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Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

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Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#131

Post by maxerickson »

xigency wrote: post #83
markbnj wrote: post #58

Earlier 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…

> 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…

It can still be the case that Sweden is easier to serve than New Jersey, it depends on how the people are arranged within, not on the average density.

As an absurd example, you can serve 40% of the population of Alaska by establishing service in Anchorage, which is roughly 0.1% of Alaska by area.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#132

Post by awinder »

markbnj wrote: post #58
staticelf wrote: post #12

That 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…

Assuming you're in Verizon's FiOS service area. They do seem to do a fine job, but I had problems when they were unable to foster a decent union relationship and they went to total shit for a few months. I had issues during this period and was totally stuck.

So if you're in the northeastern corridor, you have 1 option for decent isp service, and it's totally reliant on Scrooge McDuck CEO not boning up a labor agreement. Otherwise you're screwed. USA USA USA indeed.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#133

Post by blacksmith_tb »

gist wrote: post #28
samfisher83 wrote: post #16

Building infrastructure is hard. Even 100 years later we still have original AT&T (Verizon and AT&T) as the dominant telecommunications company. Google also seems to just give up on a lot of its products: Google+ Hangouts Project Ara Google Buzz Google video Orkut Talk Meebo etc. http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/visuel/2015/03/06/google-memori...

> Google also seems to just give up on a lot of its products Yes remember when the mantra was "don't be evil"? They also just let products linger w/o any or many improvements. Google voice is an example. Text to speech is in many cases totally worthless, even with clear speaking speakers.

Which is especially odd given how good TTS is on Android, aka Google Assistant (nee Google Now). It easily outperforms Alexa, Siri, and Cortana. But clearly that's some other team...

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#134

Post by _ea1k »

tastythrowaway2 wrote: post #126
rayiner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

And that is why I don't use tmo. :) I bet that your experience would be different with Verizon, AT&T, or maybe even Sprint.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#136

Post by rayiner »

nickik wrote: post #107
markbnj wrote: post #58

Earlier 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…

Maybe you are a troll, or maybe you just don't understand how networks work. The relevant factor is not the overall size, but rather the population density. Lower population density means more cable per person (on avg.), so it makes it MORE expensive. Sweden is not very dense, large parts are uninhabited forests. Sweden 24 United States 35 New Jersey 467.2 You are basically saying, "I live in the most densely populat…

> Sweden is not very dense, large parts are uninhabited forests.

If they're actually uninhabited, then there is no need to build fiber out there, and you shouldn't count them in the density measure. What you're really interested in is the population-weighted density (i.e. the density of the places where people live).

Compare the list of U.S. urban areas to that of Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_Sweden; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_ar.... The vast majority of the population of Sweden lives in urban areas with between 2,000 to 3,500 people per square kilometer. No urban area in the U.S. is as dense as Stockholm's (3,500). NYC is at the low end of that range (2,000), and is less dense than a bunch of Swedish cities with just ~50-100k people.

Major U.S. urban areas like Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, and St. Louis are under 900 people per square kilometer. Major cities like Houston, Dallas, and Philly are just north of 1,000. That's 1/3 the density of Stockholm.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#137

Post by walshemj »

crivabene wrote: post #60
walshemj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the capital come from to do this and how do you serve remote areas outside of towns.

You normally have government funds that are allocated to reduce the "digital divide" (deploying high speed broadband to places where it does not make any sense to do it financially). Works well especially when the company receiving such funds is only focusing on building the infrastructure to then rent it back to the ISPs that will leverage it to provide services to the customers... A similar model is also used here…

and where does that government fund come from providing BB (not mobile) to all of those remote places in Norway and Sweden is not going to be cheap.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#138

Post by rybosome »

ec109685 wrote: post #94
ilyanep wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really I'm mostly bitter because right now I'm paying $57/mo for 12 Mbps U-Verse in Mountain View. I could pay $70/mo to switch to either 50 Mbps Sonic (currently considering) or 100 Mbps Xfinity (really don't want to deal with Comcast customer service). Aside from Sonic, these all come with a data cap. I was really looking forward to giving Google $70/mo for 1 Gbps or whatever they were offering, and not having a da…

I have had Comcast for 7 years, dealt with their customer service <5 times.

Their customer service has been appalling every time I've dealt with them.

I moved recently and was forced to sign up with them as the only competitor option was 7mbps. After provisioning my service online successfully, I received a call from them stating that I would not be able to receive the the service I had requested at the price they quoted. I could either cut the speed in half, or increase my bill by $70/month. I was furious, since there is absolutely no reason the website should have given me incorrect information...I put in my service address, after all. I refused to drop my speed or pay more. There was a brief pause, then they told me this was fine and activated my service. I provided my own modem, and am still charged the monthly modem rental fee despite attempting to notify them several times.

Worst fucking company I have ever dealt with. I would happily pay more money to anybody else just to take business away from them.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#139

Post by josh2600 »

csours wrote: post #93
josh2600 wrote: post #81

I wrote about this elsewhere and am pasting my thoughts here as I think they're relevant to this community: 1) Google Fiber is dead. Long Live Google ISP. Google cannot afford to lay fiber in the ground because it's a long game and Google doesn't really want to play the long game (they just want to put pressure on competitors so they can move more bits along the wires, generating more searches and more streams with w…

Do you have to literally dig up the street? If so, why?

To put the fiber in the ground.

There are pieces of conduit that we run fiber through into your building. Inside your building there's a fiber termination point that hands off to ethernet. On the other end is a repeater/node that boosts the signal from the other termination point back in the DC.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#140

Post by Ph0X »

samfisher83 wrote: post #16

Building infrastructure is hard. Even 100 years later we still have original AT&T (Verizon and AT&T) as the dominant telecommunications company. Google also seems to just give up on a lot of its products: Google+ Hangouts Project Ara Google Buzz Google video Orkut Talk Meebo etc. http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/visuel/2015/03/06/google-memori...

Yes, laying fiber line is hard. Which is why I think Fiber is pivoting. Look at this: https://webpass.net/blog/google-fiber-agrees-to-acquire-webp...

They do point-to-point wireless transmission. This is perfect for cities, where you can place these on rooftops instead of laying underground fiber.

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