13 ms·

When I initially asked, I didn't get an answer: why wouldn't Google go ahead and roll it out Fiber here, in its own back yard? How many times are we going to se

by just2n 14y ago

When I initially asked, I didn't get an answer: why wouldn't Google go ahead and roll it out Fiber here, in its own back yard? How many times are we going to see this story and then pay our monthly Comcast/AT&T/Verizon over-priced tithe for a mediocre service? The cynical old man in me thinks maybe there's some kind of bribery going on to keep the Bay Area off the table for as long as possible. How much would Comcast have to pay you, Google, to keep you from destroying its market here? A billion? Ten? Fifty? I've thought about relocating to Austin if I ever tire of the startup scene here, but now it looks like I'd have a very good reason to just go ahead and do that.

pdeuchler 14y ago
Rolling out new infrastructure like this requires an immense amount of coordination and support with the local municipal governments. Between cities of relatively the same size and layout the sunk costs may not vary much, however the ease of obtaining permits, gaining access to main lines, having city hall support, etc. etc. can be worlds apart. The first Google Fiber campaign seemed to me like it was more or less "Which city government will bend over backwards the most for us?", and I'll bet KC ranked first with Austin close behind. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were well entrenched interests, especially in SF, that would prevent Google from making an easy entrance there.
banachtarski 14y ago
As somebody in the area, I've been annoyed at how despite Apple, Google, and a number of other tech companies are clustered together in the Cupertino/Mountain View area, I still go home to shitty AT&T internet.
- hox 14y ago
  Telecom is quite a different world. There are a number of small ISPs in North Bay that are trying to make a dent; see Sonic.net in sebastapol. http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120506/BUSINESS/120509761/1036/business?Title=Sonic-net-builds-super-fast-network-for-future http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120506/BUSINESS/12050...
  - banachtarski 14y ago
    They aren't available in my neighborhood but I routinely check every month or so.
- protomyth 14y ago
  Telecom is weird. Here are some plans from a small city in ND: $34.95/month* - High Speed Advantage - up to 15 Mbps down & 3 Mbps up $54.95/month* - High Speed Advantage Plus - up to 15 Mbps down & 10 Mbps up $104.95 to $114.95/month - High Speed Extreme Advantage - up to 50 Mbps down & 25 Mbps up They have optical lines they keep adding and no bandwidth caps. (apparently contrasting crappy service in Silicon Valley to rural areas is downvote worthy)
  - banachtarski 14y ago
    I think what you're experiencing is the situation where people execute the bearer of bad or unwelcome news.
    - protomyth 14y ago
      Probably. It's funny how small groups tend to do great telecom service and large companies don't. Kinda relates to a startup mentality.
  - wmf 14y ago
    Due to cognitive biases, anecdotes are worse than no data. Definitely downvote worthy.
    - protomyth 14y ago
      Then you should probably flag half the stories on the front page because that's is what most of them are. We aren't doing research studies here, we are talking about how chaotic telecom is and expecting everyone to provide all the pieces is just not going to happen.
  - rdouble 14y ago
    Which city?
    - protomyth 14y ago
      NDTC in ND, so the Devils Lake region.
- jordanthoms 14y ago
  I've got 100mbit up/down for $50 per month in SF with webpass.
andymoe 14y ago
Or maybe it's about testing the service and gaining expertise in smaller markets where there is less competition before committing a huge amont of risk in order to roll out to a very large market... Pretty much par for the course for telecom rollouts.
- intopieces 14y ago
  This is an astute observation. Additionally, Apple just opened a large campus in Austin, which is also home to Dell. It's a good roll out strategy: middle of nowhere, semi-large city, then bay area/chicago and maybe even NYC.
  - dpratt 14y ago
    Austin is not a 'semi-large city' - according to the U.S. Census, it's the 13th largest metro area in the country.
    - dr_doom 14y ago
      I also wouldn't call Austin the middle of nowhere. Within a 3 hour drive are Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio each being in the top 10 for populous cities. Arguably, Chicago is more isolated.
      - aidenn0 14y ago
        No "Arguably" about it; Chicago is more isolated, but it's also much bigger.
      - pjbrunet 14y ago
        But you'll find most Texans have never left the state of Texas. Texas is just that big. By and large the people here are very isolated.
    - mlinksva 14y ago
      13th largest city, 34th largest metro, both by population. If it were ever to be declared a CSA with San Antonio, they'd be of similar size to Seattle-Tacoma or Minneapolis-St Paul. Which seem 'semi-large' to me, especially on global scene.
raj564 14y ago
Better hurry up. Condo construction is taking over the city. Rental market is skyrocketing. There are 82 people relocating to Austin everyday, according to my realtor friend.
