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The future of Fiber
- shmerl 13y agoGreat. Google should just push for it everywhere gradually.
- teach 13y agoIt is hard to wait for signups to begin in Austin.
- jmgrosen 13y agoGot my hopes up there for a little bit... if only they came to Santa Barbara -- we have plenty of tech people here willing to pay for awesome internet! (and get away from Cox...) I'll keep dreaming :)
- JaggedJax 13y agoI wish they'll come to Santa Barbara so badly (As I'm sure everyone also does for their cities). We do have lots of tech here and even good connections to Google, but I feel we're probably too small. Even Verizon pulled out from installing FiOS.
- jmgrosen 13y agoAt least Cox isn't too bad in comparison with the horror stories I've heard about dealing with Comcast or TWC... still, it is not fun to deal with them. Plus, 1 gbps for $70 sounds a lot more appetizing than 50 mbps for $74.
- tostitos1979 13y agoWish they had Google Fiber in Toronto :(
- fidotron 13y agoIt would be quite fun watching the incumbents playing the "but we're Canadian" card in order to prevent such a thing. Hard as it might be for Americans to believe the ISP scene in Canada is in danger of falling behind even them.
- adventured 13y agoCanada related question. Do all the major ISPs in Canada have bandwidth caps on consumer broadband?
- CountHackulus 13y agoYes, every major ISP has bandwidth caps, some of which are prohibitively small (20GB). Even the smaller upstart ISPs, like TekSavvy are forced to have a cap (though at 300GB) due to wholesale laws. At least they offer unlimited for a reasonable amount of money. Canada is definitely behind the US for internet access, it's even behind many (if not most) third world countries.
- adventured 13y agoI've seen a lot of complaints about the caps (wasn't sure if they were widespread or not). What keeps the caps in place if they're universally disliked? I've always thought of Canada as a fairly responsive democracy.
- fidotron 13y agoCanada is a land where a lot of the big businesses maintain their position by wheeling and dealing with the government under the guise of economic protectionism. i.e. they'll protest that without these limits Canadian jobs will be lost. The most productive stuff here is the resource extraction going on in the west, and a shocking proportion of the rest of the country is subsidised by this, so the gov are incredibly sensitive to any noise about jobs. The excessive regulatory environment of the telecoms sector is a side effect of this larger picture.
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- grecy 13y agoYou don't have to wait for Google (or Bell, etc.)... http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/small-alberta-town-gets-massive-1-000-mbps-broadband-boost-1.1382428 http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/small-alberta-town-gets-ma...
- Deinos 13y agoLove to see challenges to the pathetic cable monopolies. I'd be willing to pay more than I am now if it meant sticking it to TimeWarner.
- kickme444 13y agoExcited for Salt Lake City. We are growing our reddit office there a lot. It's a really exciting city to be in and this helps us a lot!
- statenjason 13y agoReally excited if they offer service between SLC and Provo
- toomuchtodo 13y agoReddit has an office in Salt Lake City?? Need any DevOps? :-P
- saturdayplace 13y agoIt's redditgifts.com. Doesn't look like they're hiring for DevOps at the moment, but they are looking for devs (among other things): http://redditgifts.com/jobs/ http://redditgifts.com/jobs/
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dark_night_tim 13y agoIs mountain view count as San Jose?
- mikeevans 13y agoYep, according to the FAQ: "San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto"
- pravka 13y agoNo Campbell. Guess I'm too sticks for Google Fiber. :\
- jason_slack 13y agoLOL, I'm right on the border of SJ and Cupertino around De Anza and 85. I am so hoping I can get it just to dump Comcast.
- rit 13y agoSan Jose is the nearest major city to Mt. View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto & Santa Clara... they're using it as a Metro area grouping. EDIT: Yes, these are part of the "The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area comprising Santa Clara and San Benito counties".
- aetherson 13y agoI guess I fundamentally do not understand what makes a city a good or bad candidate for this kind of service. Why is SF or NY not an obvious candidate? Density means that there are lots of customers for a given physical length of infrastructure rollout, they're both wealthy cities with a large proportion of techies who could use faster internet... I'm sure they're both nightmares to deal with permitting processes for. Is that it? Or is there something else that makes mid-tier, more spread-out cities more attractive?
