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Google Fiber announced for Provo, Utah
- shloime 14y agoFantastic. Glad to see further expansion.
- mrchucklepants 14y agoHere is a little more information http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/what-google-fiber-means-for-provo-free-broadband-for-everyone/article_4879a53d-b76f-598c-a130-44b25db1b830.html http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/what-goo...
- hurfdurferson 14y agoWait, aren't Utahns the most voracious consumers of non-pirated, purchased, internet porn? "You fear to go into those IXes. The Google Fiber dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Provo, Utah."
- angersock 14y agoAlmost certainly going to help the nice folks at Bluehost out.
- systematical 14y agothey could use some faster servers too
- angersock 14y agoand better admins, but let's not be mean :)
- vyrotek 14y agoToday we announced that we hope to purchase iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city of Provo. As a part of the acquisition, we would commit to upgrade the network to gigabit technology and finish network construction so that every home along the existing iProvo network would have the opportunity to connect to Google Fiber. Our agreement with Provo isn’t approved yet—it’s pending a vote by the City Council scheduled for next Tuesday, April 23, and also is subject to satisfaction of additional closing conditions. We intend to begin network upgrades when the deal is closed. We hope to have service to our first customers in late 2013, and will have more information to share soon. https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/ https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/
- justsomedood 14y agoThe city has been looking to get out of the financial obligations from iProvo for a while, it'd have to end up being a really bad deal for them to say no to this.
- awaythrowme 14y agoIt is a really bad deal because it eliminates municipal ownership of the infrastructure that would facilitate competition. Instead they are installing a new monopolist which will only seem to improve things in the short term.
- turing 14y agoThere are still other ISPs in the area that will be competing. The change will be from a bankrupt fiber provider that the city cannot afford to a well-funded provider undergoing network enhancements and expansion. Stop complaining.
- GhotiFish 14y agoI'm actually somewhat against the purchase of a municipal line. I think the cities should be running the fiber. This feels like a move in the wrong direction. The problem is there arn't enough noisy people who know to ask for it.
- awaythrowme 14y agoPresumably those competitors won't have access to fiber to the home. Besides the fact that it doesn't make sense to roll out separate fiber for each provider it is clear that municipal owned fiber would decrease barriers to entry and therefore increase competition. You simply cannot expect good outcomes in situations of monopoly/oligopoly regardless of who the monopolists are.
- aray 14y agoWhy would this prevent anyone else from accessing fiber to the home? I thought the whole neat reaction from the Austin, TX fiber announcement was that ATT was planning on doing just the same.
- toomuchtodo 14y agoLooks like the Kansas City rollout went smoothly, if Google is willing to ramp up deployment in other cities.
- austenallred 14y agoThey just announced they'll offer a free trial period for every home.
- zwily 14y ago... a trial period of 7 years.
- Klinky 14y agoIt's Google Fiber Beta™.
- missing_cipher 14y agoWasn't this announce from the very beginning? A bit slower(100Mb?) with a one-time installation fee(~700USD I think) that could be financed.
- austenallred 14y agoFree Internet at 5 mb up/down for a $300 installation fee.
- mrtimo 14y agoyou mean $30 fee _for a $30 activation fee (plus applicable taxes) and no monthly charge for at least 7 years_
- X-Istence 14y agoFrom the linked site: Up to 5Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speed • No data caps • Free service guaranteed for at least 7 years • Includes Network Box $300 construction fee (one time or 12 monthly payments of $25) + taxes and fees
- calebegg 14y agoDon't see that on the linked page; you might be looking at the info for Topeka, where they don't already have the fiber laid. Your parent is talking about the provo specific page that the article actually links to, where it very clearly says that it's a $30 activation fee for homes already on iProvo.
- johnward 14y agoWhere? edit: Though this is great for that city.
- systematical 14y agoabout 40 miles south of Salt Lake City.
- Keyneston 14y agoProvo is a city in Utah. It is most notable for being the home of BYU (Brigham Young University) the main University of the LDS Church (Mormons).
- jere 14y agoHQ of Novell and Qualtrics apparently.
- jfb 14y agoAdobe has a dev center there (unsurprising, given Adobe's history.)
