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San Antonio: Google Fiber on Hold
- chiph 10y agoNIMBY strikes again. But to be honest, a 30' x 50' (9 x 15 meters) equipment shelter is not small. Even I might have objections.
- ensignavenger 10y agoI would have no objection to a 30' x 50' Google hut in my neighborhood park if it meant having Fiber Internet available.
- sqldba 10y agoParks are parks though. They're not meant to hold internet buildings and other large infrastructure buildings. Why not locate them on commercial space or similar?
- DannyBee 10y agoCertainly you realize if it was that simple it would have been done.
- x0x0 10y agoBut was it cost, lack of available commercial space at the correct nexuses, or ???
- DannyBee 10y agoDoes it matter? (I ask seriously) I think you can safely assume that Google would avoid this problem if the cost was not going to seriously affect their plans, because it would be dumb not to. Given that, whether the cost makes it impossible to profit, or the space has to be where it is for logistical reasons, or ... doesn't seem to matter much to me.
- x0x0 10y agoPerhaps Google perhaps didn't understand quite how delicate certain community members are. Personally, I would have assumed that the city / council would be pretty cognizant of that and, once the city council bought in, it was likely to be ok.
- ensignavenger 10y agoI'm not a Google Fiber engineer, but I imagine it was a combination of: Proximity- some neighborhoods are far away from suitable commercial property. Cost- the city was probably providing the land for free or at a discount (This may be a legitimate concern in and of itself) Not so many other utilities- There may have been less other utilities to contend with in the park versus a a commercial location. As another poster pointed out, most cities have a lot of far uglier utility infrastructure and city storage build all over town.
- foota 10y agoMaybe you would, perhaps other people don't want that though.
- ensignavenger 10y agoAnd that is why they are called NIMBYs.
- foota 10y agoI think that in order to be a NIMBY either the person needs to be a hypocrite, or the thing the NIMBY is objecting to needs to be seen as widely desirable. e.g., "Housing is too expensive but I don't want them to build apartments by me" or "I want to pay less rent but I don't want them to build more apartments by me" Notably, objecting to the building of high speed internet infrastructure doesn't fill one of these criteria unless it is widely seen as an important thing or they want high speed internet.
- BigJono 10y agoMaybe it's because I'm still on ADSL1 but I find it hard to believe that fibre Internet wouldn't be seen as a widely important thing...
- foota 10y agoWhy the jump from adsl to fibre? There is likely broadband available already.
- greglindahl 10y agoIn most of the USA, the choice is between "cable company or phone company", where the cable company has coax and offers speeds classified as broadband, while the phone company only has some kind of DSL and tops out pretty slow. Needless to say, the lack of similar offerings doesn't mean much price competition for broadband speeds.
- sonar_un 10y agoI would volunteer to put it in my back yard. YIMBY. Please.
- nikmobi 10y agoI thought Google Fiber was on hold entirely (everywhere) now[1]? Did I misunderstand that? [1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/google-fiber-laying-off-9-of-staff-will-pause-plans-for-10-cities/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/google...
- chromaton 10y agoI saw a Google Fiber van cruising around Brookhaven (just outside of Atlanta) this week.
- timdorr 10y agoIt's only on hold where they haven't started construction or made commitments to do so.
- bsharitt 10y agoAccording the article you just linked, San Antonio was on the list of cities that Google was still committed to with a separate list of paused/canceled cities that San Antonio isn't on.
- randomerr 10y agoI'll never had Google Fiber in my lifetime!
- Johnny555 10y agoI hope they can get the power companies to get rid of those far uglier electrical substations too. People want infrastructure, not the infrastructure to support the infrastructure. This same NIMBY attitude is what kept me from getting faster U-Verse service in my SF neighborhood, because they didn't want the (much smaller) U-Verse cabinets on the street... which left me with Comcast as my only high speed internet choice (with unreliable service -- 10 minute outages 3 or 4 times a week). I was so far from the CO that DSL was around 800kbit. (to be fair, the Comcast problem could have been due to poor interior wiring, but TV worked, so the landlord was unwilling to do anything about it).
- gregmac 10y agoI'm assuming that is a typo and you're not complaining that you could "only" get 800 megabits per second..
- Johnny555 10y agoYeah sorry, meant kbit, fixed.
- calbear81 10y agoWhat if we designed public infrastructure facilities with solving other problems in mind that actually built public support. For example, parking structures with new public parks/soccer fields on top can garner more support than just a simple concrete structure proposal. For these access hubs, maybe we can build them as part of a public toilet structure, god knows we need these in San Francisco.
- Johnny555 10y agoI bet they'd get more opposition to a public toilet than a utility building. Public toilets will bring "undesirables".
- quasse 10y agoAfter searching around San Antonio's terrible local news sites for a while, I finally found a picture of the utility building which has put the project on hold: http://static-21.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/8fc84e17-9488-4ccf-b2c7-df21e5731323-large16x9_GoogleFiberHut.jpg?1483656014608 http://static-21.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/8fc84... I don't know about everyone else, but my local city has much larger and much uglier utility buildings all over the place for storing municipal equipment. I guess forcing an entire city to live with terrible internet service from incumbent providers seems like a good trade off to avoid having 17 such sheds distributed across an entire city when you're an interfering busybody.
- sqldba 10y agoOne of the problems in the email is that some huts have been located very close to residences and make a lot of noise 24/7. Maybe there's something to it.
- mywittyname 10y agoIt seems like a better wall might solve most objections. Something nice looking with some sound-proofing would probably go a long way.
- politician 10y agoWhat about just giving those households free internet?
