Google recently made headlines for launching its Fiber network in Kansas City (both Missouri and Kansas). The project is still in its early stages and highly consumer-focused, but one analyst believes it could be an effort to push the internet services in general to offer higher speeds. A recent CNET article reported that Google may be operating at a loss, but the company could be planning for long-term benefits beyond pure revenue.
"We expect this initial rollout to be net negative for GOOG," said Macquarie Capital analysts, who were quoted in the article. "It reminds us that this initiative is less about a long-term revenue opportunity for Google and more about pushing current Internet providers to increase speeds and innovate (which could benefit Google in the long run)."
Kansas City consumers are not the only demographic benefiting from the faster internet speeds. As a recent Wall Street Journal article reported, several entrepreneurs have ideas for using Google's Fiber network to add significant value to their businesses. One business, Caregiv, hopes to use the network to build a health monitoring service that is capable of streaming multiple high quality instructional videos to customers. The service would also allow patients to easily teleconference with doctors. Kirk Hasenzahl, owner of RareWire, told the WSJ his current network only supports a fraction of the bandwidth of Google's.
However, early use cases like these may just be the starting point for a larger trend. As consumer technology evolves to become faster, businesses may also need to adapt their technology to deliver performance expected by consumers with faster internet speeds. Fiber networks allow businesses of all sizes to deliver high-quality web content with fewer performance bottlenecks.
"Over time, Google Fiber hopes to spur a new wave of technological innovation, from telemedicine to cloud computing, that can capitalize on its network's ability to stream high-definition videos and transfer large files. Indeed, some believe Google Fiber is so powerful that it will improve education technology and transform how businesses operate," the article stated.
Businesses that want to leverage fast networks can benefit by choosing an ecommerce hosting or other service provider provider that owns its own network. Building proprietary network infrastructure allows the hosting provider to optimize the system with its infrastructure in mind. Businesses should make sure the provider's network is built for resilience, with multiple points of pressure, to ensure they are protected from both high traffic and cyber attacks such as distributed denial of service threats.
