time were to do so, the Federal Government could realize $13.9 billion savings in commuting costs annually and eliminate 21.5 billion pounds of pollutants from the environment each year."

Broadband based speeds didn't magically make these things happen, but without millions of users with a fast internet connection, these inventions would be useless. Imagine what kind of dreams could become reality if the amount of data we can move to people's homes could grow by an order of magnitude. The virtual reality thing always promised in movies could be available (not sure if it's actually worth having but someone can give it a try). At its basic level, the internet allows for information to be transferred quickly and easily among the world's population and information is power.

As a side note, if this effort is successful I would like to see Google try to expand this to the remainder of the population who doesn't have access to broadband internet in the United States. 71% of Americans connect a home computer to the internet (http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story ... 2011-11-10) so many don't have access to these live-enhancing benefits yet.

While this wasn't written from my iPhone, I enjoy that as my signature anyway.