Business, consumer and economic tidbits from DNT business reporter Candace Renalls. Click here to view previous posts or additional resources.

Downers for the Google high

Not to burst Google initiative bubble here in Duluth… but did anyone see the article in the Wall Street Journal this month about the Internet search giant’s plans?

With the headline “Tough Road for Google’s Network,” it paints a less-than-rosy picture ahead as noted in the sub-head: “Plan to Build High Speed Internet Faces Infrastructure Hurdles, Lack of Content.”

According to the story, the super fast network Google plans to create in select communities, will be expensive to build, time-consuming and will require digging up roads. And that requires getting lots of right of ways.

To build it, Google would partner with a contractor. First, fiber-optic cable must be connected to individual homes and special electronics installed to handle the data at 1 gigabit per second. From the houses, the fiber would be connected to larger cables that would run through the neighborhoods, according to the Journal.

No mention of the cost to set up such a system in a community the size of Duluth-Superior, but for a city of 500,000, the estimated cost is $1 billion or more.

Oh, but there’s more.

Even with an ultrahigh-speed internet network, there’s currently little content for it. Moreover, since internet traffic passes through several networks to get to its destination, it can only travel as fast as the the slowest link. So downloading videos or other content will only be as fast as the slowest network along the way, the Journal said.

Tags: biz, computer, google, duluth