- tdees40 13y agoI suspect they mostly want a compliant political infrastructure and relatively easy construction. NYC and SF aren't really known for either. Also, NYC would probably be biting off more than Google Fiber has any interest in chewing at the moment. They're still scaling up, after all.
- Nrsolis 13y agoYUP. The short answer is: it's much easier to build in a greenfield environment where there is a "helpful" local government, ready access to rights-of-way, and underserved population, easy construction costs, access to labor, favorable tax climate, and a host of other reasons that come before "lots of people who want gigabit speeds". The economics of building (or overbuilding) a gigabit fiber network drive you towards areas where you can get a high degree of penetration for your investment. That's not going to happen in a place like NYC or SF. The construction costs (directional boring) and tax regime (network cables are "property" for property tax purposes) mean that SF and NYC are probably going to be the LAST places to get Google Fiber.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago> (network cables are "property" for property tax purposes) WUT.
- Nrsolis 13y agoLook it up. If you install $15M of fiber in/around town, you can bet your bottom dollar that the local taxing authority considers that real property and will tax you on it at appropriate rates. In TX, colo providers have had to send business property tax bills to people who locate their servers in those centers. Sometimes those bills are quite shocking. In CT, the local phone companies started putting DSLAMs on poles because it got them off the ground and saved them millions on property taxes because there was a rate differential between property that was pole attached and property that was on the ground. Never underestimate the effect that taxes can have on the deployment, operation, and maintenance of business property. You can explain great deals of financial shenanigans to the real savings associated with avoiding taxes. And who gets screwed? Anyone who doesn't have the scale or size to make avoiding that tax worthwhile. e.g. the small-business owner.
- malandrew 13y agoWhy not San Francisco, Washington D.C., Boston and NYC? San Francisco, NYC and Boston because they are big tech hubs where a lot of Googlers live and Washington D.C. because it is the seat of politics in this country and the best way to show what good can happen when we have broadband connectivity. In fact, rolling out Google Fiber in the capital cities of each state makes the most sense in general. You lobby the political class by giving their home base (state capitals) excellent broadband.
- mikeevans 13y agoFingers crossed that DC is in the next group of cities :)
- btgeekboy 13y ago1. Sacramento would be an odd choice for California. 2. I believe this would have the opposite benefit you intend - if you want lawmakers to be on your side, they need to feel your pain.
- mason55 13y agoNYC at least because each building is like its own little fiefdom that's already wired for at least one competing service. FiOS has the same problems rolling out, a lot of the older buildings would require substantial building-wide upgrades to support fiber, something Google is likely not interested in at this point.
- theandrewbailey 13y agoI think that NYC and DC already have Verizon FIOS, as do the suburbs of Boston, but not Boston proper. Why compete with an existing and decent fiber service when you can stick it to Time Warner- sorry, Comcast and AT&T instead?
- justina1 13y agoI can't speak for the other three cities, but San Francisco has a number of problems that would make it difficult for a Google Fiber rollout. First, AT&T is already in the process of rolling out fiber to the home, or in some cases, fiber to the node with last mile copper. They have faced nothing but problems trying to do this from people in the city: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Groups-sue-S-F-trying-to-halt-AT-amp-T-utility-2333280.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Groups-sue-S-F-trying-... Density can be a nice benefit, but lack of space makes it hard to place the equipment necessary to serve fiber. Second, a local provider Sonic.net is also rolling out fiber by taking the approach of starting in the closest thing San Francisco has to a less dense suburb (the Sunset). They've faced exactly the same issue (battles over placing Utility boxes).
