Google Fiber may enter India. The newly formed Indian State in the south, the Telangana has requested Google Inc to send its high profile delegation to examine the feasibility of rolling out Google Fiber, to provide optical fiber based superfast broadband services. The newly formed state has been in talks with foreign governments to bring infrastructure projects to the state.
An official request has been made by the state minister for Information Technology and panchayat during his two-weeks tour in the United States. The request came when the minister visited Google’s office. Google has agreed to the request and is expected to send its team to the state pretty soon.
In the meantime, the state government on Tuesday signed an agreement with Google under which the latter would set up a facility, the largest outside its US headquarters, and its first company owned campus in Asia, at Gachibowli in Hyderabad, which is already home to global players such as Microsoft, Wipro, Infosys, CapGemini and Deloitte.
Google’s Hyderabad office has been playing a key role in the development of products like Gmail, Docs and Chrome. The new facility is expected to work on future projects targetted at the global markets.
The 2-million square feet facility, spread over 7.2 acres, will house 14,000 employees once it is fully operational in about four years from now. Google currently operates from a rented facility at Kondapur in Hyderabad with 7,000 seats. The company was originally allotted 20 acres at Kokapet in Hyderabad in 2007 for setting up its permanent campus. The project, however, did not take off due to legal issues.
India’s national fiber optic projects are currently under deployment, but the speed of deployment is slow. The central government had formed separate body BBNL to supervise and accelerate broadband network deployment in India. Apart from BBNL’s broadband networks, Google’s fiber optic networks in Telengana is expected to bring state-of-the-art broadband infrastructure that is required to attract more multi-national companies to the state.
Google Fiber was launched in Kansas City in 2011, and is currently being piloted in seven other cities – Atlanta; Austin; Charlotte; Nashville; Provo; Raleigh-Durham; and Salt Lake City. It is now planning to expand the services, which will offer connections with up to 1,000 mbps, to 34 more cities in the US, even as it is in talks with the ministry of IT to bring the super-fast broadband services to India.
Besides Google Fiber, Street View is yet another service that Google would be providing in the state of Telangana. Street View provides panoramic views from positions along many streets in the world through photographs taken by car, trekkers, tricycle and walking.
Telangana is in south of India. With an area of 114,840 square kilometers it is the twelfth largest state in India. Most of Telengana was part of the princely state of Hyderabad, ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad during the British rule that joined the Union of India in 1948. Telugu speaking part of Hyderabad state, known as Telangana, was merged with former Andhra State to form Andhra Pradesh. On June 2014, Telangana was separated from Andhra Pradesh as a new 29th state of India, with the city of Hyderabad as its capital. Telangana is bordered by the states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh to the north, Karnataka to the west, and Andhra Pradesh to the south, east and north east.
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