Google sees America’s current wireless broadband options and thinks, “heck no, way too slow.” Or something to that effect. Today the company announced that it has devised a plan to get US citizens and their pocket-sized gizmos surfing the cloud along a gigabits-per-second metric by the close of 2009, reports Anne Broache on CNET’s News Blog. In a conference call held this morning, Richard Whitt, Google’s telecommunications counsel, dubbed the proposal, in consumer-friendly terms, “Wi-Fi 2.0.”
Of course, it’s not the technological goal in and of itself that might have mobile technology consumers feeling giddy, though a gigabits-per-second throughput to a smartphone of tomorrow is surely an attractive prospect. Instead, it’s the timeline set by Google - now to the end of 2009 - in which it believes it is possible to erect a nationwide broadband framework that would make possible all sorts of mobile Web and media applications and services that now remain within the realm of wishful thinking. In fact, the idea Google has put forth seems almost too good to be (potentially) true. One can’t help but think skeptically of such an ambition, really.
Google explained that the FCC would have to sign off on such a project before infrastructural business could ensue, but the company notes that the wireless auction in which crucial segments of spectrum went to the telecom giants Verizon and AT&T are required to remain open and freely accessible to third-party services and applications ensures that this new mobile dream it has outlined is altogether physically possible. Success really only requires a good deal of efficiency and coordination, which of course only a real-world collaborative exercise among corporations will (or will not) prove true.