- willidiots 13y agoFull list of cities, from the FAQ: Arizona - Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe California - San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto Georgia - Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs, Smyrna North Carolina - Charlotte, Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Morrisville, Raleigh Oregon - Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard Tennessee - Nashville-Davidson Texas - San Antonio Utah - Salt Lake City
- jader201 13y agoAnd with line breaks: Arizona - Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe California - San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto Georgia - Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs, Smyrna North Carolina - Charlotte, Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Morrisville, Raleigh Oregon - Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard Tennessee - Nashville-Davidson Texas - San Antonio Utah - Salt Lake City
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y agoAnd with frivolous awk formatting: Arizona Phoenix Scottsdale Tempe California San Jose Santa Clara Sunnyvale Mountain View Palo Alto Georgia Atlanta Avondale Estates Brookhaven College Park Decatur East Point Hapeville Sandy Springs Smyrna North Carolina Charlotte Carrboro Cary Chapel Hill Durham Garner Morrisville Raleigh Oregon Portland Beaverton Hillsboro Gresham Lake Oswego Tigard Tennessee Nashville-Davidson Texas San Antonio Utah Salt Lake City cat jader \ | sed 's/ - /\t/g; s/, /\n\t/g' \ | awk -F'\t' '{ printf "%-18s%s\n", $1, $2 }'
- turing 13y agoWoo! Moving to Mountain View in June, so I'm excited to see this. On another note, I wonder if this will have any impact on the Comcast/Time Warner merger. Comcast has specifically called out Google Fiber as a source of legitimate competition in defending the merger[1]. With the announcement that Google could increase the number of Fiber cities 10-fold, that claim might have a little more weight. 1. http://gigaom.com/2014/02/13/comcast-cites-competition-from-google-fiber-netflix-hulu-as-reasons-to-approve-merger/ http://gigaom.com/2014/02/13/comcast-cites-competition-from-...
- jonlucc 13y agoI've been hearing that there will be no real threat to that merger. If that's true, then I see this as a real threat to the new Comcast; basically Google saying "you will have real competition even if you are massive". Edit: Otherwise, why would they announce this at this stage? They've only announced other cities when they were certain.
- roc 13y ago> "Otherwise, why would they announce this at this stage?" Drum up local interest and support to help with any local political roadblocks.
- georgemcbay 13y agoStill no San Diego, but still happy to see this as the more Google Fiber expands within different regions the more the dinosaur ISPs in those regions will be forced to compete, hopefully rising boats even in areas not yet covered by Google Fiber.
- benihana 13y agoI currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh. It seems pretty clear that tearing up New York City to lay fiber is a much more expensive and tedious process than it would be in Raleigh. The state and local governments also seem much more friendly to that kind of thing.
- johnward 13y agoDoesn't raleigh already have municipal fiber? I know there is fiber in in the RTP area.
- austintaylor 13y agoNope. There is municipal fiber in Wilson, NC which is about an hour away (greenlightnc.com). I'm not sure about RTP. A crappy anti-muni broadband law was passed at the state level a couple of years ago (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed-anti-muni-broadband-bill-advances-in-north-carolina/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed-anti...), so apparently the network has to be run by a private company? There is joint initiative by local municipalities and universities to bring in a private company to run fiber (http://ncngn.net http://ncngn.net). It's not clear to me how this will be affected by the Google announcement. (They released a rather vague statement about it.)
- johnward 13y agoMaybe I was thinking that they were going to get muni fiber but then they passed a law to not allow it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jseliger 13y agoI currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh Howdy neighbor: I live in NYC too. A lot of NYC already does have fiber in the form of FiOS. I'll also observe that NYC's overall Internet situation appears to be much better than many places; right now I'm paying $50 a month for 50 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up through RCN. In Tucson, where I used to live, I was paying $70 for 12 down / 1 or 2 up. Google is presumably targeting the places with the crappiest service and the most amenable local governments; NYC's service isn't terrible and its government isn't exactly known for being responsive.
- epmatsw 13y agoAtlanta! Looks like they're targeting the nicer suburbs too. My mom's going to get fiber before I am.
- baddox 13y agoHow is the residential Internet in the San Jose area cities listed? I'm in SF, and I can't believe how bad the Internet service is. It's worse and more expensive than what I had 4 years ago in my Midwest town of 100k people.
- ac29 13y agoI live in Sunnyvale where the options are Comcast (who will happily sell a 105Mbit connection for $$$), or DSL from ATT or Sonic. I personally use Sonic since they are a great ISP.