- intopieces 14y ago
  I've heard it as high as 100 people a day, but it's also a part of the whole 'the sky is falling'/'welcome to Austin, please don't move here' attitude that pervades the entire city's culture. Also, 'Austin was great before you got here.' So I take those statistics with a grain of salt.
- OldSchool 14y ago
  "according to my realtor friend" - a reliable source of "supplies are limited" messages. Austin experiences relatively mild boom/bust cycles. The metro area is not that big and there is still a great deal of undeveloped land so developers are always ready to build more, thus holding prices stable. The biggest problem the area faces is water supply. High property taxes of 2-3% annually offset most any gain from not having a state tax. Racial diversity is about 50 years behind most major cities.
hkmurakami 14y ago
In one of Marco Arment's podcasts last year (I've been going through the old stuff lately), he mentioned how in Kansas City, the city is in charge of what can go on the poles (rather than smaller jurisdictions), so there is only one entity with which Google would have to negotiate. Given how much of a clusterfuck residential development and zoning restrictions are in SV, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Goolge would have to negotiate with many many governing bodies to roll out fiber in 'its back yard'. (Wasn't it San Mateo that blocked some Bart line extension back in the day? I remember a HN'er sharing that info with us a few months ago) Maybe Austin is another city where one entity owns all the rights to the telecommunication poles and pipes. Even if that's not the case, Texas cities have proven to be more business friendly than California overall in the last decade. There's probably an incentive for State govt to coerce cities to work with Google to build infrastructure that will help business. Heck, it'll surely help Rackspace and other Datacenters to have a stronger backbone of internet bandwidth.
- sylvinus 14y ago
  This "single entity" argument makes a lot of sense. But then shouldn't NYC be the next step after testing in smaller cities like KC and Austin?
  - jauer 14y ago
    There's no way NYC would agree to the kinds of concessions that Google wants: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/11/the-real-cost-of-google-fiber http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/11/the-real-cost-of-goog...
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      You're assuming those are requirements. What's much more likely is that Google opened up the "bidding" between cities and said "whoever gives us the best deal goes first." Kansas gave them the best deal. This is pretty much the status quo for major infrastructure projects. Look at what happens with new sports stadiums between New York and New Jersey -- they each bend over backwards to see who can provide the most subsidies. Why do you think New York wouldn't be able to provide a competitive "bid" to be one of the next cities? I can see why they wouldn't want to provide e.g. free office space as a result of the difference in local real estate prices, but that doesn't mean they can't offer something else. Tax incentives are a popular staple for this sort of thing. And NYC has the huge advantage that Google can wire more customers for less money as a result of the high population density, which means New York wouldn't have to offer the most concessions in order to be the most attractive.
Nrsolis 14y ago
This thing is bigger than Austin or Kansas City. This is Google's answer to the cold war declared on the Internet by Comcast and Time-Warner Cable. Do any of you remember when Comcast was complaining that Google was making billions of dollars selling ads on Comcast's cable modem service? Do you remember them saying that they wanted a part of that revenue? That this was UNFAIR? Make no mistake: this is Google making the cable companies watch their step. If push comes to shove and the cable companies start to try and constrain the open Internet in an effort to extract rents, you can bet your bottom dollar that Google will expand this service QUICKLY and get into the wireless broadband business post-haste. This is about ACCESS. Google isn't Google if they can't ensure that they get the visits to their web properties. Right now, the cable companies are the only game in town in way too many cities. This is wrong. We should have competing wireline providers. I'm no Google apologist but I can't say that I disagree with their strategy.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  you can bet your bottom dollar that Google will expand this service QUICKLY and get into the wireless broadband business post-haste. With what? A city here and a city there is a great experiment hoping to push telcos into action. Trying to expand nationally can get hairy and extremely expensive. I have a feeling that Google is losing on this project and the "real price" would be much higher than the current one.
  - Nrsolis 14y ago
