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Google Fiber Turns
to Fixed Wireless
It’s probably not a coincidence
that shortly after Google Fiber ac-
quired wireless ISP Webpass, it began
pausing its FTTP overbuild plans in
previously announced Google Fiber
markets. Webpass offers fixed wire-
less services, including 100 Mbps, 200
Mbps, 500 Mbps and 1 Gpbs tiers, in
Boston, Chicago, Miami, Oakland, San
Diego and San Francisco, with prices
starting at $60 per month.
“Webpass has been offering superfast
Internet service – up to a gigabit per sec-
ond – in these cities for some time, and
has the full support of Google Fiber to
continue doing so going forward,” posted
Google Fiber president Dennis Kish.
Kish says Google Fiber and Web-
pass have been “working together in
the cities both Webpass and Google
Fiber share: Chicago, San Diego and
San Francisco.”
Webpass currently uses point-to-
point technology, limiting wide cov-
erage of a market, and it does not
currently blanket any market with its
fixed services. But with all the hype
around 5G, its expected boost in ca-
pacity and cost savings over fiber in an
overbuild scenario, it’s not hard to see
why Google Fiber might view “Google
Fixed” as a smarter option, especially
now that the company has had a taste
of passing actual homes with fiber.
Enterprises to Up
WAN Spending
T
he WAN is becoming a strategic component of technology
infrastructure for enterprises and is driving a renewed
focus on WAN security and performance, say research-
ers at IHS Markit.
Interest in software-defined wide area
networking (SD-WAN) also is reach-
ing critical mass, with four out of five
respondents having plans for SD-
WAN during the next 4 years.
Across private, public and hybrid
networks, enterprises surveyed by
IHS plan to increases WAN spending
by more than 20 percent annually.
The top changes expected over the
next year are increasing capacity
and improving security. The leading
drivers of WAN traffic, show survey
figures, are backup/storage and col-
laboration tools.
Meanwhile, SD-WAN lab trials of
2016 are turning into production de-
ployments in 2017 and 2018. Forty-two
percent of respondents started SD-
WAN lab trials in 2016, and in 2017,
many are moving into production trials
and onto live production networks.
Most North American Enterprises Have Some SD-WAN Plans Brewing
Source: IHS Markit
By end of
2016
Lab trial
Production trial
Live production
2017
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
2018
2019 2020 or
later
Don’t
know
No plans
Percent of enterprise survey respondents
5G Technology Challenges
1ms latency
1000x bandwidth per unit area
Perception of 100% coverage
Perception of
99.999% availability
10 to 100x
connected devices
1G to 10G connections
to end points in the field
90% reduction in energy use
Challenges
83%
71%
54%
50%
46%
46%
33%
Where Google Fiber is Going
Source: Google Fiber, 1/17
Zettabytes
Channel
Vision
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March - April, 2017
34
Overheard
“Our DVD by mail service was the original digital distribution network. Each DVD carries 5 GB
of data – and sending that out to people by mail was still the fastest way to get content to a
computer. We launched in 1997, and started streaming in 2007. We knew that eventually
the Internet would catch up with the U.S. postal system, but it took 10 years.”
– Netflix CEO R ed Hastings, speaking at Mobile World Congress, on broadband growth