- 27182818284 13y agoI'm really, really glad they chose Kansas City as the pilot city despite not living there. If they had just gone and chosen San Francisco, Chicago or New York, it would have been no more of an experiment than offering more cable channels to the big cities in the 1990s—It just is completely uninteresting. On a side note, If you haven't been to KC's Startup Village, the climate is electric! It feels like something really real is going on there. It is just awesome to see someone with a coding question, you can walk literally a few doors down to a different house to ask one of the startups there. When you walk inside, you see rooms that should be living rooms with hackers on laptops and would-be dining rooms with iMacs setup on tables. Meanwhile a sleepy hacker is waking up and making breakfast in the kitchen. The climate is wonderful.
- wmf 13y agoI see it the opposite way: Deploying fiber is easy if the city gives you carte blanche as KC did. Doing something easy proves nothing. If Google Fiber wants to prove that their model is replicable they need to deploy it at a profit in a politically hostile environment.
- nostrademons 13y agoYou usually make things less politically hostile once you've deployed successfully in a few politically friendly zones. People's opinions aren't immutable.
- _greim_ 13y ago> Doing something easy proves nothing. Depends on the audience. Joe Random Voter, seeing his cousin's internet being super fast, will carry that knowledge back to his hometown. He doesn't care how easy it was for Google, only that it's possible.
- vijayp 13y agoThe point is not to prove anything but to shame competitors into providing good quality service. Google Fibre is not about making money, it's about driving the industry to provide faster Internet, which Google believes will lead to more ecommerce and thus more profit.
- coreymgilmore 13y agoanything to get away from Comcast or Time Warner helps the greater population!
- JunkDNA 13y agoI know it would be painful, and the local politics certifiably insane, but if Google wanted draw attention to the dysfunctional monopoly of the cable industry, there would be no better place to wire than Philly. Take the competition right into Comcast's back yard. Start with a rollout of the Philly 'burbs where the Comcast execs live and work inward toward the city from there.
- psbp 13y agoYou live in Philadelphia, don't you?
- leviathant 13y agoI live in Philadelphia, where we have a subway station named after AT&T and the tallest building is the Comcast center (until they build their new Comcast building, which will be even taller), and if Verizon can't get fiber to my house (never mind that free wifi movement that sputtered out six or seven years ago) there's absolutely no hope for Google fiber happening here. Between old infrastructure and big players, decent fiber internet is just something I accept that I'm not going to get in this city. There's plenty of other reasons I like it here, but Comcast domination is not one of them.
- joekrill 13y agoWell Verizon was finally given approval in 2009 for FIOS in Philadelphia. but they suddenly stopped their FIOS rollout, coincidentally at the same exact time the cable companies gave Verizon a big chunk of their spectrum licenses. Of course everyone involved insists the two are completely unrelated, even though Verizon had been trying for years to get into Philadelphia.
- mey 13y agoVerizon had started selling off it's Fiber installs before 2009 (which I still scratch my head at). While they may not be directly related, I'm sure it didn't hurt the negotiation. Edit: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPoint_Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPoint_Communications and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Communications
- godgod 13y agoI for one don't trust google anymore. They are in bed with the feds.
- kgermino 13y agoCool to see they're expanding, but I'm disappointed to see that there's no love for the upper Midwest. Wouldn't expect it in Chicago but Milwaukee (where I am), Madison, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and possibly a few smaller cities would all seem like reasonable candidates (although I acknowledge there's issues with all of them).
- mitchty 13y agoMinneapolis kinda sorta not-quite has at least some parts with fibre. http://fiber.usinternet.com/coverage-areas/ http://fiber.usinternet.com/coverage-areas/ Barely though to be honest. >.<
- rufugee 13y agoIt always surprises me how excited people get about Google Fiber, yet how up-in-arms they get about GMail, Google+ and other Google services which tend to invade and/or expose your privacy. Do you really think that using a advertising company's fiber as your gateway to the internet is going to offer a private experience? Don't you see how much easier it will make it for them to gather your personal details and habits? Do you really think Google won't use your data to their advantage?
- pkulak 13y agoGoogle flat out tells us that they are using the content of emails to direct ads. Secret, deep-packet snooping on a broadband connection? That's a whole new level of evil.