    Why would you believe that? Google makes a lot of money on ads. This is the broadcast television model applied to Internet service. They can subsidize their service with ad revenue (cablecos do this too) and still make money. But you don't have to cover the whole nation to have an effect. You just find out the cities where the CableCos are extracting the highest rents and target those. You take away their gravy with the fattest OPEX margins and repeat until they cry uncle.
  - jedberg 14y ago
    They've state repeatedly that this is a profitable enterprise for them. As a public company, they couldn't say that if it weren't true.
reustle 14y ago
One of the big factors in deciding which cities to look at is cost I'm sure. They're starting with the smaller cities and moving up. The amount of red tape in cities like SF and NY must be outstanding.
- bluedino 14y ago
  SF is smaller in size, and slightly smaller in population than Austin.
  - mtp0101 14y ago
    Yeah, but the entire SF Bay Area is much more populous than the Austin-Round Rock Area
  - protomyth 14y ago
    SF has more red tape than Austin.
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    For giggles, take a look at the flow chart for getting a building permit in SF, compared to Austin. Check out the average times, etc. Try to imagine for a second how much easier and less expensive it is to deal with Austin than SF.
    - csdreamer7 14y ago
      Was the link posted elsewhere? I'm interested in this flowchart.
      - DannyBee 14y ago
        http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/SF-Planning-Permitting-Process-June2011.pdf http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/SF... http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/03/navigating_the_treacherous_and_tumultuous_san_francisco_permitting_process.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/03/navigating_the_trea... is a wonderful explanation Realize it is so bad they have a many-page colored guide on replacing a fucking window: http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/Standards_for_Window_Replacement.pdf http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/St...
bajsejohannes 14y ago
To broaden the question a bit: What's likely to be the next location or locations for Google Fiber? I'm not in the bay area, but would love to see it in my city. I was so dissatisfied with the webpage and user experience of signing up for Comcast [1] that I eventually just gave my neighbor some cash for his wifi password. [1] Off topic: They'll tell you that you can get pretty decent internet for $10 a month. Then it turns out you're not eligible. And it turns out you're not eligible for the $20/month either. So after a lot of back and forth, it ends up being $40/month. Which is fine, unless you though you were getting the same deal for $10 just a few hours before. I don't understand how this scheme could work. Maybe by annoying users enough that in the end they just click Sign Up to get it all over with? Somehow it must work, though, since they keep doing it.
- jseliger 14y ago
  >To broaden the question a bit: What's likely to be the next location or locations for Google Fiber? It'll probably be somewhere without decent options right now, which rules out anywhere Verizon operates FiOS. I would guess that it will show up in a low-regulation stat, which rules out most of the West Coast and Northeast. Somewhere like Seattle is plausible, but the city is teaming up with a company to offer Gigabit Seattle. Some of the more plausible options might be Phoenix, AZ, Denver or Boulder, CO, a city in one of the Carolinas (Raleigh / Durham?), Oklahoma City, Minneapolis / St. Paul, or Madison, Wisconsin (some may already have FiOS).
raldi 14y ago
Because this is what happens when you try to build something in the Bay Area: http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2011/11/15/no-att-lightspeed-internet-service-anytime-soon-nimbys-win-against-city-a-stay-from-judge-harold-khan/ http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2011/11/15/no-att-lightspeed-inter...
- badgar 14y ago
  Sorry, evil (bribes in this case) is the only answer for when Google does something an HN commenter doesn't like.
DannyBee 14y ago
Why would google want to deal with the kabillion regulations that exist here. "Sorry, we'll bring fiber to your area just as soon as we get through the 46 meetings necessary to remove this heritage tree blocking the way" Imagine the red tape involved in doing anything in MTV or SF or the bay area. The cynical old man in you consider just how over-regulated the area really is. California requires lighting and wattage density calculations to place lighting in a building. This part is actually not so uncommon, since IECC has some requirements. However, compare: http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/excerpts.asp?state=CA http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/... with http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/excerpts.asp?state=TX http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/... Note: Texas just follows IECC (so for example, you will find it the same for NJ, MD, VA, TX, etc), while california has gone off on their own. I'm actually all for permitting and code inspection, but a lot of the crap you deal with in SF and MTV is truly crazy.
- driverdan 14y ago
  Issues like this are the reasons I moved to Austin instead of SF. The CA government is bonkers.