- Johnny555 10y agoIf any of them accept a $70/month "gift" to give up their opposition, then they really were NIMBY's without any real concerns.
- politician 10y agoSo what? Those substations serve thousands of people. Why are we letting busybodies ruin it for everyone? Pay them off and move on.
- revelation 10y agoThis is hilarious for a country that takes the "put it all on wooden poles" approach to their cabling.
- randomtossr88 10y agoHey look, fiber resources freed up, Larry. Can you point them at PDX? Please.
- joeskyyy 10y ago50x30?! hahahaha I used to live in San Antonio. San Antonio is MASSIVE land wise, and very sprawling. There's absolutely no density problems what-so-ever. Ridiculous.
- namuol 10y agoI'd drag a 50x30 shack around on a chain everywhere I went if it meant bringing Google Fiber to my area.
- knodi123 10y agoI live in Austin, in an area google has designated "the rest of the city", and it's been "coming soon" for a couple of years now.
- iainmerrick 10y agoIn parts of Austin and San Antonio you can already get fiber from Grande, at a decent price. Why are people so fixated on Google? Edit to add: googling for info on this, it looks like Google recently bought a stake in Grande! (http://www.rcrwireless.com/20160816/network-infrastructure/google-fiber-could-leverage-telco-cable-acquisitions-tag4 http://www.rcrwireless.com/20160816/network-infrastructure/g...) If you can't beat 'em, buy them.
- b3b0p 10y agoI'm in Austin and have access to AT&T Fiber, Google Fiber, and I think even Grande Fiber (I live downtown). All are about the same price. Before I got Google Fiber I had AT&T Fiber. There is absolutely zero difference in speed up and down. I don't get the fixation of Google Fiber either. If you can get fiber from any provider at affordable pricing, jump all over it.
- spacemanmatt 10y agoI buy plenty of "bandwidth" from TWC but I do not get the streaming quality I expect from youtube or netflix. It always starts out HD enough, but it always falls back to a much lower quality after a few minutes. SpeedTest results suggest this should not happen, but I know my way around the cable company fuckery enough to see that a less-tolled route would probably be superior, even at half the max bandwidth.
- b3b0p 10y agoI had this problem with U-Verse DSL when I lived in Tulsa. I did not have this issue with AT&T Fiber in Austin. They do not appear to be throttling any services or websites like I experienced with AT&T U-Verse DSL in Tulsa.
- wiggity 10y agoAs a San Antonio resident, tech industry worker, and optimist about the city's future tech relevance, this is sadly representative of the growing pains we have to overcome. NIMBY, sure, but also simple ignorance about how important this could be, and how some huge the returns could be on such small sacrifices. Efforts to expand the city's tech scene [1, 2, 3] and a significant tech industry driven by notable employers [4, 5, 6, 7] are too often offset by middle-child syndrome among SA's TX peer cities, and misguided conservatism about preserving aspects of the city very few people would miss. Generally speaking, the city is sprawling and not particularly scenic, and I could name 50 eye-sores worse than a few equipment shelters. There's no reason we couldn't eventually share in and augment Austin's cachet, both cultural and technological (we're already trending towards a south-Texas megalopolis), but we'll have to embrace our strengths and cast off some of these provincial weaknesses. Crossing my fingers. 1. https://www.satechbloc.com/ https://www.satechbloc.com/ 2. http://buildsecfoundry.com/ http://buildsecfoundry.com/ 3. http://geekdom.com/ http://geekdom.com/ 4. https://www.usaa.com/ https://www.usaa.com/ 5. https://www.rackspace.com/ https://www.rackspace.com/ 6. http://www.24af.af.mil/ http://www.24af.af.mil/ 7. https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-centers/texas/ https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-centers/texas/
- classybull 10y agoHaving lived in both San Antonio and Austin, I wouldn't actually mind much if San Antonio's tech scene caught up. I'm at the point I'm contemplating home ownership, and the fact that a decent house in Austin is starting to hit the $400k market while San Antonio's is literally half of that makes San Antonio very attractive nowadays, especially if they ever get shit together and build a rail between the cities. But my employment prospects are severely diminished there, particularly companies that offer the standard tech work environment and benefits. And yes, before anyone says anything, I know that Austin is still relatively affordable compared to some of the other tech hubs, but its still its expense is still growing quickly.
- trhway 10y agoseems like a bad UX design.
- kc10 10y agoGoogle announced Fiber in several bay area cities at least three years ago. Last year there was a news article that the project has been suspended as they can't access the existing utility poles to lay the fiber optic line.
- ckeck 10y agoIt's ok, AT&T has been aggressively rolling out their fiber service in San Antonio the past year and it's quite good! Same $70/mo, no data mining, no data caps, no equipment rental fee...and a cool 930-940 Mbps bi-directional...I'm happy :)
- Animats 10y agoHere's Sonic's installation video for San Francisco.[1] Google is talking about San Francisco, but Sonic already has fiber in the entire Sunset and Richmond Districts. Gigabit fiber for $58 per month. Rather than issuing press releases, Sonic is quietly installing fiber. Their lowest level nodes are boxes on poles. No idea where the next level of concentration is, but they're definitely not putting shipping container sized boxes in SF parks. SF just passed a new law requiring landlords to allow any network or cable provider to install in their building. No more exclusive deals and kickbacks with Comcast. Google just isn't very good at this business. [1] https://www.sonic.com/sanfrancisco https://www.sonic.com/sanfrancisco
- rawoke083600 10y agoIf you are in South Africa... https://www.fibretiger.co.za https://www.fibretiger.co.za