Four paths to abundant Internet bandwidth

[Commentary] Can cities stop worrying about whether they’ll have the affordable, abundant bandwidth needed to thrive in the future? No. Announcements are not deployments.

There are now four kinds of communities. Each has to address the challenge of assuring abundant bandwidth differently.

1. For communities that have or are likely to attract Google Fiber, the starting strategy is detailed in the handbook Google itself commissioned. If Google arrives, the incumbent telecommunications company and cable provider will do what they have always done: accelerate their own gigabit efforts. Google Fiber could expand to, at most, 20 million homes in six to eight years. Communities serving those other 100 plus million homes should follow the sensible recommendations within the Google handbook, but they’ll need to develop different growth strategies.
2. One set of such communities are those that don’t fit the Google algorithm but enjoy the scale and density necessary to create an attractive next generation investment case.
3. Another set of communities are smaller, less dense communities but with characteristics that can attract private capital to accelerate next generation deployments.
4. The fourth set of communities are rural, where government involvement must play a larger role.

One lesson from the last year is that in a few years, the gigabit divide will not be about wealth or density; it will between those communities that had a plan and those who didn’t.