by just2n 14y ago

pdeuchler 14y ago

Rolling out new infrastructure like this requires an immense amount of coordination and support with the local municipal governments. Between cities of relatively the same size and layout the sunk costs may not vary much, however the ease of obtaining permits, gaining access to main lines, having city hall support, etc. etc. can be worlds apart. The first Google Fiber campaign seemed to me like it was more or less "Which city government will bend over backwards the most for us?", and I'll bet KC ranked first with Austin close behind. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were well entrenched interests, especially in SF, that would prevent Google from making an easy entrance there.

banachtarski 14y ago

As somebody in the area, I've been annoyed at how despite Apple, Google, and a number of other tech companies are clustered together in the Cupertino/Mountain View area, I still go home to shitty AT&T internet.

hox 14y ago
Telecom is quite a different world. There are a number of small ISPs in North Bay that are trying to make a dent; see Sonic.net in sebastapol. http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120506/BUSINESS/120509761/1036/business?Title=Sonic-net-builds-super-fast-network-for-future http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120506/BUSINESS/12050...
- banachtarski 14y ago
  They aren't available in my neighborhood but I routinely check every month or so.
protomyth 14y ago
Telecom is weird. Here are some plans from a small city in ND: $34.95/month* - High Speed Advantage - up to 15 Mbps down & 3 Mbps up $54.95/month* - High Speed Advantage Plus - up to 15 Mbps down & 10 Mbps up $104.95 to $114.95/month - High Speed Extreme Advantage - up to 50 Mbps down & 25 Mbps up They have optical lines they keep adding and no bandwidth caps. (apparently contrasting crappy service in Silicon Valley to rural areas is downvote worthy)
- banachtarski 14y ago
  I think what you're experiencing is the situation where people execute the bearer of bad or unwelcome news.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    Probably. It's funny how small groups tend to do great telecom service and large companies don't. Kinda relates to a startup mentality.
- wmf 14y ago
  Due to cognitive biases, anecdotes are worse than no data. Definitely downvote worthy.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    Then you should probably flag half the stories on the front page because that's is what most of them are. We aren't doing research studies here, we are talking about how chaotic telecom is and expecting everyone to provide all the pieces is just not going to happen.
- rdouble 14y ago
  Which city?
  - protomyth 14y ago
    NDTC in ND, so the Devils Lake region.
jordanthoms 14y ago
I've got 100mbit up/down for $50 per month in SF with webpass.

andymoe 14y ago

Or maybe it's about testing the service and gaining expertise in smaller markets where there is less competition before committing a huge amont of risk in order to roll out to a very large market... Pretty much par for the course for telecom rollouts.

intopieces 14y ago
This is an astute observation. Additionally, Apple just opened a large campus in Austin, which is also home to Dell. It's a good roll out strategy: middle of nowhere, semi-large city, then bay area/chicago and maybe even NYC.
- dpratt 14y ago
  Austin is not a 'semi-large city' - according to the U.S. Census, it's the 13th largest metro area in the country.
  - dr_doom 14y ago
    I also wouldn't call Austin the middle of nowhere. Within a 3 hour drive are Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio each being in the top 10 for populous cities. Arguably, Chicago is more isolated.
    - aidenn0 14y ago
      No "Arguably" about it; Chicago is more isolated, but it's also much bigger.
    - pjbrunet 14y ago
      But you'll find most Texans have never left the state of Texas. Texas is just that big. By and large the people here are very isolated.
  - mlinksva 14y ago
    13th largest city, 34th largest metro, both by population. If it were ever to be declared a CSA with San Antonio, they'd be of similar size to Seattle-Tacoma or Minneapolis-St Paul. Which seem 'semi-large' to me, especially on global scene.