- Keyneston 14y agoThat was largely due to their acquisition of Omniture.
- mrchucklepants 14y agoAdobe's new facility for Omniture is north of Provo.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoCue AT&T announcement in 5... 4... 3...
- eco 14y agoThe telco is CenturyLink in Utah.
- fnordfnordfnord 14y agoMy comment was a tongue-in-cheek snipe at AT&T for the way they handled Google's Austin Fiber announcement; and for continuing to extract rent from their shabby old infrastructure when there is clearly a demand for more data services.
- thomasjames 14y agoI'm glad that this is gonna be so close to the Bluffdale, UT NSA data center. Now they wont even have to build too much of their own cable to listen in on every single packet!
- angersock 14y agoDamn. Hadn't thought of that. :(
- w1ntermute 14y agoEnd-to-end encryption, folks. Fuck the NSA.
- a3n 14y agoThe War on Citizens will make encryption illegal again.
- javert 14y agoThe fact that this is close to Bluffdale only helps support (just a little bit) the likely thesis that Google has decided to ally itself with the US surveillance state (which is probably has little choice about anyway).
- clobber 14y agoIt seems fact at this point :( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-upheld/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-...
- jholman 14y agoTL;DR: trash-talking Google's record doesn't seem fair to me. Here are some things that are public knowledge: 1) Google considers some kind of network traffic to be attacks (obviously). Google claims (and no one doubts) that in some cases Google reports these attacks to law enforcement authorities, and to other companies believed to be affected. The main example of this that I'm aware of is Operation Aurora (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora ), the purported 2009 attack, allegedly by Chinese state actors. AIUI, this is the source of the Google/government collaboration mentioned in that Wired article that clobber linked. I think that any reasonable person would agree that this type of data-sharing between victims of crime and the government is not necessarily tantamount to "allying oneself with the surveillance state" (although a reasonable person could point out that once you start cooperating with governments, sometimes it's a slippery slope). 2) Google wants to position itself as a defender of user rights against governments. Maybe this is for-real, maybe this is bullshit; what do we know? We know that Google publishes a transparency report ( google.com/transparencyreport ) , you can read it for yourself. Google claims that they comply with the law, and thus obeys e.g. National Security Letters (including the gag orders that come with most NSLs). If you want to say that obeying legally-constituted surveillance law is necessarily "allying oneself with the surveillance state", well, maybe... but I dispute that this is in-general true. 3) Google also purports to push back the limits of this legal surveillance. For example, in the case of the IRS claiming (until a few days ago) that it can warrantlessly read your email, Google alleges that they refuse to respect such IRS demands, instead requiring a warrant. That is, Google claims to be daring the IRS to take Google to court, since Google thinks the IRS is overreaching their government authority. I cannot prove (or disprove) that Google is in fact doing as they claim, but if so, I see this as a mildly courageous act that protects civil society. For Google's claims about IRS email surveillance, see e.g. http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/279441-facebook-email-providers-require-warrant-for-private-data http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/279441-f... (For full-on heroics, see John Doe vs Ashcroft, revealed to be Nicholas Merrill of Calyx, so mad props to him. Also see http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/nsl-found-unconstitutional/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/nsl-found-unconstit... , another piece of brave civil challenge to the same surveillance bullshit). ------ So, what's my point here? Look, we don't know that Google isn't doing sinister shit. Google knows a lot, and has a lot of secrets, so it's appropriate to be wary. (Knowing a lot is key to the huge benefits that Google provides, btw.) But I think we have basically zero evidence of this hypothetical sinister behaviour; all secret-sharing we know about is appropriate and above-board. And we have some meaningful evidence that Google is actively pursuing the public interest by resisting over-sharing (not that I'm claiming this is the #1 corporate goal). TL;DR: trash-talking Google's record doesn't seem fair to me. Disclaimer: I work at Google, I have a pro-Google bias, I have no insider knowledge of any of the things discussed in this comment, and if I did have insider knowledge I wouldn't post it on Hacker News.
- exabrial 14y agoIn other news, AT&T expects to be able to be sold the same fiber network at the same rate with the same privileges as Google.
