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Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

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Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#121

Post by jrockway »

curiouscats wrote: post #88
jrockway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on Google Fiber. We have pretty good customer support; call us 24/7, someone in the US will help you with pretty much anything you want that's Fiber-related (WiFi too slow? TV remote not working? That sort of thing.)

I just hope the commitment to good service that Google Fiber has started with isn't trashed by foolish executives. The state of customer dis-service in the USA is so strong that it seems pretty likely any company that has good service for awhile will shift resources into bigger paychecks for executives and fewer resources for customer support. I hope Google Fiber avoids this situation. Some companies do but not very…

I think good customer service is pretty much essential to running a service like Fiber, because there is no code that I can write that's going to smooth over the fact that we killed your lawn while running the fiber through your yard. It happens :/

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#122

Post by visarga »

atburrow wrote: post #111

This is exciting news! In Chicago, I'm currently living in a high rise where the fastest plan I can get is 24 Mbps for around $80/mo. My high rise has an exclusivity contract with AT&T U-Verse. I've spoken with AT&T reps and they can't offer any higher speeds. I also talked to property management and they said there's nothing they can do for me. They are locked into an exclusivity contract with AT&T for the wires in…

> I can get is 24 Mbps for around $80/mo

Bucharest internet pricing is 10$ / 1gbps, so that would come at about 320x price ratio, and still 5x cheaper than Google Fiber.

Funny thing, the ISP I am getting this from set the price for 100mbps and 300mbps the same, 7$/month. As if a 200mbps difference is trivial.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#123

Post by rhino369 »

vially wrote: post #101
nurblieh wrote: post #51

Huge fan of Webpass. 1 Gbps of IPv4/6 with great customer service for $55 a month. It can't be beat, if it's available to you. I hope this is a win for the Webpass employees, in the short and long term. Thanks for all the bits!

That still seems pretty expensive. In Romania you get the same service (1 Gbps with IPv4/6) for less than $12 (45 RON).

That's pretty cheap but you have to account for purchase price parity. Local goods are more expensive in America than Romania. By about 2X. That includes cost of local labor.

For example, the average Romanian wage is like 8,000 dollars a year. But that 8,000 dollars goes a lot further.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#124

Post by rhino369 »

xhrpost wrote: post #109
dsk139 wrote: post #77

Former Webpass employee here. Was one of the first software eng. hires. This is a great example of a bootstrapped business focused on customer experience that built up with no outside funding (that I know of). Congrats Charles & team.

The idea of starting an ISP without outside funding (unless you're a millionaire already) is pretty astonishing. Been researching the possibility of this myself recently and costs of infrastructure are simple astronomical.

Going wireless is a lot cheaper. But you are right. They had to have had either founders capital or they took bank loans after they signed contracts.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#125

Post by OrwellianChild »

techsupporter wrote: post #70
rayiner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a brilliant business model: expand slowly based on demand only to dwelling units dense enough to be economically viable.

It definitely is and a bunch of small companies are doing an amazing job of it (Seattle has three such companies, for example). It is also one big reason why I really want municipal fiber. There are a lot more "houses or smaller and/or older apartment buildings" than there are new condo or high-end apartment buildings. It would be nice to have some competition in those dwellings alongside the cable company, usually w…

Fellow Seattleite - who is doing this here? I have a personal interest... :-)

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#126

Post by baddox »

pyvpx wrote: post #86
baddox wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no public IP, which was really disappointing when I switched from AT&T Uverse.

I'm always intensely curious what residential (and these days, even business) customers want with a dedicated, publicly routable IPv4 address. why were you disappointed?

I wouldn't use it for anything too resource-intensive or important. It's just nice to have my home development environment available over SSH for the rare coding emergency. I shouldn't exaggerate how disappointed I am. It's obviously not very crucial to me, since it would be easy enough to set up a cheap VPN for tunneling but I haven't bothered to do that yet.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#127

Post by p1mrx »

boulos wrote: post #75
baddox wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only complaint is that for home service there is no way to get a public IP address, so you've got to get an external server if you want to access your home computers from elsewhere on the Internet.

Yeah they ran out of v4 addresses a little while back, but you can always get an IPv6 address from them. To avoid having most people get confused by IPv6 though they seem to have some form of layered IPv4 NAT (one IP per building or something, and then your "own" IP), which in a different building I discovered and found more confusing than "oh look, just straightforward v6 only".

> "oh look, just straightforward v6 only"

An ISP that doesn't provide at least outbound IPv4 connectivity would rapidly lose all of its customers.

IPv6-only with NAT64 is doable when you control the set of attached devices; see T-Mobile US, with phones that implement 464XLAT.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#128

Post by kornholi »

baddox wrote: post #126
pyvpx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always intensely curious what residential (and these days, even business) customers want with a dedicated, publicly routable IPv4 address. why were you disappointed?

I wouldn't use it for anything too resource-intensive or important. It's just nice to have my home development environment available over SSH for the rare coding emergency. I shouldn't exaggerate how disappointed I am. It's obviously not very crucial to me, since it would be easy enough to set up a cheap VPN for tunneling but I haven't bothered to do that yet.

why not just use IPv6?

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#129

Post by walrus01 »

010a wrote: post #103
sametmax wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a good deal in the US ? Wow, in France for $40 we got: - 12Gbps (100G Fiber at no additional cost in supported area) - Free landline call to a 100 countries and free cell calls to France - HD TV - and a media center with recording capabilities, a blue ray player, public FTP and network harddrive - for 3 more $, you get a cell phone line with 2 hours of communication and unlimited text, or for $20 unlimited ca…

100G fiber? I had no idea France was running 4x EDR Infiniband to their citizens' homes.

I demand only the finest quality 16QAM low FEC coherent single wavelength 100 Gbps interface for my condo, doesn't everyone have an ASR9010 with $50,000 100GbE linecard in their closet???

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#130

Post by tbrock »

pyvpx wrote: post #84
gruez wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price discrimination. Businesses tend to be more able to pay than home users.

if by discrimination you mean guarantees versus best-efforts. business class services, speaking generally, are less or not at all over subscribed while providing contractual guarantees to service performance and problem resolution. residential is best effort. they'll do their best to keep it up and give you the speeds you pay for, but if it doesn't work out that way sometimes, well, they're sorry about that.

Actually those are the rates for the best effort class of service. The business class service where you have guarantees is even more expensive.
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