12 ms·

It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber

by oimaz 12y ago

bdcravens 12y ago
It's not something an area "adopts" - Google initiates that discussion, as far as I know: https://fiber.google.com/newcities/ https://fiber.google.com/newcities/
- fizzbatter 12y ago
  I'm not sure who starts it, but they're very clearly (and openly) rolling it out based on not only logical locations, but willingness of cities. Some places are just hard to get into, like Seattle[0]. [0]: http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-broadband-internet/ http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-...
  - mtviewdave 12y ago
    From an email I got from the Google Fiber team last May: "We’ve been impressed by how enthusiastic the City of Mountain View has been as we’ve worked with them over the past few months — so let’s take a moment to thank them for everything they’ve done so far." The City is also working on the physical infrastructure Google needs: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go-ahead http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go... I can't speak for other cities in the area, but for Mountain View, the belief that Google Fiber expansion is being held up by government inaction or unwillingness, is unwarranted. (The one exception is San Francisco, which is a mess whenever anyone wants to build anything anywhere in the City, but SF's an outlier in that regard)
therobot24 12y ago
says that "Santa Clara, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto" are potentials
cmsmith 12y ago
It is sad that with all the would-be entrepreneurs flocking to Silicon Valley and looking for startup ideas, they all shy away from 'hard' problems like disrupting the current ISP model.
- sounds 12y ago
  Well, I wouldn't say they _all_ shy away from it. But I agree with your premise, that hard problems with large rewards require a different sort of VC pitch and may take longer to see a payoff. And are completely worth pursuing!
- na85 12y ago
  It's easier to write a javascript framework than it is to solve the hard problems.
  - bicknergseng 12y ago
    If by easier you mean "doesn't require vast amounts of capital" then yah.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
      I don't think you can claim that it's "solving" the problem if you can throw money at it. That's the business-world equivalent of "brute forcing"... and what we've learned from technology is that you're required to throw ever-larger amounts of resources at the problem until it eventually overwhelms any real-world capacity to "solve" it.
- psychometry 12y ago
  I think that smart people in both business and technology are attracted to hard problems that are intellectually challenging. Dealing with the corruption and the entrenched bureaucracy of local, state, and federal governments doesn't qualify as an "interesting" problem for these types of people. It's why you don't see many scientists in elected office.
discardorama 12y ago
Agreed. Whenever there's a comparison of our pathetic speeds with those in Korea/Japan, people claim "the US is a huge country", etc. However, San Francisco's density (6600/km^2) is higher than that of Tokyo (6000/km^2); why doesn't SF have FTTH?
- baddox 12y ago
  Note that both points can be true. Local politics can screw over SF Internet, and it can be more difficult to wire up a larger sparser country.
- underwires 12y ago
  Tokyo's density is more like 8800/km^2
  - delinka 12y ago
    Wikipedia disagrees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#cite_ref-population_3-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#cite_ref-population_3-0
- ollebro 12y ago
  The denstity where I live is about 20/km^2. Me and all my neighbours have fiber and 1Gbit cost about 30$ a month. Sweden is spending a lot of money digging down fiber for everyone in Sweden right now.
- jpatokal 12y ago
  Comparisons to Tokyo are not necessarily instructive, since Tōkyō-to includes a vast swathe of essentially uninhabited mountains. Population density in the central 23 wards, which is what people usually mean when they say "Tokyo", is 14,485/km2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo
- cthalupa 12y ago
  Where is the majority of Japanese internet traffic going? Where is the majority of San Fransiscan internet traffic going? There's more than just population density to take into account. It makes a big difference when you don't need nearly as much long haul backbone capacity because almost all of the destinations for the traffic are close to the subscribers.
jseliger 12y ago
AT&T couldn't even roll out U-Verse in San Francisco: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-buildout-san-francisco/2011-11-17 http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-... , and it's among the hardest cities in the U.S. to build any physical infracture: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/... . As demand for housing the bay area rises supply remains constant, leading to dramatic price increases. These are political problems and they have political solutions. It's not "sad" that Silicon Valley can't get faster Internet access; it's the nature of the way California's politics as a whole have developed. The number of veto players (http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring-Market-ebook/dp/B006C1HX24 http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring...) and NIMBYs ensure the problems California is currently experiencing.
- baddox 12y ago
  Interesting. I have U-verse in Soma. Apparently my apartment building has a "deal" with AT&T so that no other TV/Internet providers can work there. And if you're curious, the U-verse Internet plans are awful.
  - intopieces 12y ago
    That's surprising. I thought the FCC banned those types of deals: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court-upholds-fcc-ban-on-exclusive-cable-deals/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court-uph...
    - baddox 12y ago