- teach 13y agoYes, but Google Fiber is a product I can pay for. I don't mind trading personal information / eyeballs for Google's services but I much prefer to give them money to get a superior service I'm already paying someone else for.
- Einstalbert 13y agoWe're excited for better service at lower prices, and if you think Google would be (or is) the only one snooping traffic, well I think you're giving a lot of trust to people like Comcast.
- bestdayever 13y agoYou are comparing a free service where they are up front about their plans to a pay for service which doesn't detail any plans you describe. I have to ask, do you think they would?
- nostrademons 13y agoAll the other telecoms have far worse privacy records than Google does. Who were the original companies implicated in illegal NSA wiretapping? Verizon, AT&T, and Bell South. [1] What happened to the CEO of the one company that refused, Qwest? He went to jail on trumped-up insider trading charges. [2] [1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-ns... [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30/a-ceo-who-resisted-nsa-spying-is-out-of-prison-and-he-feels-vindicated-by-snowden-leaks/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...
- jjallen 13y agoGoogle Fiber will pass <~0.5% of total U.S. homes[0], even after they build out Austin and take over Provo. They have to start doing things much faster if they will make a dent this decade. Google is selectively building out 'fiber hoods' - neighborhoods that bend over backwards to get the service, pre commit and make construction super easy - not full cities, by any means. Google Fiber was announced almost four years ago and has only a few tens of thousands of subscribers. While it's fun to get excited about what Google Fiber could be, it will be years before any material percentage of the country has the opportunity to use Google Fiber. Google is still building out small neighborhoods in Kansas City [1] [0]https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q-sGUEiuT9VN__VPsFeorRtqmBGwnlIpLN61MzRTsUA/edit#slide=id.g2bd4c3781_00 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q-sGUEiuT9VN__VPsFeo... [1]https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/#zone=Kansas+City,+KS&fiberhood= https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/#zone=Kansas+City...
- abvdasker 13y agoGoogle Fiber has so far only been an experiment. I see it as a very expensive, very ambitious proof of concept the likes of which only Google is capable of creating. This new announcement is evidence that their experiment of the last 4 years has succeeded. Google can only move so fast with this given the stranglehold Comcast has on the market right now and the regulatory obstacles. There is a killing to be made by undercutting the monopolistic pricing and terrible service Comcast provides right now (not to mention the ways ownership of distribution might benefit Google's content). TL;DR This is the next step in Google's big, slow play to become a major ISP.
- ericd 13y agoI think it's likely that this exists mostly as a threat to keep the big ISPs from getting complacent. If internet speeds improve via themselves or the ISPs, Google wins either way as internet usage increases.
- help_wanted 13y agoSo excited to to see Nashville on this list. Our technology scene has been thriving recently and this only adds fuel to the fire.
- rybosome 13y agoNashville is a great city...I was totally unaware of the tech scene. Startups, big companies? I have no idea if I'll ever move away from the west coast, but Nashville is one of the few places in the eastern US that I could imagine living.
- atwebb 13y agoI'm interested to see where it would start to spread from (if it comes here at all), any thoughts?
- lukateake 13y agoPfft. I'm waiting on Google Drone/Blimp; it solves the last-mile problem.
- seanalltogether 13y agoThe Denver-Boulder corridor is going to start losing it's place as one of the top tech startup areas in the country if it doesn't get itself on this list of potential fiber installs.
- simmons 13y agoAs a resident of greater Denver-Boulder, I, too, was disappointed to see the big empty space on the map around Colorado. At least one ISP here is experimenting with residential gigabit, though -- I'm hoping that maybe someday I can get it in my neighborhood: http://fiber.forethought.net/ http://fiber.forethought.net/
- jcomis 13y agointeresting. Their website is a bit lacking in info. Do they offer residential service at all right now? Looks like they are just servicing larger multi-tenant buildings, I'm guessing where everyone needs to sign up to get them to come and install.
- simmons 13y agoIt's in the extremely nascent stages right now. I think they'll be turning on the first residential gigabit customers in downtown shortly. We've occasionally discussed the idea of getting my condo complex in Arvada lit up -- it's technically feasible, although I suppose the numbers would have to work out.
