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Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

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Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#91

Post by cdancette »

ailideex wrote: post #88
cdancette wrote: post #17

This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the deployment). They planned to equip 50% of the territory by 2017 (which was achieved), and 100% by 2022. Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.

> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. This is just categorically false. Where I live our state owned telco is horrible and you have to jump through hoops to cancel your account with them. People have to keep paying them for literally months (sometimes more than 6) after they cancel their service with them to cancel as they just do not process cancellati…

And where are you living? This sounds a lot like being due a high level of corruption. I think that's one challenge to overcome, you're right that public services are not automatically better

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#92

Post by briandear »

masklinn wrote: post #19
cdancette wrote: post #17

This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the deployment). They planned to equip 50% of the territory by 2017 (which was achieved), and 100% by 2022. Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.

That only works where the government is willing though, see Australia for a case study of the opposite. And keep in mind that in France currently "fiber" means "at least FFTN", much of rural france won't see FTTH for a long time.

Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it?

France claiming 100% fiber by 2022? They are dreaming, or perhaps even delusional. No way they can get FTTH by 2022. There are some places that don’t have any connectivity and you have to use Satelite.

They’re going to fix that in 4 years?

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#93

Post by endtime »

adamcharnock wrote: post #36

I wonder, was Google Fibre ever intended to succeed in the traditional sense? Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry by 1) scaring the incumbents into improving, and 2) expanding consumers' Overton windows[1] regarding what they could/should expect. Google presumably wants to ensure its services can be delivered to consumers, so this would seem towards that end. As another commenter notes…

I worked for Fiber for two years. It was both (wanting to succeed as a business and wanting to shift the industry), with a primary focus on succeeding as a business, or at least that was what the internal messaging was.

I won't comment on any possible changes in the last couple years or why they may have happened, except to say that to the best of my knowledge, at no point was the sentiment, "We've shifted the industry enough that we can stop pretending to want to succeed."

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#95

Post by Spooky23 »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #81
adriaanm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I use them in Lausanne. 777 CHF/year is a great deal! Interesting model: the price is the same for everyone, while bandwidth is the maximum they can offer in your location. Excellent support. I bought a TP-LINK MC220L + patch cables from them, and hooked up an edgerouter lite for PPPoE & VLAN tagging. Already had a wifi router (google wifi), which sadly can't do VLAN tagging. Haven't noticed any issues with the do…

That model has a downside for the customer: the company has no incentive to invest to upgrade your speed, as you already pay them the one fixed amount.

Market pressures take care of that when they exist. Networking is a pure commodity business, you can squeeze a lot of cost out of it, but in the absence of competition the providers get fat, lazy and rich.

Once you deliver the fiber, the marginal cost of increasing port speed is a rounding error as you do routine infrastructure refresh.

Where I work, we’re increasing many wan links to 10Gb because the cost is marginal at scale. In some cases, it can save money versus an older slower tech!

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#96

Post by ailideex »

cdancette wrote: post #91
ailideex wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. This is just categorically false. Where I live our state owned telco is horrible and you have to jump through hoops to cancel your account with them. People have to keep paying them for literally months (sometimes more than 6) after they cancel their service with them to cancel as they just do not process cancellati…

And where are you living? This sounds a lot like being due a high level of corruption. I think that's one challenge to overcome, you're right that public services are not automatically better

Where I live is irrelevant as this speaks to the point that "profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.". They can and do all the time. Maybe not in France and maybe not in USA - but the for profit model works just fine here. Why it works so well some places and not at all in others is the real kicker.

And yes the problem is exceptionally high levels of corruption - but if the Govt does not have a self granted monopoly on providing services this provides some measure of containment for corruption and also means that you don't have to pay for everything twice as I have to do now.

And sure - I would like to have a non corrupt govt - but that won't happen ever. So people who make this blatantly false statement that Govt services will always be superior from private services is just giving fuel to the cash grab perpetrated by the Govt of my country.

So yeah, thanks, I guess - thanks for giving the govt of my country excuses for looting even more money - like they needed any to begin with.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#97

Post by JoBrad »

300bps wrote: post #66
adamcharnock wrote: post #36

I wonder, was Google Fibre ever intended to succeed in the traditional sense? Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry by 1) scaring the incumbents into improving, and 2) expanding consumers' Overton windows[1] regarding what they could/should expect. Google presumably wants to ensure its services can be delivered to consumers, so this would seem towards that end. As another commenter notes…

Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry I’ve been a happy Verizon FIOS customer for 12 years. For $140 per month I have TV with every pay channel, landline phone and gigabit Internet. The gigabit is relatively recent but I get full gigabit speeds for up and down and it is amazing. I think you’re right that I don’t believe Verizon would’ve offered this at this price without the threat of Go…

Comcast had data caps on their broadband packages in Nashville until Google Fiber showed up. GF has shown very little expansion here, but the other guys definitely felt it.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#98

Post by ailideex »

Feniks wrote: post #4

Not really surprising, my own country is still profiting from the massive investment in cable done by the state owned telecom operators in the 80s. Infrastructure like this is something that can only be done with government support.

> Infrastructure like this is something that can only be done with government support.

Bullshit.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#99

Post by yaantc »

kosei wrote: post #53

I think some people still don't realize quite how expensive it is to truly build out a national Telecom network. I remember when Clearwire raised ~$7 billion [1] and still wasn't in many markets and rural areas, ultimately selling to Sprint for pennies on the dollar. The infrastructure costs are staggering, and even a rich company like Google can't just dip their toes in hoping to succeed. [1] https://www.crunchbase.…

Yes, I agree this is the key here. Google realized FTTH is too expensive in most places, and still are looking at wireless IIUC. Except for new buildings in dense areas or similar, it's likely that bringing fiber close and going over the remaining distance with either 3.5 GHz radio or millimeter waves (former better for range, later for available BW) makes more sense. We'll see soon how well it works in practice, 5G NR deployments will start with fixed wireless like this.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#100

Post by smileysteve »

cm2187 wrote: post #8

But is wireless seriously an alternative to fiber? I mean with 4k streaming spreading, what will happen on a super bowl night? There is only one shared bandwidth.

> what will happen on a super bowl night?

Wireless multicast means that the superbowl will be sent out once to many subscribers.

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