Google plans satellite antennae farm for super-speed web service

A subsidiary of Google, Google Fiber, Inc. is seeking permission to set satellite antennas on a 1,000 acre stretch of land close to its data centre in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

In a recent FCC public notice (.pdf), the request was filed last week to setup the satellites a few hundred miles away from Kansas city:

Google Fiber, Inc. seeks to register a C-band receive-only earth station and a Ku-band receive-only earth station in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The earth stations would be located adjacent to each other and will be used to provide analog and digital audio, data and video services.

The antennas may be used to receive content feeds from broadcasts networks -- and potentially become bundled with the company's high-speed fiber services. The 4.5-meter satellites would be able to receive these feed through transmissions from other satellites including Intelsat 9; which have the capabilities of carrying international television feeds.

A decision will not be made for several weeks at the earliest. Google Fiber had a previous proposal partially rejected by the FCC earlier this month, in regards to its wish to register the earth station in conventional KU bands -- as it was deemed unnecessary to license with no other primary users within the 11.7 - 12.2 GHz frequency.

The Google Fiber project is the result of the company's recent focus on super-speed connectivity services:

"Since we announced our plans to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks, the response has been tremendous. Hundreds of communities and hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country have expressed their interest in the project. We're not going to be able to build in every interested community -- our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people -- but we hope to learn lessons from this experiment that will help improve Internet access everywhere."

Google hopes that the experimental fiber project will be able to grant gigabit speeds to businesses and consumers in different communities. Kansas city recently won a bid to become the next city supplied with the service, and construction has now begun this month after lengthy preparations.

(via: Data Center Knowledge)

Image credit: Alan Levine

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This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com