Today the company announced its investment in O3b Networks (O3b = Other 3 Billion), which holds as its mission to provide high-speed, low-cost Internet connectivity to the other 3 billion people on Earth—those finding their existences in remote parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
From the Google Blog:
“O3b plans to deliver fiber-like Internet backhaul service using a constellation of medium-orbit satellites. This means data can be quickly transmitted to and from even the most remote locations such as inland Africa or small Pacific islands.”
Just to review: Google has tons of dark fiber across America, invested in submarine, trans-Pacific fiber to Asia, become very cozy with NASA, helped launch a satellite, helped broker open standards for wireless spectrum, put out a mobile operating system and a browser. All of this fits in to Google’s master plan of more ubiquitous Internet connectivity everywhere. Yeah, you might say we saw it coming.
All of that connectivity is part of Google’s long-term strategy and answer to critics who say Google has gotten too far a field of its core search competency. As one executive recently stated, more Internet for everyone is an important part of the company mission to boost advertising revenue, which supports their other mission, which is to index the world’s information and make it freely available.
O3b plans to have their satellite-based Internet services up and running in 2010, and expects bandwidth to be cheaper, faster, and easier for much of the world. The company claims the network will offer low-latency links from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps for core trunking, instant fiber-path restoration and 3G cellular backhaul.
Wanna take bets the Internet noobs out in there in the boonies get faster Internet than in the States?