raj564 14y ago

Better hurry up. Condo construction is taking over the city. Rental market is skyrocketing. There are 82 people relocating to Austin everyday, according to my realtor friend.

intopieces 14y ago
I've heard it as high as 100 people a day, but it's also a part of the whole 'the sky is falling'/'welcome to Austin, please don't move here' attitude that pervades the entire city's culture. Also, 'Austin was great before you got here.' So I take those statistics with a grain of salt.
OldSchool 14y ago
"according to my realtor friend" - a reliable source of "supplies are limited" messages. Austin experiences relatively mild boom/bust cycles. The metro area is not that big and there is still a great deal of undeveloped land so developers are always ready to build more, thus holding prices stable. The biggest problem the area faces is water supply. High property taxes of 2-3% annually offset most any gain from not having a state tax. Racial diversity is about 50 years behind most major cities.

hkmurakami 14y ago

In one of Marco Arment's podcasts last year (I've been going through the old stuff lately), he mentioned how in Kansas City, the city is in charge of what can go on the poles (rather than smaller jurisdictions), so there is only one entity with which Google would have to negotiate. Given how much of a clusterfuck residential development and zoning restrictions are in SV, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Goolge would have to negotiate with many many governing bodies to roll out fiber in 'its back yard'. (Wasn't it San Mateo that blocked some Bart line extension back in the day? I remember a HN'er sharing that info with us a few months ago) Maybe Austin is another city where one entity owns all the rights to the telecommunication poles and pipes. Even if that's not the case, Texas cities have proven to be more business friendly than California overall in the last decade. There's probably an incentive for State govt to coerce cities to work with Google to build infrastructure that will help business. Heck, it'll surely help Rackspace and other Datacenters to have a stronger backbone of internet bandwidth.

sylvinus 14y ago
This "single entity" argument makes a lot of sense. But then shouldn't NYC be the next step after testing in smaller cities like KC and Austin?
- jauer 14y ago
  There's no way NYC would agree to the kinds of concessions that Google wants: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/11/the-real-cost-of-google-fiber http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/11/the-real-cost-of-goog...
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    You're assuming those are requirements. What's much more likely is that Google opened up the "bidding" between cities and said "whoever gives us the best deal goes first." Kansas gave them the best deal. This is pretty much the status quo for major infrastructure projects. Look at what happens with new sports stadiums between New York and New Jersey -- they each bend over backwards to see who can provide the most subsidies. Why do you think New York wouldn't be able to provide a competitive "bid" to be one of the next cities? I can see why they wouldn't want to provide e.g. free office space as a result of the difference in local real estate prices, but that doesn't mean they can't offer something else. Tax incentives are a popular staple for this sort of thing. And NYC has the huge advantage that Google can wire more customers for less money as a result of the high population density, which means New York wouldn't have to offer the most concessions in order to be the most attractive.

Nrsolis 14y ago

This thing is bigger than Austin or Kansas City. This is Google's answer to the cold war declared on the Internet by Comcast and Time-Warner Cable. Do any of you remember when Comcast was complaining that Google was making billions of dollars selling ads on Comcast's cable modem service? Do you remember them saying that they wanted a part of that revenue? That this was UNFAIR? Make no mistake: this is Google making the cable companies watch their step. If push comes to shove and the cable companies start to try and constrain the open Internet in an effort to extract rents, you can bet your bottom dollar that Google will expand this service QUICKLY and get into the wireless broadband business post-haste. This is about ACCESS. Google isn't Google if they can't ensure that they get the visits to their web properties. Right now, the cable companies are the only game in town in way too many cities. This is wrong. We should have competing wireline providers. I'm no Google apologist but I can't say that I disagree with their strategy.