      I don't know the details, but apparently the deal had something to do with the wiring of the building when it was constructed in 2008. There have been resident meeting discussing the issue, and apparently the only way to support other ISPs is to pay for new separate wiring in the building, which I'm sure the building management will not do (given the housing demand situation in SF).
jseliger 12y ago
AT&T couldn't even roll out U-Verse in San Francisco: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-buildout-san-francisco/2011-11-17 http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-... , and it's among the hardest cities in the U.S. to build any physical infracture: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/... . As demand for housing the bay area rises supply remains constant, leading to dramatic price increases. These are political problems and they have political solutions. It's not "sad" that Silicon Valley can't get faster Internet access; it's the nature of the way California's politics as a whole have developed. The number of veto players (http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring-Market-ebook/dp/B006C1HX24 http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring...) and NIMBYs ensure the problems California is currently experiencing.
untog 12y ago
Not really. Spread the benefits - Silicon Valley already has the advantage of having a huge amount of investment money swilling around. Give Austin and Kansas better internet connections to see if they can attract larger startup industries of their own.
freeasinfree 12y ago
Because not all cities want to sell their souls to Google: 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... Edit: Google-washed version of what they demand from cities: https://fiber.storage.googleapis.com/legal/googlefibercitychecklist2-24-14.pdf https://fiber.storage.googleapis.com/legal/googlefibercitych...
- nostromo 12y ago
  "Free" access to right-of-way and waived fees for permits are a small price to pay. Better yet, cities should eliminate them entirely to encourage even more competition. All those rules do is create barriers to entry that prop up the existing players.
exelius 12y ago
I doubt you'll ever really see Google Fiber much outside the neighborhoods in downtown Austin (and maybe some up north). This fits the engagement model they've used in other cities where they wire up the dense / wealthy areas and never get around to the rest of the city. Which is also what Verizon, AT&T and Comcast do. The neighborhoods in Austin getting Google Fiber already have U-Verse and TimeWarner Cable.
- usefulcat 12y ago
  From an email I received 30 minutes ago: "Sign-ups are beginning today in South and Southeast Austin. We’re starting with these neighborhoods, and will be opening new areas on an on-going basis." Also, I'm pretty sure that TWC is available pretty much everywhere in Austin.
  - exelius 12y ago
    TWC is, but U-Verse isn't. Most places in Austin (specifically apartment buildings) your only option is TWC (or Grande, if you're in a Grande area). If you look at other cities (Kansas City) only a fraction of the city (the denser, wealthy area) actually has the service 2 years later. Other large areas have been carved out entirely. Construction is "ongoing" in a number of areas but service remains unavailable. Half of the city hasn't even opened sign-ups yet - nearly 4 years after the initial announcement. A large part of KC that does have service was because Google purchased an existing fiber to the home network that already served that area. By and large, Google Fiber is a big promise that's proving pretty tough to deliver quickly. Just google for the myriad of delays the project is facing in the cities it's "launching" in. By the time they're done launching in most of these cities by the end of the decade, the cable/telco companies will have gigabit service available in most of their markets.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
siong1987 12y ago
MonkeyBrains is currently offering Gigabit wireless in SF[1] on Indiegogo, $2500 setup fees and $30 monthly. estimated delivery date is early February next year. 1: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gigabit-wireless-to-the-home--2 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gigabit-wireless-to-the-h...
- jakobegger 12y ago
  I'm sceptical. There've been a couple of Wifi-based local ISPs who went bankrupt where I live (in Austria).
  - simoncion 12y ago
    Monkeybrains has been a WISP at least four years. [0] They also sell service in a Carrier Hotel. I read an article a long while back where they mentioned that: 1) The $250 installation fee, plus the $35/month monthly fee more than covers the costs for each residential customer. 2) The revenue from the stuff in the Hotel would also cover the cost for the residential customers, if the residential customers stopped paying their bills or something. [0] http://twitpic.com/m63rt http://twitpic.com/m63rt
    - monkeybrains 12y ago
      Ha, that is an old service map! We have close to 5000 antennas up now. Also, Business WISP is the new revenue hog for us... Colocation is stable, but not growing. Residential WISP is also growing (and has outstripped colocation). - Rudy
      - simoncion 12y ago
        Yikes! I should have re-read my comment. My prose doesn't make it at all clear that I was pointing to a four year old map. (Sorry about that! :( ) An up-to-date coverage map can be found under the "Coverage Map" section here [0]. It's neat to hear how your new revenue sources have changed over the years. Hope you guys keep growing the business and -one day- push Comcast and ATT out of The City! [0] https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html [1] [1] Or, a direct link to the current-at-the-time-that-I-wrote-these-words coverage map: https://www.monkeybrains.net/2011/islands-of-san-francisco.png https://www.monkeybrains.net/2011/islands-of-san-francisco.p...
driverdan 12y ago
I'm in SoMa right now. No Comcast / cable, AT&T DSL maxes out at 6Mb / 0.8Mb. My Clear hotspot outperforms DSL. The city is so backwards, I don't understand why people clamber to live here.

