14 DAY TRIAL // Google is thinking about expanding its fiber-to-home program, which is very much in the early stages, to Europe. Since Google hasn't yet managed to get the program going in scale in the US, don't hold your breath for a Google ISP across the pond anytime soon, but the fact that Google is thinking about it at all should be good news.
Apparently, Google Senior Vice President David Drummond, who is the company's Chief Legal Officer but is also head of Corporate Development, said that Google is considering deploying a fiber network in one European country.
Specifically, he said Google is looking "very closely" at the prospect. However, no country was specified and he couldn't provide any more details on this.
Europe generally has stricter regulation than the US on almost anything, so launching an ISP, even a small scale one, in the Old World should be a complex matter, meaning that Google could drop the idea at any point.
Another hurdle is that Europe, by and large, has a much better Internet infrastructure and high speed broadband is available in many European countries.
Many Scandinavian and Easter European countries top the broadband speed by country charts and have done so for many years.
Fiber-to-home connections, which seem a pipe dream in most of the US are a reality in many places in Europe.
So the need for a Google network is smaller. However, telcos around the world need an impulse to drive up broadband speeds.
But Google has only gotten started in the US. It took it two years and it's still a small-scale project. The company planned to reach as many as 500,000 Americans eventually, but that may be a long way away. So any European network is years away at the earliest.