- gliese1337 14y agoWish this had happened a year ago; it's not entirely clear what the effect will be on me and everyone else who already has a service contract on the iProvo network. I suppose if Google is upgrading the network, though, that can only be good.
- backwardm 14y agoIf they (Google) are purchasing the whole iProvo network, then I would think they could also undo the service contracts so you could sign up for their normal services? Or, maybe you mean that you have a contract to work on the network—like a technician or something?
- gliese1337 14y agoFound it: http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/what-google-fiber-means-for-provo-free-broadband-for-everyone/article_4879a53d-b76f-598c-a130-44b25db1b830.html http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/what-goo... "Veracity customers' accounts will be transferred to Google Fiber automatically." Of course, that's still a very vague statement; there's a lot of fiddly details to ask about (like, does the contract actually get changed so I'm not paying a bill every month anymore), but I am encouraged.
- antimatter 14y agoRealistically speaking, if all these various roll outs go smoothly for Google, how many years until we see Google Fiber in major cities (LA, SF, NY, etc.)?
- axusgrad 14y agoProvo, Utah has about 100k population. There are about 250 US cities with at least 100k people. If Google doubles the number of cities they serve every year, and starts with the smallest cities, that's 7 more years to reach the largest cities. Most people assume they'll stop when AT&T + Verizon start investing in land lines again, but who can say if Google will have the desired effect.
- simonsarris 14y agoGood god I hope these announcements light a fire under the butts of the other US providers.
- austenallred 14y agoI think one of the things I'm most excited for is canceling my absurd Comcast agreement.
- umsm 14y agoMe, ATT... <10Mbps is a joke....
- sterlingross 14y agoMy 2mbps internet connection and I envy all of you.
- chaosphere2112 14y agoMy last apartment had <1mbps with AT&T. I was working remotely for a company that required VPN+VNC into a linux server on their intranet to get anything done. Any time my roommates tried to watch something on hulu/netflix (frequently), our router had to be rebooted.
- wtallis 14y agoYour router was shit, then, and probably bad enough that you weren't able to measure the true connection speed. Did you let the ISP provide the router? That's always a mistake.
- chaosphere2112 14y agoIt was an exceptionally shitty router, yeah. One of my roommates wanted to be in charge of the internet connection; she went with the lowest end AT&T plan, and she had the router that they had given her in her last apartment. On top of that, the cable going into the router was practically falling apart; I didn't actually know any of this until shortly before I moved out, at which point there wasn't a lot of motivation to do anything about it. Upon moving out, I got a 18 Mbps cable subscription & a Motorola Surfboard Extreme. Now the only shitty piece of networking equipment in my setup is a Belkin wifi router that I haven't been bothered to upgrade.
- btrautsc 14y agoDear Google, please buy EPB's fiber network in Chattanooga, TN. Love,
- andyking 14y agoIf they are getting into the habit of buying failing public-sector fibre networks, can they come and take over Digital Region South Yorkshire too? It works reasonably well, but is incredibly ineptly run, has a tiny number of users and has been facing the axe for as long as I've been using it. http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/general-news/plug-could-be-pulled-on-digital-project-disaster-1-5491839 http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/general-news...
- backwardm 14y agoHoly cow that's great! I sure hope that means they can easily expand to Salt Lake City (about 50 miles North of there—and where I am) after building the infrastructure there. There is already a fiber ISP in the area called Utopia who are in cities near here, but have been disallowed into the bigger cities (Provo and Salt Lake) apparently due to lobbying by the Qwest / CenturyLink and Comcast ISPs. I wonder if this announcement has anything to do with the fact that Comcast recently doubled my speeds (from 25/5Mbps to 50/10Mbps)
- nobleach 14y agoUtopia is around 1Gbps for $600 though, right? I actually work right across the street from their facility on Redwood Rd.
- backwardm 14y agoNot sure about 1Gbps speeds—that always seemed so out of reach to me, I never paid attention. Their normal residential speed was said to be about $70 / month for 50Mbps up and down.
- austenallred 14y ago"Holy Cow" - confirmed, we have a Utahn here.
