Today's column is about the grassroots campaign, quickly spreading to political and commercial institutions, to persuade Google to build one of its superfast broadband networks in Baltimore. In talking about this yesterday with MP3Car's Rob Wray, Roundhouse Technologies' David Troy and others, the hazy topic of how much Google would spend came up.
Google says it wants to build gigabit networks in a small number of test markets in the United States. "We plan to offer service to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people." Using the estimated figure that Verizon is spending $10,000 per household to connect its FiOS broadband to each subscriber, some are estimating that Google could spend $1 billion in each of several cities. ($10,000 x 100,000 households.) This sounds like way too much to me.
A billion dollars is a ton of money for a project that may generate only nominal revenue, even for a moneybags like Google. Note that Google is saying it will "offer" service to 50,000 to 500,000 people. That's not the same as connecting that many households. Verizon may spend $10,000 per household that it signs up for FiOS, but it spends far less -- ~$2,000 -- for each home "passed," that is, each house to which it can offer service. Not every house with broadband fiber at the street curb subscribes.
Also, Google says it will offer the service to from 50,000 to 500,000 "people." There are about 2.5 people per household in this country. So if Google means "people" literally, we're talking 20,000 to 200,000 households for all the test markets. Of course the company will hook up businesses, too, for which the person-per-connection ratio would be even higher. At some businesses you can get 1,000 "people" with essentially one connection.
This is why I used a conservative, "tens of millions" figure in the column for a potential pricetag for Google Baltimore broadband. (Which is still lots of dough.) For more on the bmorefiber movement, see the Web site, the BaltTech blog, the Daily Record blog and the Twitter stuff. Oh and the Facebook page.