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Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

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Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#151

Post by amazon_not »

oldmanjay wrote: post #110
xigency wrote: post #83

Earlier 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…

These arguments are now decades old and unresolvable since everyone is trying to extract a meaningful comparison from a single dimension of a complicated metric. I'm pretty over them. Can we call a halt?

If you want to use a single metric, why not use people per mile of road?

This correlates well with the only network metric that matters, linear route miles of cable per subscriber needed to provide service. Every (on-grid) dwelling and business is on a street or a road, so if you put a fiber cable on every road or street, then you will pass every inhabitant in the country.

Sweden has 10 people per mile of road. The US has 30 people per mile of road.

Sweden simply does better, despite having to deploy more infrastructure to provide service.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#152

Post by logfromblammo »

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…

I don't think it has all that much to do with population density. I think it has everything to do with Sweden not having AT&T, Comcast, and TWC to establish the ground rules for network deployment with their lobbyists.

You can't really treat an entire region like it has a uniform population density, either. Area is not the relevant unit of measure, but total linear distance of the edges of the spanning tree.

Maybe a more predictive measure for networking costs would be median distance to nearest neighbor?

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#153

Post by itake »

jgrowl wrote: post #97

Forgive me if I'm incorrect... The way I understand it is that they are halting planning in cities that they marked as potential locations, but that does not mean they are discontinuing the roll out and service in cities that are already in progress. For example in Nashville, they have been trying to roll out fiber in Nashville for over a year now but have only been able to install on less than a dozen utility poles…

I think what they are saying is they are not profitable with what they are currently doing and at best, they are re-evaluating their business model to try to find profitability and at worst they are going to close up shop all together.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#154

Post by newjersey »

delecti wrote: post #79
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everyone moving to fiber IS building new infrastructure. Sure, they're continuing to cash in on telephone wire and coax, but fiber is new infrastructure. And Google discovered that you CAN'T just make money deploying Gigabit fiber for $60 a month. Getting even a 50 Mbps fiber circuit around here is hundreds of dollars a month.

Much (most?) "new" fiber is just companies lighting up existing dark fiber infrastructure.

The expensive part is "the last mile". I imagine laying down cable on the side of the I-70 is easier than laying fiber in Manhattan under the pavement, above the utilities, and above the subway system. Or finding space to put up those boxes to "land" the fiber optic cables for a neighborhood.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#155

Post by maxerickson »

DasIch wrote: post #113
zzzeek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. well that would be socialism. Sorry comrade, here in the US we have this thing called FREEDOM. It Trumps your smart/efficient/reasonable solutions any day.

I do wonder what would happen, if networks for water, waste, electricity or even streets would have to be build on a large scale in the political climate of the US today.

It depends on what you mean by large scale, but there is nothing unusual about a development with hundreds of new homes, with complete utilities (maybe even a small wastewater treatment system for the development).

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#156

Post by Xixi »

rayiner wrote: post #53
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…

The question is whether the Nordic model is scalable. Here is the OECD data on broadband deployment: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2-OECD-WiredWirelessBB-2... . It breaks down DLS, cable, and fiber subscribers per 100 residents. Sweden: 11.4 DSL, 6.6 cable, 17.5 fiber. U.S. 8.2 DSL, 18.5 cable, 3.4 fiber. U.K. 30.6 DSL, 7.2 cable, 0.0 fiber. Germany: 28.9 DSL, 8.1 cable, 0.6 fiber. France: 33.3 DSL, 4.5 cable,…

"Stuck on DSL"? I beg to differ: I'll take DSL in Paris over cable in NYC any day. Cheaper, faster and much more reliable. That said large European countries are definitely late when it comes to fiber...

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#157

Post by hash-set »

talmand wrote: post #124
j1vms wrote: post #75

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." 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 prefe…

The US has a corruption problem.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#158

Post by lameexcuse333 »

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…

Yet the country put people on the Moon, built that highway system that spans edge to edge, has telephone services across it, places cables across oceans, built oil pipelines running crazy lengths, among numerous other ridiculously complex engineering projects.

But "bury big tubes with fiber optic cables in them" is somehow too complicated of an engineering task?

The reality is we could get it done, there's just no political will cause the status quo benefits the entrenched players.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#159

Post by hnal943 »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #130
daveFNbuck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

GP did mention that his connection is unreliable, which is true for me as well (suburb of Milwaukee, WI). When it's working, it's fast enough. But there are plenty of days it's slow or not working when I want it. That I'd like fixed.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#160

Post by amazon_not »

rayiner wrote: post #136
nickik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_…

What you really are interested in is linear density.

The only metric that matters when building a network is linear route miles of cable per subscriber needed to provide service.

There is a single metric you can use to approximate this for any country: people per mile of road. Every (on-grid) dwelling and business is on a street or a road, so if you put a fiber cable on every road or street, then you will pass every inhabitant in the country.

Sweden has 10 people per mile of road. The US has 30 people per mile of road.

Sweden simply does better, despite having to deploy more infrastructure to provide service.

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