- sounds 13y agoI want Colorado on the list too. All I can think of is: Google's doing this to put pressure on other cities. Is it working? (Not living in Denver anymore, or I'd just ask around :) )
- jcomis 13y agoYeah, also disappointed. I thought for sure it would at least be planned.
- csense 13y agoWhy is there not a single city in the northeast or the Rust Belt? Chicago, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh are all major cities that are at least "on the map" as far as tech is concerned. I know for a fact that the local authorities in Detroit, Cincinnati and Cleveland would bend over backwards for any project that has even the slightest whiff of economic development. I can understand NYC being a special case that they don't want to deal with, but there are plenty of other cities in the region.
- bgilroy26 13y agoI would have liked to have seen one in Ohio.
- pyrocat 13y agoSeriously? No Seattle?
- mdturnerphys 13y agoUp until the last month or two, Gigabit Squared was supposed to be taking over the city's fiber, which may have been keeping Google away.
- pyrocat 13y agoJoke's on us :(
- BlackDeath3 13y agoNo kidding. God damn.
- tehaaron 13y agoVery excited to see Portland,OR on the list! I'm tired of Comcast and the other options are quite lacking in one way or another.
- fuzzywalrus 13y agoEast Portland is wired up with Fibre backbone DSL from Century Link. Its $30 a month for a connection that's roughly 40 mbps down / 15 mbps up. I generally get 4 megabytes a sec downloads, and my friend who lives south around Holgate and 65th sees about the same. No data caps that I'm aware of either. Its faster than Comcast's two lower tier internet packages. I've heard North Portland isn't as lucky but its certainly worth checking out. Also various complexes around town are already offering FiOS.
- brewdad 13y agoI'd love to see Google buy up Frontier's FIOS lines. Their service isn't bad, but I get the feeling they don't really want to be in the fiber business and just got stuck with it in the Verizon purchase.
- tadfisher 13y agoHow far east? I'm east of 82nd, and the fastest CenturyLink offers here is 1.5 mbps.
- izzydata 13y agoAwesome. They added Leawood to the list of cities. Now they need to complete some of the neighboring areas they have already started on and make some progress. Although I wouldn't complain if they just abandoned those and started on Leawood.
- mindcrime 13y agoThe Triangle region of NC would be a great place for Google to start with this. Seriously, with all of the technology workers working in RTP, and all the university students in the area, as well as the emerging startup hub(s) in Durham and Raleigh, the area could really put Google Fiber to great use.
- Moral_ 13y agoAt least for SLC there is already _Some_ fiber around the city: http://www.utopianet.org/ http://www.utopianet.org/ Much like Provo, I think google saw that utopia already had some infrastructure in place and wanted to swoop it up. So while people are asking, why not this x,y,z city perhaps it's due to infrastructure not already being in place.
- shitlord 13y agoI live near DC... shit! I wanted Google Fiber just for the awesome TV. DirecTV is incredibly awful. Hopefully they can expand to even more cities in the future.
- cpeterso 13y agoThe FAQ does not mention details about bandwidth other than "Internet that’s up to 100 times faster than basic broadband", but Wikipedia says the free service is 5 Mbps down (1 Mbps up) and the pay service is 1 Gbps down and up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Technical_specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Technical_specifi...
- wil421 13y agoNice try Google, I was really happy about Atlanta until I saw the cities listed. Most of the cities they listed are in very sketchy areas that probably dont even know the difference between their regular connection and a faster fiber connection. Avondale Estates - not so nice Brookhaven - will probably benefit College Park - crime area, could care less about fiber Decatur - some areas will benefit East Point - crime area Hapeville - crime area Sandy Springs - will benefit, lots of Apartment Complexes Smyrna - will benefit in some areas
- thrownaway2424 13y agoYeah, God forbid anyone should bring high-speed networking to poor areas. Fiber should be reserved for rich white people.
- wil421 13y agoWhen they laid fiber down in KC they had each neighborhood sign up and based on how much interest each community had they would have precedence over the others. If the cities they choose dont have an interest then what is the point? Who said anything about white people?
