Google's Wi-fi Plan for San Francisco.

Google has plans to offer free wireless Internet access for free to the city of San Francisco. This is a roll out which threatens the current hold on this market space by the telecom industry. Google Wi-fi would be hi-speed and give the company a direct line into consumer’s homes. The bid underscores the threat to traditional telecom companies as their industry is bring restructured to move from land line based to technologies to the Internet. “Free Voice”, as termed by News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, can achieve ubiquity within 3 years radically changing the competitive field for telecom and cable companies. At this time one-third of U.S. households have broadband connections and more then 50% of homes with Internet connections are high speed. Control of this “last mile” with the right mixture of content, application and safety features would mean large sums of revenue and possibly upending companies who currently transmit voice and data. I believe the usage of wi-fi in this manner has a great potential for success because Google can use their ad revenue and other investing sources to fund the implementation. Local government is open to the plan as it provides free to low cost Internet access to the economically disadvantaged and elevates the city’s usage and the resultant economic and educational benefits.
The telecom business as we know it today is doomed to failure. Phone companies have recently lobbied several legislatures to prevent wireless network plans like the one offered to San Francisco from being pursued by other cities. When companies appeal to government for competitive help it is usually a sign of pending loss of market share due to an upheaval of the industry business model. Wi-fi supplants the land based wire and cable structure which is the mainstay for transmission of voice and data.