They backed out of Portland after spending a ton of money and time with city officials. Sad to hear this is not happening and hope Google finds a way to get back into this because the options today are a joke. This will just embolden companies like Comcast to charge more for horrible service.
Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
121–130 of 382 posts
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#122That sucks for citizens of the US. I think the Swedish (Nordic?) model for bringing internet connectivity to it's citizens is superior. The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. For example, I have 250/1…
When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population…
Except I'm relatively certain that like most states once you're outside one of the major cities the options and quality of broadband access drops significantly. In many non-US countries this is not the case. Likewise the level you're able to get isn't even equally available in main cities across the U.S. My hometown of Milwaukee WI for example has very poor options for s moderately large city.
Compare this to a relatively small city like Pereslavl in Russia where I lived for a summer. It's about 120some km north of Moscow but the base options for most of the ISPs was 50/50; note the plural on ISPs. We had more choices and better service in a small Russian city than most states have across their major cities. And my girlfriend (Russian native) was annoyed that we had to pay an "outrageous 450 ruble" for the access.
It's not just a matter of size with the U.S., the planning in general is very poor and not built out compared to many countries. The priority on the last mile networks just seems to be lower or more poorly managed.
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly?
> Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly? Because monopolies are wasteful and horrible at things like customer service. The fiber in the ground is a natural monopoly. Connecting that fiber to the rest of the world isn't. You don't want the monopoly to extend one inch more than it has to, regardless of whether the natural monopoly is municipal or Comcast.
Do you have any proof Comcast being the monopoly is "better" than your municipality (who doesn't have to show a profit)? Or is this just how you feel?
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population…
> When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." I don't know if the comparison should be valid. Over the past 100 years the US has done incredible things. From developing the first transistor to applied atomic power to the first man on the moon, and more relevantly to yo…
If by America you mean the citizens, yes we want to do it and have made it quite clear we've wanted it for quite a while.
First problem is the cost of the infrastructure for such a huge space. We did offer to subsidize it to a point and the companies took the money without delivering. As usual, no repercussions.
Second problem is very few politicians, in office or wishing to run, will listen to the citizens and prefer taking money from corporations to maintain the status quo.
It's a bigger issue than it seems on the outside.
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Abusive Monopoly" is the definition of most cable providers. Its a long sad history of civic corruption and greed. The actual cable should be turned into a utility, and the content competed for channel by channel, service by service, in an open market.
Well every county has a local county cable commission (or something similar) who set the policies for the cable company operating in that particular county. I did a semester project at Comcast Montgomery County MD which is (or was at the time) a top 5 county for them. Every aspect of their business, from what the prices were to where call centers could be had to be approved by the local commission. You might say that…
Not every county. It depends on the state.
Florida, for instance, is decided via the state, no local city or county has power at that level.
In other states, it can be set at the city level (different franchise agreements for each city without any county say).
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden and ... New Jersey Except that Sweden is 20 times larger than New Jersey in area. The continental US is 18 times larger than Sweden, so it is actually a better (if terrible) comparison geographically. Maybe in your argument you should compare Sweden with Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, or Minnesota instead of New Jersey, which each have at leas…
I'm not sure you can just look at just total population and total land area. The pattern of development in Europe is very different. I just got back from Munich. You go 15 minutes outside the city and it's farmland! In the U.S., it's low-density suburbs for hours in every direction outside a major city. Incidentally, I didn't get LTE service in the farmland between Munich and the airport. That would be quite unusual…
'That would be quite unusual in the U.S.'
...depending on your provider. try driving around in the sticks of Maryland just 20 minutes outside Baltimore, good luck getting EDGE on tmo!
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#127That sucks for citizens of the US. I think the Swedish (Nordic?) model for bringing internet connectivity to it's citizens is superior. The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. For example, I have 250/1…
When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population…
> I have no complaints.
Very few people have no complaints when it comes to Comcast, one of the most hated companies in the country. And you have no alternative besides Comcast. If it were regulated like a utility that would be one thing, but you're at the mercy of a powerful monopoly which has been know to play all kinds of anti-consumer tricks. I'd recommend keeping a close eye on your bill.
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zero fiber in the UK? That looks wrong. Although, a lot of "fiber" sold in the UK is not actually fiber all the way to the home.
Only FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) should count as fiber. In Belgium one of the larger cable providers used to advertise their plans as 'FiberNet' while it was only FTTN (fiber-to-the-neighbourhood) and the last step was cable (with significantly lower uplink speeds than what would be attainable with fiber).
We have a lot of fibre-to-the-cabinet in the UK, which means you may only have copper for a few hundred metres. It's obviously nowhere near as good as fibre to the home, but I think lumping it in with plain old DSL is a bit unfair - a lot of people get 60+mbps down and 18+mbps up which isn't too shabby internationally.
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population…
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is a bit smaller and more densely populated than New Jersey. Yet I have an unreliable and expensive 20mbps connection. If this issue were about size, Silicon Valley would have world-class high speed internet.
Silicon Valley has 100 or 200 Mbit Internet options available, and for the lucky, gigabit Internet. Funny thing is, like money in the Valley, it's very unevenly distributed. (I pay ~$50/month for 100Mbit)
Silicon Valley covers a large number of municipalities, and without specifying which one you're in, all I can say sorry, 20 Mbit is slow these days.
Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population…
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is a bit smaller and more densely populated than New Jersey. Yet I have an unreliable and expensive 20mbps connection. If this issue were about size, Silicon Valley would have world-class high speed internet.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the problem is the sense of good enough. I have the option to purchase 100mbps but I am only paying for 20mbps because it is virtually good enough for everything I do: working from home, video chat, streaming HD videos, backing up to iCloud, etc. When I rent HD movies from iTunes, my wait time is 0.
Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of cheap super high-speed internet, just like I like my streets to be repaved nicely every year.