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Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

nytimes.com

231–240 of 382 posts

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#231
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Google maps around say Blacksburg VA or Charleston WV. Which are both is city, city, city, forest. Which is fairly common across much of the US. The eastern seabord being basically one big city is very much an exception not the rule. The US has ~1/3 it's population in ~1/20th of it's land.

The difference is that Blacksburg and Charleston have 50,000 people, while Munich has 1.5 million people.

Las Vegas has 600,000 people and the same thing. While less extreme, Chicago has over 2.5 million people and farmland is very close by.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You could cover 90% of the population of Sweden while only covering a small fraction of the roads. You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network.

> You could cover 90% of the population of Sweden while only covering a small fraction of the roads.

Is this just a guess or do you have anything to back this up with?

> You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network.

Here's a map of xDSL coverage: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/20110...

Let's see how you propose to cover that land area without also covering much of the road network.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#234
post #58

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#236
post #27
post #13

Well google announced they were exploring a fiber rollout in Chicago. Now both AT&T along with Time Warner Cable have 1G service throughout parts of the city. Alternatively, one can look at this not as a failure, but as a success. The point of Google fiber was to force carriers to get faster internet to everyone. It appears that it has been working. This benefits google directly as their properties such as Youtube ca…

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'm in Mountain View too. I agree it's pretty frustrating that this is supposedly the tech center of the universe, and our home internet is lousy. Five minutes from Google HQ and no Google Fiber for the forseeable future now.

FWIW, I recently switched from Sonic to Comcast and I'm relatively happy now. But that had something to do with Sonic being unable to provide a good connection in my old apartment building.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly?

This is what my city is doing. They just brought fiber to my home, and I pay $50/mo for bidirectional gigabit. I pay for it alongside my trash and water bill. (Longmont, CO)

I live in Boulder and every time I visit friends in Longmont and use their wifi I die a little inside. Count those blessings my friend!

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#238

Just as expected. It was just to force the network carriers to speed up wasn't it?

Didn't really work because the cost to deploy nationwide 1 gig is super expensive. It's only going to happen if there is profit in it.

If Google wanted to create a market they shouldn't have priced it so low. Even if you could do nationwide gigabit for 70 bucks, there wouldnt be any profit.

Isps aren't going to do a massive capital expenditure to make the same money.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compan…

In the US, it's locally monopolized with a single provider. Sometimes you can get DSL, but since Verizon employees get fired for fixing outages now, that will be gone soon.

Interesting, I had to go searching, but here's the info on the firing of Verizon employees:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/verizo...

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#240

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.

Portland spent a lot of time and resources (during a serious housing crisis), bent over backwards to give them everything they wanted... and they decide to just punk out, lay off their operations team and walk away from years of planning because they can "do fast wireless for some apartment buildings". Thanks, guys. There's a tiny ISP (US Internet) in Minneapolis that's already wired half of the city with fiber with…

That's awesome. I absolutely hope they come to Portland as this city loves to support the underdog. :)
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