Google looking at millimeter-wave transmission to bring fiber to masses

Who doesn’t want Google’s cheap, high-speed Fiber Internet network? But then, not many people want to bear the cost of running fiber-optic under streets and to houses, which involves a lot of messy manual labor as well.

Well, Google might just have got its solution for this problem. According to Alphabet chairperson Eric Schmidt, one of the solution they are pondering over is millimeter-wave wireless signals to cover the “last mile” to customers’ houses.

Millimeter-wave transmission works a lot like WiFi, but at a much higher frequency. This lets the signal car much more data i.e. faster internet, but it mostly works on line-of-sight. That means it wouldn’t work well for WiFi in your house or as a substitute for cell networks, but it’s perfect for carrying a signal half a mile from a cable junction to a receiver on top of your house.

The idea isn’t really novel: back in 2012, a startup called WiSpire in the UK started mounting transmitters to church spires in order to connect individual houses using millimeter-wave transmission (albeit, resulting in the far slower internet than proposed by Google).

Also, there are some technical hurdles that need serious deliberation and working, but the end result could be very interesting indeed. Having to run cables into houses to supply the internet is one of the more archaic leftovers from the copper phone-line era. If cabling — and the heinous installation fees that seem to come with wired internet — could be ditched in favor of a small antenna supplying cheap gigabit internet, Google might just do something truly good for humanity.