Google Solves One Asia Pacific Telco Problem
September 17, 2008
In early 2008, one of the firms with whom I work set up a series of Google telco briefings. These were quite interesting for me, but I think the telco executives were baffled by Google’s long history of telco-related inventions. The company nailed a quality of service invention a year after opening its doors. Yes, telco has been on Google’s very big brain for almost a decade, maybe longer.
A story, largely ignored by the trade journals, appeared on TelecomAsia.net that reported Google’s progress on what one telco executive told me was, and I am quoting from memory, “An almost impossible problem for the best minds in the telephone industry and almost certainly beyond Google’s capabilities.”
Well, the telco executive–not surprisingly–seems to have be incorrect if the TelecomAsia.net story is accurate. You can read “Google-Backed LEOsat IP Backhaul Project Is Go” by John C. Tanner by clicking this link. I verified this link at 10 pm Eastern on September 9, 2008, but some of these news sites roll off their content in order to protect their interests. (Your interests, dear reader, don’t count.)
The telco double talk is tough to penetrate. Let me simplify. Google is getting in the telco business in Asia. You can dig through the details that Mr. Tanner does an excellent job presenting.
Let me offer several comments;
- Google doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about getting in the high speed connect business in the Asia Pacific region.
- The “problems” appear to be solved. Just as Google “owns” its own high resolution satellite for geospatial imagery, Google owns its own undersea cables.
- Telco assumptions about Google remain shallow.
My question is, “Who’s going to regulate Google outside the US and across the region empowered by the GOOG’s new backhaul initiative?” Any ideas? The World Court? The UN? There are two stellar outfits ideally positioned to understand the whys and wherefores of Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, September 10, 2008
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