- Rhapso 13y agoYou sound like one of those people in the suburbs stunting Atlanta's public transit because it would bring in more black people. The areas you are describing are not high crime areas, just poor.
- wil421 13y agoNo I want Marta just like I want my fiber. Accessible anywhere in and outside the perimeter.
- SimpleXYZ 13y agoSo I guess I have a 1 in 34 chance of getting Google Fiber. Better than nothing...
- jmharvey 13y agoWhen I saw the headline, I cringed. At this point, whenever I see a Google article titled, "The future of [google product]," I assume it's an announcement that the product is being phased out. Needless to say, I'm glad that's not what's happening here, but I'm still not holding my breath that Google Fiber is going to take over the world.
- mje__ 13y agoIt seems one of the biggest costs of fiber is installation; i.e. trenching. Why is it not hung from poles? It must be much cheaper and quicker, surely?
- liotier 13y agoYes, whereas Europe puts everything underground, US operators will go cheap and string stuff across poles. My supplier of infrastructure management software was astonished when they saw at our data an realized we have almost no aerial spans in France.
- wmf 13y agoWhere poles exist, fiber is run on them. Where utilities are underground, fiber is underground.
- kushti 13y agoIf you want to save money with Fiber, it's okay. But please use VPN with encryption or other traffic-encryption methods to no let Big Brother intercept all of your your data.
- carsonreinke 13y agoI don't understand, obviously there is a demand for this, so why aren't more companies rolling this stuff out? Give the people what they want!
- BlackDeath3 13y ago"15/1 should be enough for anybody!" - something TWC would say. Seriously though. Why are most of us still in the bandwidth dark ages?
- drawkbox 13y agoThere is such a high demand for this product because it fulfills a great need and requirement to be competitive, but we are being held back by our providers. Our progress, held back due to lack of innovation. Google Fiber will rule the US as soon as it can get rolled out. Cable companies better be really nice and start being competitive. Please bring it to Chandler, AZ. This article comes to mind, I recently, through normal work, started hitting Cox's 250GB max, I work on games and can easily send 4-8GB per day in assets/code to remote repos. Cringley from 2011... http://www.cringely.com/2011/07/28/bandwidth-caps-are-rate-hikes/ http://www.cringely.com/2011/07/28/bandwidth-caps-are-rate-h... This isn’t about capping ISP losses, but are about increasing ISP profits. The caps are a built-in revenue bump that will kick-in 2-3 years from now, circumventing any existing regulatory structure for setting rates. The regulators just haven’t realized it yet. By the time they do it may be too late. Most U. S. broadband customers don’t get anywhere near that 250 gigabyte cap. The few who do hit those limits are big gamers or file downloaders for the most part. Maybe they do take unfair advantage of the system, but the question is whether this is the proper way to control their consumption? I don’t think it is. In time we will all bump into these caps and our Internet bills will suddenly double as a result, circumventing competition and ending a 15 year downward broadband price trend. ISPs win, we lose. Unless there is competition. Bandwidth is as needed as roads, shipping, airplanes, etc to business and economies. This is an anti-competitive hostage situation we are in in the US. This is also anti-small business as many are run from home offices and co-location etc.
- sandyarmstrong 13y agoI recently had to restore a 500GB cloud backup over Cox. I called them to ask if they could give me an exemption for one month, and not only did they refuse, but they could not honestly tell me what would happen if I went over the cap, except that I would get an email about it and my Internet "might slow down". I work from home, and can't afford any degradation of service, so I've been doing the restore piecemeal and checking https://myaccount.cox.net/internettools/datausage/usage.cox https://myaccount.cox.net/internettools/datausage/usage.cox every day. It's annoying but doable. What happens to you when you hit the cap?
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- alwaysdoit 13y ago>We’re asking cities to ensure that we, and other providers, can access and lease existing infrastructure. This is probably my favorite part. They're not just trying to get special privileges for themselves, they are trying to level the barriers to entry so that there is actual competition in this space.
- shaaaaawn 13y agoI live in Scottsdale and this is excellent news! Cox is the longstanding primary internet/cable provider here and their speeds are good but service is atrocious.
- allsystemsgo 13y agoWhy San Antonio over Dallas/Houston?
