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Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

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Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#211

Post by Aloha »

hash-set wrote: post #157
talmand wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In general, democracies have corruption problems, the US doesn't seem any worse than the median.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#212

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #204
kmicklas wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Wat. NYC is over 10k/km^2. Manhattan is over 25k/km^2.

The "NYC" urban area encompasses NYC + Westchester + Long Island + Newark + parts of CT. Half of the population that lives/works in/around New York lives outside of the city proper.

NYC is not 13,318 sq mi which is what your talking about aka an area ~200 miles wide and bigger than the state of Maryland. By comparison DC is 61 square miles total your figure is like lumping DC, Baltimore, and Richmond VA into one metro area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#213

Post by JeremyBanks »

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...

I agree with some of this, but be reasonable.

It's silly to describe what happened to Google Video as "just giving up". They abandoned that specific product because it was getting no traction. Instead, they won the entire category for at least a generation by buying YouTube, working out all of its licensing issues, and integrating the best elements of Google Video's features and design. You'd be hard-pressed to argue they made was the wrong choice for anybody.

Meebo was practically an acqui-hire, never really a Google product.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#214

Post by secure »

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.

I think “Don’t be evil” is way to amenable to mean “Don’t do what I personally don’t like”.

In this concrete example, I don’t think “Google cancelled a product” can be equated with “Google is evil”.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#215

Post by oldmanjay »

amazon_not wrote: post #151
oldmanjay wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 U…

No, my point is that these single metric comparisons are masturbation. When I asked for a halt, that wasn't an invitation to masturbate all over me next.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#216

Post by jamesblonde »

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_…

Anecdotal evidence. I live in Stockholm. I talk at a conference about once/month, nearly always outside Sweden. Nearly every industrial conference has problems with wifi. Never in Sweden. Anywhere do we have problems at hotels, venues, massive conferences. We have the bandwidth. Most other countries do not, and leaving Sweden is always like going back in time, tbh. Everybody i know has fibre to the home, irrespective if they live in an appartment or suburban house. The suburban house people complain that it costs them 1-2k Euro to pay for the fibre, but they pay for it. The people who don't have fibre to the home are mostly old people (lots of them!) and farmers (and lots of them have it anyways).

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#217

Post by crivabene »

walshemj wrote: post #137
crivabene wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From taxes, or EU subsidies (which are still taxes). But it's the same concept as building roads or other basic infrastructure. As a government, you invest in creating infrastructure in your country even if in purely commercial terms is less profitable. You reduce the digital divide, you lay out infrastructure for future growth, you create jobs, and so on. Different models, pros and cons for each one.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#218

Post by amazon_not »

rayiner wrote: post #172
amazon_not wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But neither the U.S. nor Sweden puts fiber on every road and street. Only 60% of Swedish households have fiber, and you can reach that figure without serving households outside of relatively dense towns. Also, it looks like you're counting Sweden's vast unpaved road network, which makes up about 75% of its roads. I bet very few of the 60% of households with fiber live on an unpaved road. If you compare paved roads on…

> But neither the U.S. nor Sweden puts fiber on every road and street.

Firstly, Sweden pretty much intends to do so. The official goal is to bring at least 100 Mbps service to at least 90% of the population by 2020. Many municipalities/states have programs to build out fiber to everybody.

Sweden also already has a cable running to almost every premise, so in practice every road and every street is already passed. In 2011 xDSL covered 98,5% of the population and only 1100 households or businesses had no service or less than 1 Mbps service.

Secondly, it's an estimate, but it's a far better estimate than population density or any other single metric presented so far. It correlates with the linear miles of cable needed to pass all premises, which is the deciding factor in determining costs. It is also readily available and it measures compratively how hard it would be wire up a nation.

By this measure Sweden does far better, even having a need for more infrastructure per inhabitant to reach the same end result, i.e. broadband service for everyone.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#219

Post by badmadrad »

amazon_not wrote: post #160
rayiner wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sweden does "x" better argument is getting tired. Sweden has a lot of negative outcomes as well from socializing so much. Our problem isn't that fact that internet isn't socialized its that its monopolized by 3-4 companies. The incentive to innovate at rapid rate is not there but rather keep the status quo. That being said Google and Verizon are two fiber companies that are leading innovation and forcing other companies to keep up or get left behind by leaving a vacuum of people that want that service. Thats how/why capitalism works. Over time fiber options will rise and we will be in a better position to have some options of our provider instead of being stuck with a state run service that could become crappier over time.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#220

Post by raesene6 »

sgt101 wrote: post #147
oarsinsync wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, there's very little fibre in the UK. VDSL (DSL in that list) is being sold as fibre, and cable (cable in that list) is being sold as fibre, but cruicially, are not fibre. Very few even vaguely close to fibre-like services (e.g. Hyperoptic) in the UK

I have 330mbs fttp in the UK, and I live in the countryside. 2% have fttp cover now, relatively few take it though. There are very few use cases right now, I had 12mbs vdsl before, and I hardly notice that there is a difference to be honest, although my wife is a photographer and the high speed upload is a god send for her.

Is that the FTTP on demand product?

I've asked BT about that one and it looks like it's select exchanges only (even after FTTC has been rolled out), which is a shame as I'd happily pay for it.

The only "superfast" option I've got at the moment is a full leased line, whcih isn't a viable prospect for residential Internet..

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