- miles_matthias 14y agoI can see how buying fiber networks like this helps their implementation strategy, but Provo where? I've literally never heard of this town. I'm wondering if these Google Fiber experiments wouldn't be more impactful if they weren't in big cities. KC and Austin are good choices with solid tech centers to see innovation from high network speeds, but Provo, Utah? Really?
- JPKab 14y agoUtah has a pretty solid economy, and lots of outdoors enthuiasts love it. I don't know much about Provo, but the drawback to me about Utah is that you have to live in a state that is strongly controlled by the LDS, which is great if you are a mainstream Mormon. Not so much if you aren't. My good friend recently left the Salt Lake City area after several years. When his neighbors found out he wasn't Mormon (LDS to be exact), they pretty much ceased all meaningful social interaction with his family. Oh yeah, the beer is watered down too unless you buy it at the right place.
- rdl 14y agoI'm not LDS, and generally dislike religion, but I wonder how bad an LDS-controlled area really would be. I assume it means good disaster/etc. preparation, a relatively strong social safety net for participants (and thus less abject poverty, random crazy people, etc.) The non-LDS or ex-LDS people I know who live in Utah (from Defcon or whatever) seem pretty cohesive as well. Maybe because it's a smaller tech scene than other cities, or because of LDS mainstream culture, or whatever. I guess my question is how hard is it to be involved in business or other parts of civic life if not LDS but also not openly hostile (I mean, as religions go, I don't personally find it any worse than the others, and I'm fine with respecting participants, if not the religion itself, by not attacking it, and accommodating their beliefs). Could you be a non-LDS company in Provo and still reasonably hire a mix of LDS and non-LDS employees?
- mrchucklepants 14y agoTo answer your last question, yes. I work in Provo, and many of us here are LDS and many aren't. Most of us don't care who is and who isn't. Everyone gets along great. No one is left out and religious standing has zero affect on job status. There may be exceptions in other companies, but this has been my experience.
- alohahacker 14y agoAs someone who lives in provo aka silicon slopes, this is great news! I don't think most people realize how tech-based this area is and this should only help the companies in the area!
- wangg 14y agoCan someone explain the impact of widely-distributed fiber on DDOS attacks? As I understand it, if 1-2 of these nodes get compromised, then add in the 10-100x magnification via DNS, you're looking at 10-100gigabits of bandwidth off only two nodes? Compared to the recently published high of 300, this seems disproportionally high.
- X-Istence 14y agoLet's get providers to stop packets from leaving their network when the IP source doesn't match any on their network. Bye bye DNS amplification.
- djrogers 14y agoPedantically speaking, it's difficult - in fact darned near impossible - for a single residential type host (ie, likely a laptop running windows) to utilize anywhere near the full 1Gb capacity offered. That said, a botnet host running on this network would be substantially more capable of causing damage than a host on an 8Mbps upstream. Hopefully google has plans or already has implemented some ability to mitigate that type of problem...
- AnthonyMouse 14y agoThose attacks only work from networks that don't impose egress filtering.
- cbhl 14y agoLuckily, if a node becomes compromised, it can be disconnected under the "you can't run servers" provision of the ToS. :)
- r00fus 14y agoDNS amplification as a strategy is a symptom of shitty network management on the part of incumbent ISPs. I'm pretty sure Google will be more responsive in addressing these kinds of outbreaks.
- kamkazemoose 14y agoI'm curious what the size of the upstream pipe is? Is it 1G up/down? Even without DNS amplification, it only takes infecting a couple hundred machines on fiber to have a massive botnet. Hopefully ISPs will better handle DDoS attacks, because likely a few host machines could take down many sites.
- nijiko 14y agoHow many cities are they going to go to?
- tomkinstinch 14y agoRochester, NY has a municipal fiber network running through its sewers, and Verizon is absent from the city. In the past before Kansas City, Rochester and county were vying for Google to come to town. With a favorable environment and a supportive government I'm hoping we'll be next. http://www.monroecounty.gov/google-map http://www.monroecounty.gov/google-map
- driverdan 14y agoSo that's a municipal line running through the subway? I never knew that.
- grantjgordon 14y agoHere's to hoping this goes through and that google can turn iProvo around!