OGinparadise 14y ago
you can bet your bottom dollar that Google will expand this service QUICKLY and get into the wireless broadband business post-haste. With what? A city here and a city there is a great experiment hoping to push telcos into action. Trying to expand nationally can get hairy and extremely expensive. I have a feeling that Google is losing on this project and the "real price" would be much higher than the current one.
- Nrsolis 14y ago
  Why would you believe that? Google makes a lot of money on ads. This is the broadcast television model applied to Internet service. They can subsidize their service with ad revenue (cablecos do this too) and still make money. But you don't have to cover the whole nation to have an effect. You just find out the cities where the CableCos are extracting the highest rents and target those. You take away their gravy with the fattest OPEX margins and repeat until they cry uncle.
- jedberg 14y ago
  They've state repeatedly that this is a profitable enterprise for them. As a public company, they couldn't say that if it weren't true.

reustle 14y ago

One of the big factors in deciding which cities to look at is cost I'm sure. They're starting with the smaller cities and moving up. The amount of red tape in cities like SF and NY must be outstanding.

bluedino 14y ago
SF is smaller in size, and slightly smaller in population than Austin.
- mtp0101 14y ago
  Yeah, but the entire SF Bay Area is much more populous than the Austin-Round Rock Area
- protomyth 14y ago
  SF has more red tape than Austin.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  For giggles, take a look at the flow chart for getting a building permit in SF, compared to Austin. Check out the average times, etc. Try to imagine for a second how much easier and less expensive it is to deal with Austin than SF.
  - csdreamer7 14y ago
    Was the link posted elsewhere? I'm interested in this flowchart.
    - DannyBee 14y ago
      http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/SF-Planning-Permitting-Process-June2011.pdf http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/SF... http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/03/navigating_the_treacherous_and_tumultuous_san_francisco_permitting_process.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/03/navigating_the_trea... is a wonderful explanation Realize it is so bad they have a many-page colored guide on replacing a fucking window: http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/Standards_for_Window_Replacement.pdf http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/St...

bajsejohannes 14y ago

To broaden the question a bit: What's likely to be the next location or locations for Google Fiber? I'm not in the bay area, but would love to see it in my city. I was so dissatisfied with the webpage and user experience of signing up for Comcast [1] that I eventually just gave my neighbor some cash for his wifi password. [1] Off topic: They'll tell you that you can get pretty decent internet for $10 a month. Then it turns out you're not eligible. And it turns out you're not eligible for the $20/month either. So after a lot of back and forth, it ends up being $40/month. Which is fine, unless you though you were getting the same deal for $10 just a few hours before. I don't understand how this scheme could work. Maybe by annoying users enough that in the end they just click Sign Up to get it all over with? Somehow it must work, though, since they keep doing it.

jseliger 14y ago
>To broaden the question a bit: What's likely to be the next location or locations for Google Fiber? It'll probably be somewhere without decent options right now, which rules out anywhere Verizon operates FiOS. I would guess that it will show up in a low-regulation stat, which rules out most of the West Coast and Northeast. Somewhere like Seattle is plausible, but the city is teaming up with a company to offer Gigabit Seattle. Some of the more plausible options might be Phoenix, AZ, Denver or Boulder, CO, a city in one of the Carolinas (Raleigh / Durham?), Oklahoma City, Minneapolis / St. Paul, or Madison, Wisconsin (some may already have FiOS).

raldi 14y ago

Because this is what happens when you try to build something in the Bay Area: http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2011/11/15/no-att-lightspeed-internet-service-anytime-soon-nimbys-win-against-city-a-stay-from-judge-harold-khan/ http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2011/11/15/no-att-lightspeed-inter...

badgar 14y ago
Sorry, evil (bribes in this case) is the only answer for when Google does something an HN commenter doesn't like.

DannyBee 14y ago

Why would google want to deal with the kabillion regulations that exist here. "Sorry, we'll bring fiber to your area just as soon as we get through the 46 meetings necessary to remove this heritage tree blocking the way" Imagine the red tape involved in doing anything in MTV or SF or the bay area. The cynical old man in you consider just how over-regulated the area really is. California requires lighting and wattage density calculations to place lighting in a building. This part is actually not so uncommon, since IECC has some requirements. However, compare: http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/excerpts.asp?state=CA http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/... with http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/excerpts.asp?state=TX http://www.lightingcontrols.com/support/statecodes/excerpts/... Note: Texas just follows IECC (so for example, you will find it the same for NJ, MD, VA, TX, etc), while california has gone off on their own. I'm actually all for permitting and code inspection, but a lot of the crap you deal with in SF and MTV is truly crazy.

driverdan 14y ago
Issues like this are the reasons I moved to Austin instead of SF. The CA government is bonkers.