It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber

by oimaz 12y ago

It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber

It's not something an area "adopts" - Google initiates that discussion, as far as I know: https://fiber.google.com/newcities/ https://fiber.google.com/newcities/

fizzbatter 12y ago
I'm not sure who starts it, but they're very clearly (and openly) rolling it out based on not only logical locations, but willingness of cities. Some places are just hard to get into, like Seattle[0]. [0]: http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-broadband-internet/ http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-...
- mtviewdave 12y ago
  From an email I got from the Google Fiber team last May: "We’ve been impressed by how enthusiastic the City of Mountain View has been as we’ve worked with them over the past few months — so let’s take a moment to thank them for everything they’ve done so far." The City is also working on the physical infrastructure Google needs: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go-ahead http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go... I can't speak for other cities in the area, but for Mountain View, the belief that Google Fiber expansion is being held up by government inaction or unwillingness, is unwarranted. (The one exception is San Francisco, which is a mess whenever anyone wants to build anything anywhere in the City, but SF's an outlier in that regard)

therobot24 12y ago

says that "Santa Clara, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto" are potentials

cmsmith 12y ago

It is sad that with all the would-be entrepreneurs flocking to Silicon Valley and looking for startup ideas, they all shy away from 'hard' problems like disrupting the current ISP model.

sounds 12y ago
Well, I wouldn't say they _all_ shy away from it. But I agree with your premise, that hard problems with large rewards require a different sort of VC pitch and may take longer to see a payoff. And are completely worth pursuing!
na85 12y ago
It's easier to write a javascript framework than it is to solve the hard problems.
- bicknergseng 12y ago
  If by easier you mean "doesn't require vast amounts of capital" then yah.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    I don't think you can claim that it's "solving" the problem if you can throw money at it. That's the business-world equivalent of "brute forcing"... and what we've learned from technology is that you're required to throw ever-larger amounts of resources at the problem until it eventually overwhelms any real-world capacity to "solve" it.
psychometry 12y ago
I think that smart people in both business and technology are attracted to hard problems that are intellectually challenging. Dealing with the corruption and the entrenched bureaucracy of local, state, and federal governments doesn't qualify as an "interesting" problem for these types of people. It's why you don't see many scientists in elected office.

discardorama 12y ago

Agreed. Whenever there's a comparison of our pathetic speeds with those in Korea/Japan, people claim "the US is a huge country", etc. However, San Francisco's density (6600/km^2) is higher than that of Tokyo (6000/km^2); why doesn't SF have FTTH?

baddox 12y ago
Note that both points can be true. Local politics can screw over SF Internet, and it can be more difficult to wire up a larger sparser country.
underwires 12y ago
Tokyo's density is more like 8800/km^2
- delinka 12y ago
  Wikipedia disagrees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#cite_ref-population_3-0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo#cite_ref-population_3-0
ollebro 12y ago
The denstity where I live is about 20/km^2. Me and all my neighbours have fiber and 1Gbit cost about 30$ a month. Sweden is spending a lot of money digging down fiber for everyone in Sweden right now.
jpatokal 12y ago
Comparisons to Tokyo are not necessarily instructive, since Tōkyō-to includes a vast swathe of essentially uninhabited mountains. Population density in the central 23 wards, which is what people usually mean when they say "Tokyo", is 14,485/km2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo
cthalupa 12y ago
Where is the majority of Japanese internet traffic going? Where is the majority of San Fransiscan internet traffic going? There's more than just population density to take into account. It makes a big difference when you don't need nearly as much long haul backbone capacity because almost all of the destinations for the traffic are close to the subscribers.

jseliger 12y ago

AT&T couldn't even roll out U-Verse in San Francisco: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-buildout-san-francisco/2011-11-17 http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-... , and it's among the hardest cities in the U.S. to build any physical infracture: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/... . As demand for housing the bay area rises supply remains constant, leading to dramatic price increases. These are political problems and they have political solutions. It's not "sad" that Silicon Valley can't get faster Internet access; it's the nature of the way California's politics as a whole have developed. The number of veto players (http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring-Market-ebook/dp/B006C1HX24 http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring...) and NIMBYs ensure the problems California is currently experiencing.

