Google works toward 10Gbps Internet connections
Web giant aims to deliver data transfer speeds that are roughly 1,000 times faster than the average US Internet connection.
Google's need for Internet speed just kicked into a whole new gear.
The Web giant is working on technology to deliver data transfer speeds over the Internet at 10 gigabits per second, 10 times faster than the connections offered by Google Fiber in Kansas City, a Google executive revealed Wednesday, according to a USA Today report. That's roughly 1,000 times faster than the average US connection speed of 7.2 megabits per second.
The project is part of Google's vision of the next-generation Internet, allowing for more stable connections for data-intensive applications and greater adoption of software as a service, Google CFO Chief Patrick Pichette said during the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference.
"That's where the world is going. It's going to happen," Pichette said. It may happen over a decade, but "why wouldn't we make it available in three years? That's what we're working on. There's no need to wait," he added.
Few homes need 1Gbps or even 100Mbps broadband today, but existing capacity is steadily being absorbed by emerging technologies such as streaming audio and video, cloud storage, video chats, software updates, and multiplayer games.
Connections will be stretched even thinner with adoption of higher-resolution 4K video, expected to be the next bandwidth-hogging technology. Netflix, which plans to begin streaming content in 4K this year, said the 4K streams will need a 15Mbps connection, roughly twice the bandwidth needed to stream Super HD content.
Of course, Google isn't alone in its quest for faster Internet connections. A team of UK researchers announced last year that they had achieved wireless data transmission speeds of 10Gbs via visible light. Their "Li-fi" system used a micro-LED light bulb to transmit 3.5Gbps across each of the three primary colors of visible light: red, blue, and green.