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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

#101
post #73
post #3

Google seems to halfass a lot of their products. I really had expected it would at least be live in the Bay Area right now. It's not like Google doesn't have the money.

I think Google has too.much money. They can try a lot of stuff but there isn't much pressure to succeed.

Or moreover it shows that money isn't necessarily the limiting factor in success that many perceive it to be.

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

#102

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.

It would help if the USA was as small as France.

France has approximately the same population as the Northeast megalopolis (the Boston–Washington Corridor) but the French population is spread out over three times the area.

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

#103

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

Corruption is less of a problem than incompetence and general “not giving a fuck.” Municipal infrastructure makes the most sense in relatively dense cities. But in America, cities are disproportionately where poor people live. (Contrast say Paris, where poor people live in the suburbs and rich people in the city). These are disadvantaged voting blocs that won’t (or can’t) complain that loudly when their public services suck. I saw this starkly when I lived in Wilmington and Philadelphia. The busses in Wilmington might as well not keep any schedule. But nobody cares because the DuPont executives don’t rise the bus, they live in the very nice surrounding suburbs and drive in.

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

#104

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.

Australia's nbnco would disagree with you.

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

#105

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.

Well, to be fair to the private sector... it's only thanks to Xavier Niel that the French have such affordable internet (and now mobile too).

Before he disrupted those two markets, it was just as bad as the US. Remember the "Forfait RSA" the government crowed about having negotiated for the poorest citizens? 40mn and 40SMS for 10 euros per month...

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

#107
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.

I don't think that's the case. Google certainly has more disposable cash available at less bureaucratic cost than many country's governments. They just lack the interest. If there's a single company with a forever long track record of half-assing products and never finishing them, only to cancel them later with disregard to current customers, that's Google. They make so much money that nothing really matters for them…

You clearly underestimate the cost of providing fibre to every house. This is why in the past electricity, water and phone lines were rolled out by the government.

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

#108
Also, they didn't really seek to keep expenses down where they could. Both the jack and the router are proprietary, for instance. Also, in very high density areas like high rise apartments, normal cat6a would more than suffice at half the price of single-mode fiber, and that's not even taking into the account the price of switch equipment.

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

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to keep in mind that with enough antennas (and enough VERY high bandwidth connections between the antennas - but only has to exist on the service provider side, plus the antennas can be pretty close together and still work) there is, in theory, 2^n interference patterns, each of which is localized. Each of which can transmit data. If you use the interference patterns to transmit data instead of the signals d…

I don't understand why people keep saying that we won't be able to satisfy bandwidth demand on wireless. Is it possible, from an engineering perspective, to build a wireless network with very high bandwidth and generous transfer limits? Absolutely! You just need to increase last mile bandwidth every time you get a new subscriber, so cells never get overloaded. Is it possible, from a market incentive perspective, to b…

> Is it possible, from a market incentive perspective, to build a wireless ISP business where it's more profitable to increase last mile bandwidth or turn away customers, rather than overload a cell? I'm not sure.

As someone who's now lived >5 years in 3 locations, I've always found that there are things that oppose last mile bandwidth buildouts and there are things that don't matter.

What doesn't prevent capacity buildouts:

large costs (but within an order of magnitude or so of reasonable, I'm not talking "FTTH to a fishing village on a remote island" large costs)

technological limitations (again within an order of magnitude of what's possible)

What prevents capacity buildouts:

monopolies

cartels

absurd (and required) levels of capital investment (like buried fiber/copper capacity)

And you know what I find another huge positive about wireless networks ? There's 15 in every place I've lived. 2 "really" independent ones, 1 "more or less"/partially independent one, and a dozen or so that piggyback on the others' networks, providing for more price differentiation. Physically, there's room for something like up to 5 truly independent ones, using different frequency ranges. If the military were to get off half the spectrum, we can easily make that 20, so if the situation gets bad, there is an actual reserve. This means that governments can always threaten the existing providers with allowing another one in, in a way that they can't with wired networks.

Wired providers, there was never more than 2. Mostly there was just 1. Even when there were 2, they were absolutely not comparable (I mean, I've done telecommunications consulting for huge companies, I know there are really 50 or so, with 49 having extremely limited reach, unusable for consumers). This lead to monopoly, which lead to all sorts of shit situations, including bandwidth limits and turning away of customers. Even then, in the one place were 2 were available, the key to good service was to switch wired provider every 2 years.

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

#110
GF potential customer here in Atlanta, I will say 5 years in it has been nothing but a series of disappointments. I was in one of the first neighborhoods to get GF actually laid down. I have been promised "any day now" for 2 years. But what it looks like is if your house is not on a direct fiber line, it will never be coming. GF had promised it would get ATT to complete the 1 block connection between their fiber and my house for 2 years.

However I did get fiber from ATT for 100 meg symmetrical for 50 bucks a month. And unlike comcast it really delivers 100 megabits per second. I could have gotten the full gig fiber for 70 a month. But it did not seem worth it.

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