- ensignavenger 13y agoI wish Google would publish more technical information about their fiber project. I am quite interested in what equipment they have chosen, what types of cabling they are using, etc. (and why) Also, any other information that could be used by community internet providers looking to roll out fiber!
- dav- 13y agoHow is the free plan going to work? Are they going to monetize it somehow by collecting data or serving ads?
- thrownaway2424 13y agoIt is free for "only" the first seven years.
- voidlogic 13y agoNot a single city in the upper-Midwest, Great Lakes region... :(
- robryan 13y agoWould love to see Google, or anyone, come shake up the Australian market. We are still beholden to low bandwidth, almost non existent upload and data usage caps. We also have a national broadband network that most people will never see due to the politics played by the current government.
- jimmcslim 13y agoThis +infinity. The National Broadband Network is the one policy that had reasonably bi-partisan voter support, but the new conservative government has seen fit to abandon the admittedly more expensive, but more future-proof 'Fiber to the Premises' in exchange for what was going to be 'Fiber to the Node' but is now 'Multi-Technology Mix' or more appropriately 'Massive Telecommunications Mistake'...
- tmnsam 13y agoAs an Englishman, I feel left out :(
- maxmax 13y agoAlways wondered why they didn't buy out Surewest or Consolidated Communications. Instant fiber subscriber base, right-of-ways, and complementary service areas. And the money found in Google's couch cushions would probably more than cover the costs. Easy way to add 100K subscribers...
- ck2 13y agoGoogle should install their fiber in the cities of corporate headquarters for at&t, time warner, quest, verizon, and cox. Should have an interesting effect on the top-down mentality of price setting. FCC also needs to rule ISPs as common carriers.
- jusben1369 13y ago"announce the next round of cities who’ll be getting Google Fiber by the end of 2014." - announce which cities are chosen by the end of 2014? or those cities that will have fiber in them by the end of 2014?
- jusben1369 13y agohow do people feel about mobile networks? In a lot of locations the speeds are getting as good as or better than broadband. They're cost ineffective right now for anything but short term tethering but that problem could be solved in 2 - 4 years. I just wonder if laying down fiber house to house is going to seem outdated in 5 years or so for anyone except the hard core work at home dev.
- DigitalSea 13y agoGoogle needs to bring Google Fiber to Australia. The coalition have plans for a fiber/copper hybrid in which the fibre runs to a box and then you connect via outdated copper from the street to your house. It's like driving a sports car 90% of the way and a horse and cart the rest of the 10% — I think what Google are doing is great, they need to expand though. I know New Zealand could use something like Google Fiber as well.
- brc 13y agoWhich is precisely why a re-nationalized telecommunications provider was such a terrible, terrible idea. Google cannot install fiber in Australia even if it wanted to, because competition to the NBN is illegal. It's now 7 years since it was announced, virtually nobody has it, and private companies like Google are precluded from filling in the gap, and the local telcos have just let their existing network go to ruin because they are being paid to rip it up. A shocking outcome.
- geitiegg 13y agoWhile I won't argue that Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) is better than Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) it is, at the very least, much cheaper. The cost per consumer for "last mile" connections can be an order of magnitude more than those used in the core network because of the economies of scale at play. [1] Most of the UK is currently being set up with FTTC, representing a dramatic increase in the country's average broadband speed over the past few years. [2] [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/fiber-its-not-all-created-equal/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/fiber-its-not-all... [2] http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/03/14/average-uk-broadband-speeds-hit-double-figures/ http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/03/14/average-uk-broadband-sp...
- _mulder_ 13y agoIs it cheaper? It depends on how long you expect your investment to be relevant for. If you accept that FTTH is going to be an ultimate 'end game', at least for the foreseeable future, then going FTTC is not cheaper. It may require less capital investment today than FTTH, but in 5 years, you're having to invest a similar amount all over again, in new equipment or by going FTTH. FTTC is just delaying FTTH.
- quarterwave 13y agoDoes 'do no evil' include canonical net-neutrality, or will it end up like Animal Farm: but already it was impossible to say which was which.
- fredgrott 13y agoI have a question does the cities Google picks have anything to do with their CDN locations?