- sjs382 14y agoNew Orleans is an area with a growing tech community that could REALLY use some infrastructure improvements. nudgenudge
- xwei 14y agoWhy not come to Bay Area? I feel this is a suitable place for high speed internet.
- debt 14y agoit's probably much cheaper and quicker to roll fiber out in multiple smaller cities then in one giant city.
- marcamillion 14y agoThis is definitely one of those situations where when the big telcos heard about Kansas - they were prolly thinking..."meh...who cares about Kansas". But it feels like every few weeks, Google makes a new announcement. This is definitely going to shake-up the entire ISP market in the US. I am happy for you guys - I no longer live there, but when I did RoadRunner wasn't TOOO bad. I guess Comcast is the biggest offender and I hate to see customers taken advantage of.
- shmerl 14y agoI'm really excited that they continue to expand.
- mikedemarais 14y agoour startup just got google fiber TODAY courtesy of brad feld! http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/04/the-feld-fiberhouse-is-now-the-handprint-house.html http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/04/the-feld-fiberhouse-...
- rdl 14y agoI wish Palo Alto could get out of their limited and never very awesome metro fiber business (run by the city, like their other utilities) by getting Google as a partner. For Google, it would make sense from a marketing perspective -- if I got 1Gbps fiber at home in PA due to Google, I'd be more positively inclined toward the company in general (for working, M&A, other products, whatever). San Francisco, I have zero hope for due to the totally dysfunctional city government, but Palo Alto, Mountain View, maybe EPA (for political reasons), Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino all seem pretty sanely governed. If EPA had Google Fiber, I'd probably brave the (moderate, now) security risks, air quality, and floodplain.
- crapshoot101 14y agoCA makes it impossible unfortunately. I wish you were right, but this state is setup to allow every crank to block any sort of development.
- rdl 14y agoHow does California make it impossible? State PUC, or just NIMBY culture?
- jseliger 14y agoI've posted this elsewhere, but take a look at the California Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), which is overlaid on top of the national version (NEPA). I've worked on projects in CA that hit CEPA problems, and the level of bureaucracy can be really hideous. NIMBY stuff doesn't help either: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... ; that's primarily about housing, but there's a strong "People united against everything" front. This: 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... is about San Francisco, but Palo Alto is not exactly known for its developer-friendly environment either.
- r00fus 14y agoComcast, Verizon: You're officially on notice. Prepare to be disrupted.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoIt's Comcast and Century Link here, but I am so ready for them to be disrupted. I'm just 10 miles too far away. :(
- ignostic 14y agoI imagine that Google will be working its way north, up through Orem and Bluffdale where the NSA, Adobe, and a number of other large tech companies are. There are some SLC suburbs up north that are running failed fiber networks, too, so I imagine they'll eventually fill in the Salt Lake area. I'm surprised about Utah, even with the existing fiber. The population density in most of the valley is really low, and the installation cost to subscriber potential must be higher than it is in more compact urban areas.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jaredstenquist 14y agoDowntown Boston. Please. I'm paying $1,500/m for a 50x50mbps primary and $350/m for a 100x10mbps backup. The alterative is DSL from version at 1Mbps peak, or a T1 - 1.5mbps for $500/m. We need something new in this old city of copper.
- eksith 14y agoThat's just obscene! It has to be price gouging, plain and simple. How can any provider justify charging such an outrageous amount for mid-range copper? I'm surprised Boston, being as metro as it is, still doesn't have enough competition for lower prices. Then again, New York isn't all that much cheaper for T1, but FiOS is more acceptable.
- stephenhuey 14y agoLaunch in the EaDo area of Houston, please!!!
- djanogo 14y agoIs it cheap because google doesn't have to make money on this product?. I doubt any other company would survive providing 1Gbps fiber service $70/month, it costs a lot to dig through everybody's yard and create a fiber network.
- Nux 14y agoFast forward some years: The United States of Google.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- habosa 14y agoGreat skiing a few miles away and the world's fastest internet? Sounds like most of what I need to be happy. I wish I could move there.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoIt's easy to do. There are a lot of jobs in the area. I'm getting contacted multiple times per week by recruiters.
- WalterBright 14y agoCome on, Seattle!