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About two weeks ago I was walking from my house in SF and at 20th and Douglass (http://goo.gl/WD2SX http://goo.gl/WD2SX) I saw 4 "HP Communications" trucks (htt
by phlux 16y ago
About two weeks ago I was walking from my house in SF and at 20th and Douglass (http://goo.gl/WD2SX http://goo.gl/WD2SX) I saw 4 "HP Communications" trucks (http://www.hpcomminc.com/ http://www.hpcomminc.com/) installing multi-strand fiber on the telco poles.
I asked "What are you installing?"
"Fiber."
"For Google?" :)
"Yeah."
"The home project?"
"Yeah."
Check out this "Confidential" PDF: http://www.hpcomminc.com/pdf/Revised_Intro_Draft.pdf http://www.hpcomminc.com/pdf/Revised_Intro_Draft.pdf
Google Cache: http://goo.gl/FN2W4 http://goo.gl/FN2W4
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So... it looks like the GFIOS project is moving forward.
- JakeSc 16y agoIf this is indeed for Google, then congratulations San Francisco!
- phlux 16y agoYes, I couldn't tell if the guy that I asked the questions was just yes-ing me away...
- Nrsolis 16y agoI'm not so sure how I feel about this. On one hand, this is a direct shot across the bow of the cablecos/telcos. By essentially taking the roadmap of bandwidth expansion via slow, rolling upgrades over a long long period of time and going straight to the ultimate destination, GOOG is sucking a whole lot of "value" out of the existing infrastructure. On the other hand, this will place enormous stress on the regional/long haul networks which I'll be forced to upgrade yet again. Unless they can charge more, this cant be good news for level3 or VZ or T. I forsee an acceleration towards metered b/w in our future.
- phlux 16y agoIm less concerned about metered BW than I am every single farking packet I create passing through the hands of a deeply technically capable company that is google. Will digital freedom exist in the future? in 20 years, will the thought police/BB be monitoring every action, input and response? [Edit: More-so than now, with Eschelon?] Sure, the google "Free Candy" van looks really enticing now - but what about once I get in and am too far into the trip to say no?
- wmf 16y agoI think Google fiber can answer the question of how elastic bandwidth demand is. If you give someone effectively unlimited bandwidth, how much will they actually use?
- Nrsolis 16y agoThey? I think the better question is what kind of applications are enabled and what that revenue model looks like. How does that revenue stream get allocated between network and app provider?
- synnik 16y agoI'm confused - what does a PDF showing their sales pitch have to do with the Google project?
- phlux 16y agoIt shows they do a very substantial amount of cable and fiber installations. That packet, being confidential, is submitted when they bid on work and attempt to get large projects. The words of the installer were "Yeah" to my question about the install being for Google. If this were some po-dunk little company, and they did not have such a strong sales sheet - I would be less-inclined to think that installer was telling me the truth. The fact is that I didnt reveal all info about myself - I asked him if he was installing for the [google code name for the FIOS project] and he said yes.... so - all the information that I have, leads me to believe them - though, obviously it is circumstantial.
- shotgun 16y agoYes, but all it means is part of SF is getting fiber. Could this just be a new line for added redundancy for their Stanford "beta" project? I'm not sure what list of cities other people are referring to...in the PDFs? Or the fiberforcommunities.com list of cities that responded to the RFI?
- phlux 16y agoGoogle has a list of the cities that appied for and (may?) receive the FIOS offering. Its in the original story link.