1. Google will team up with Starbucks to bring faster, free WiFi connections to all 7,000 company-operated Starbucks stores in the United States over the next 18 months. When your local Starbucks WiFi network goes Google, you’ll be able to surf the web at speeds up to 10x faster than before. If you’re in a Google Fiber city, we’re hoping to get you a connection that’s up to 100x faster.
2. New technology can blast gigabit-per-second data speeds across age-old twisted-pair copper telephone cables—at least at distances from a telephone pole to a house, says Alcatel-Lucent.
In theory, such technology could be crucial to speeding up global Internet access. Of the 580 million broadband subscribers in the world, 55 percent have copper connections—though that figure is 33 percent in the United States, where most people get their broadband from the same coaxial cable that delivers their TV, according to Dell’oro, a telecommunications market research firm.
Some current systems use similar approaches to achieve 300 megabits per second in lab tests, and 40 to 60 megabits in the field, say Michael Timmers, who helped develop the technology at Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs. In field tests with Telecom Austria, the new technology hit 1.1 gigabits per second at a distance of 200 feet, and 500 megabits at 300 feet.
ISPs have to care about improving speeds
Internet service providers will have to care about improving those speeds. Levin says the factor most likely to alter market dynamics is competition from the likes of Google Fiber—Google’s effort to install cheap one-gigabit-per-second service in Kansas City and elsewhere.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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