baddox 12y ago
Interesting. I have U-verse in Soma. Apparently my apartment building has a "deal" with AT&T so that no other TV/Internet providers can work there. And if you're curious, the U-verse Internet plans are awful.
- intopieces 12y ago
  That's surprising. I thought the FCC banned those types of deals: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court-upholds-fcc-ban-on-exclusive-cable-deals/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/federal-court-uph...
  - baddox 12y ago
    I don't know the details, but apparently the deal had something to do with the wiring of the building when it was constructed in 2008. There have been resident meeting discussing the issue, and apparently the only way to support other ISPs is to pay for new separate wiring in the building, which I'm sure the building management will not do (given the housing demand situation in SF).

jseliger 12y ago

untog 12y ago

Not really. Spread the benefits - Silicon Valley already has the advantage of having a huge amount of investment money swilling around. Give Austin and Kansas better internet connections to see if they can attract larger startup industries of their own.

freeasinfree 12y ago

Because not all cities want to sell their souls to Google: 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... Edit: Google-washed version of what they demand from cities: https://fiber.storage.googleapis.com/legal/googlefibercitychecklist2-24-14.pdf https://fiber.storage.googleapis.com/legal/googlefibercitych...

nostromo 12y ago
"Free" access to right-of-way and waived fees for permits are a small price to pay. Better yet, cities should eliminate them entirely to encourage even more competition. All those rules do is create barriers to entry that prop up the existing players.

exelius 12y ago

I doubt you'll ever really see Google Fiber much outside the neighborhoods in downtown Austin (and maybe some up north). This fits the engagement model they've used in other cities where they wire up the dense / wealthy areas and never get around to the rest of the city. Which is also what Verizon, AT&T and Comcast do. The neighborhoods in Austin getting Google Fiber already have U-Verse and TimeWarner Cable.

usefulcat 12y ago
From an email I received 30 minutes ago: "Sign-ups are beginning today in South and Southeast Austin. We’re starting with these neighborhoods, and will be opening new areas on an on-going basis." Also, I'm pretty sure that TWC is available pretty much everywhere in Austin.
- exelius 12y ago
  TWC is, but U-Verse isn't. Most places in Austin (specifically apartment buildings) your only option is TWC (or Grande, if you're in a Grande area). If you look at other cities (Kansas City) only a fraction of the city (the denser, wealthy area) actually has the service 2 years later. Other large areas have been carved out entirely. Construction is "ongoing" in a number of areas but service remains unavailable. Half of the city hasn't even opened sign-ups yet - nearly 4 years after the initial announcement. A large part of KC that does have service was because Google purchased an existing fiber to the home network that already served that area. By and large, Google Fiber is a big promise that's proving pretty tough to deliver quickly. Just google for the myriad of delays the project is facing in the cities it's "launching" in. By the time they're done launching in most of these cities by the end of the decade, the cable/telco companies will have gigabit service available in most of their markets.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

siong1987 12y ago

MonkeyBrains is currently offering Gigabit wireless in SF[1] on Indiegogo, $2500 setup fees and $30 monthly. estimated delivery date is early February next year. 1: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gigabit-wireless-to-the-home--2 https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gigabit-wireless-to-the-h...

jakobegger 12y ago
I'm sceptical. There've been a couple of Wifi-based local ISPs who went bankrupt where I live (in Austria).
- simoncion 12y ago
  Monkeybrains has been a WISP at least four years. [0] They also sell service in a Carrier Hotel. I read an article a long while back where they mentioned that: 1) The $250 installation fee, plus the $35/month monthly fee more than covers the costs for each residential customer. 2) The revenue from the stuff in the Hotel would also cover the cost for the residential customers, if the residential customers stopped paying their bills or something. [0] http://twitpic.com/m63rt http://twitpic.com/m63rt
  - monkeybrains 12y ago
    Ha, that is an old service map! We have close to 5000 antennas up now. Also, Business WISP is the new revenue hog for us... Colocation is stable, but not growing. Residential WISP is also growing (and has outstripped colocation). - Rudy
    - simoncion 12y ago
      Yikes! I should have re-read my comment. My prose doesn't make it at all clear that I was pointing to a four year old map. (Sorry about that! :( ) An up-to-date coverage map can be found under the "Coverage Map" section here [0]. It's neat to hear how your new revenue sources have changed over the years. Hope you guys keep growing the business and -one day- push Comcast and ATT out of The City! [0] https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html [1] [1] Or, a direct link to the current-at-the-time-that-I-wrote-these-words coverage map: https://www.monkeybrains.net/2011/islands-of-san-francisco.png https://www.monkeybrains.net/2011/islands-of-san-francisco.p...

driverdan 12y ago

I'm in SoMa right now. No Comcast / cable, AT&T DSL maxes out at 6Mb / 0.8Mb. My Clear hotspot outperforms DSL. The city is so backwards, I don't understand why people clamber to live here.