4 ms·
No, I think it's just that some cities have insane bureaucracies that make it a nightmare to get anything done, and others don't. See, for example, AT&T's elev
by raldi 11y ago
No, I think it's just that some cities have insane bureaucracies that make it a nightmare to get anything done, and others don't.
See, for example, AT&T's eleven-years-and-counting ordeal to roll out U-Verse across San Francisco.
- therobot24 11y agoYou're definitely right that many cities are crossed off due to bureaucracy, though I'm specifically curious at how Google is picking cities to look into in the first place. That's where I think density/population come into play.
- yessql 11y agoI think there is a sweet spot in high enough population density and low enough bureaucracy (or enough local gov cooperation).
- therobot24 11y agomaybe we should be looking at this in the opposite direction, if you want to live in a good sized city that has low bureaucracy government then look at where Google is looking to put fiber
- rayiner 11y agoEh. Atlanta is a relatively low bureaucracy city that's getting fiber. It's also a police state that puts black people in jail for failing to pay car registration fees on time.
- therobot24 11y agofair enough
- pavs 11y agoGoogle is deploying to cities where the admins are bending over backwards to accommodate google to come to their city.
- eitally 11y agoIf you look at the Raleigh/Durham area, Google Fiber is coming here and it makes logical sense for a huge number of reasons. Here are a few: 1) they can deal independently with multiple, local bureaucracies, each of which is easier to deal with than a consolidated large city's. 2) there's a ton of high tech / biotech here already, and demand for fiber. 3) The population is highly educated and there are several very good universities (UNC, Duke, NCSU) and smaller schools (Shaw, Peace, Meredith, NCCU, ...) in the area. 4) With the exception of older parts of Raleigh & Durham, all of the cities are pretty well planned and have layouts that make running fiber pretty straightforward, and all of the municipalities agreed to accommodate all of Google's requirements. Coincidentally, we had 0 fiber ISPs a year ago and now we have 3 (plus TWC is updating all their "extreme" customers to 300mbps). AT&T has been laying fiber like crazy and Centurylink is here, too.
- jseliger 11y agoNo, I think it's just that some cities have insane bureaucracies that make it a nightmare to get anything done, and others don't. That's true of New York, but I'll also note that NYC has reasonably good Internet speeds in much of the city right now. For example, RCN sells 330 Mbs / down and ~25 Mbs /up for $~60/month right now: http://rcn.com/330 http://rcn.com/330. Verizon FiOS is more expensive and probably worse (unless you need high upload speeds for some reason), but it is widely available. Google Fiber is probably not targeting places that are "pretty good, but could be better;" they're probably targeting places that are a combination of "really bad," along with reasonable regulatory climates.
- manacit 11y agoEven TWC provides a 330/20 service for $70/m in my (and many) neighborhoods in Manhattan. Obviously gigabit symmetrical would be nice, but it's far from "really bad" (and probably explains why it's not a great target for Google Fiber). That being said, there are neighborhoods that don't have anything close to this level of service in NYC, but I doubt they would be targeted by Google Fiber in the beginning. Not to mention the fiasco that FiOS is going through right now is probably a big warning to stay far far away.