Live data from Hacker News

Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

nytimes.com

251–260 of 382 posts

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#251
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

DC and Baltimore are typically lumped in as one metro area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore%E2%80%93Washington_m...

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

GP said "regardless of whether the natural monopoly is municipal or Comcast", i.e. both are bad options. Not sure why you are asking the GP to defend a claim that wasn't made.

Because a monopoly isn't inherently bad, if regulated properly. My monopoly water, gas, and electric providers do just fine; all highly reliably (and either a small or no profit right is granted).

Why not my internet? Why can't it be a regulated utility? Because of fear mongers and corruption.

Full steam ahead on municipal bandwidth it appears, and coming for politicians with pitchforks who oppose it.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Look at the HSPA map on page 5. Look at how little of the country you need to cover to hit 99.6% of the population.

That's an interesting observation. I wonder if that 99.6% figure is a mistake or if they use a different coverage definition for wireless, because the numbers don't add up.

Looking at the map, the northernmost county has barely any HSPA coverage. Nevertheless that county has a population of a quarter of a million inhabitants. To get 99.6% coverage, you'd still have to cover over 200 000 of those and everybody else in the country. That's clearly impossible as 100 000 inhabitants in that county live outside the ten largest "metro" areas.

There's just no way of not covering a lot of roads if if you aim for coverage in the high nineties with such a dispersed population.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#254

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_…

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…

> The suburban house people complain that it costs them 1-2k Euro to pay for the fibre, but they pay for it.

I think that's the difference - the costs are upfront, not paid by capital/loan with the subscriber having to pay for it eventually.

Rationally, most people wouldn't want to pay that much into a US cable/net provider, considering their historical experience with them.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#255
post #82

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 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.

Uhh, you do realize the areas most receptive to fiber have been conservative red states and cities, correct?

https://fiber.google.com/about/

By contrast, California municipalities have made building fiber difficult[1].

[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/blog/morning-roundup/2...

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#256
post #156
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

When the DSL network is giving 50Mb/s or more, there's much less incentive for users to choose the fibre service.

I'm on a 100Mb/s cable service, even though there's fibre to my new-built apartment, since the cable company seemed much more competent when I moved in.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#257
post #26
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…

Even with 1Gbps from other providers, I'd still prefer Google. I think they're far less likely to do scummy things like impose bandwidth caps.

Will they pick up the phone for a personal subscriber, though?

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#258
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…

> 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.

Did you hear anyone talk about broadband during this year's presidential election?

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#259

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…

> For example, I have 250/100 mbit/s for free. This isn't "free" - your taxes pay for it.

No, his pays for it with his rent, the same way my rent includes heating.

The owner of the building has probably signed a deal to get a good rate for everyone. Fine if you like it, but a waste of money if you'd prefer a different provider.

Re: Google Fiber Cutting Jobs and Halting Rollout

#260
This is discouraging. I thought that Google Fiber was over-hyped for the number of users actually connected, but didn't think they'd just give up.

Perhaps Sonic, which provides gigabit Internet service to parts of San Francisco at a lower price than Google [1], will take over Google's operation there.

[1] https://www.sonic.com/sanfrancisco

Post reply on HN