Google analyst: Broadband connections are "essential infrastructure when it comes to economic growth." STORY HIGHLIGHTS * CNN.com talks with Derek Slater, a policy analyst at Google * Slater says the Internet in the U.S. needs to get faster to spur business * The Internet could reach speeds of a gigabit per second, he says Mountain View, California (CNN) -- Google long has been an advocate of a single Web, one that's free of government censorship and barriers to information access. That's not the reality in today's world however. Governments from China to France put various roadblocks in the information superhighway to serve their interests, filter speech or protect copyrights. And high-speed Internet connections haven't reached all corners of the globe -- not even all parts of the United States. To learn more about this split between Google's idea of an all-access Web and the reality today, CNN sat down recently with Derek Slater, one of Google's policy analysts. Slater declined to comment on Google's negotiations with China. The search engine has threatened to pull out of the country after the Gmail accounts of some human rights activists were hacked. Since this interview, it has been reported that Google is working with the National Security Agency to prevent similar cyberattacks. But Slater did offer insights about increasing today's sluggish Internet speeds and why a unified Web can change peoples' lives. The following is an edited transcript: CNN: What are you expecting from the broadband talks in the United States? Slater: Earlier in the year the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] started its proceedings to create a national broadband plan, and in our view that's a great step in the right direction, to make the U.S. once again a leader in broadband. The Internet was essentially invented here, but over the years we've fallen further and further behind in speed, deployment, penetration. And we think it is essential that there be a national goal to have fast, affordable and open access to the Internet. CNN: What aren't we doing that we should be? Slater: It's a combination of classical and jazz. So there are certain things that we need to do in order to bring faster connections to all Americans, to make sure there's really, truly universal service, and updating the ways in which we do that. Broadband is the dial tone of the 21st century. --Derek Slater, Google RELATED TOPICS * Google Inc. * Broadband Internet * Haiti * U.S. Federal Communications Commission But there's also a range of experimentation that's going to have to go into this. It's a really difficult challenge to think about how are we going to move not just a step further in terms of the speeds that we're getting today, but a leap further. How are we going to get to 100 megabits per second, a gigabit per second, to homes? There is no silver bullet there. Instead, it's going to take encouraging creative solutions. Some of them will … [Read more...]
