While it continues to review the more than 200,000 responses it received for its FTTH testbed RFP, Google has announced it will open a smaller testbed in Stanford University’s Residential Subdivision. Deployment within the subdivision is scheduled to begin early in 2011.
The Residential Subdivision comprises approximately 850 homes owned by either Stanford faculty or staff. Google says it chose the location for what it describes as a beta test of optical broadband technology for three reasons:
- Stanford’s willingness to let Google deploy fiber in its streets
- The relatively small number of homes and the neighborhood configuration
- Its close proximity to Google’s engineering facility
The beta trial will examine what Google described as “new fiber-optic technologies” that it has already tested on its campus. As described in the testbed RFP, these technologies will support 1-Gbps Internet connections to each home.
The search engine giant remained mum on what these technologies are. A link in the blog describing the Stanford deployment brings you to a YouTube video Google had released earlier this year of a micro-trenching race.
Google says the trial is “completely separate” from the community selection process for what is being called Google Fiber. Google provided little update on the progress of that effort, other than to reiterate that it plans to connect to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people and that it will announce “our selected community or communities” by year end.