Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 190 posts

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#91

Post by edwhitesell »

jedberg wrote: post #67
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have WebPass (webpass.net) in Denver, which is a company that Google acquired. It's mainly for residential multi-unit apartment buildings, though. I've had it for several years and it works extremely well. It uses point-to-point radios from their main node in the city to the top of your building, then you get an ethernet hookup in your unit. I almost always get in the ~700-800Mbps up and down range on ethernet conn…

> And I believe even ATT only does fiber to a neighborhood and then coax to the home, right? No, I have a fiber going right to my dmark. I watched them string it and terminate myself.

In the past, the answer was sometimes. About 6 years ago I lived in a Dallas suburb where I had ATT fiber directly to my house. A friend a few miles away, in Dallas, had copper. We had the same services, same prices, same hardware, etc.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#92

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #68
eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have WebPass (webpass.net) in Denver, which is a company that Google acquired. It's mainly for residential multi-unit apartment buildings, though. I've had it for several years and it works extremely well. It uses point-to-point radios from their main node in the city to the top of your building, then you get an ethernet hookup in your unit. I almost always get in the ~700-800Mbps up and down range on ethernet conn…

I know "fiber to the neighborhood and coax to the home" is how both Comcast and WOW operate. Note that coax can provide some fairly decent performance, with DOCSIS 3.1, you can do gigabit down a coax cable, though the networks are still built asymmetrically, so you're only going to see 50 Mbps back up on a connection like that.

Agreed. DOCSIS 3.1 is nice. I think most of the bad news around coax is because a lot of cable operators overload their nodes.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#93

Post by sbov »

AareyBaba wrote: post #27
vb6lives wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tried to lay fiber in 2in trenches instead of typical 6in trenches. Then left when it didn't work. This isn't Goliath beating David. This is David throwing a rock, missing, and going home.

Is there any technical analysis or reports available online on why the trenches didn't work ? I've always wondered if we could use our network of roads to bring internet to the doorstep by laying lines just below the road surface.

At 2 inches its not even deep enough to survive a road repavement.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#94

Post by walrus01 »

jrockway wrote: post #86
walrus01 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry perspective here. I work for an ISP that does gigabit class last mile residential access. Google gave up because they couldn't make the ROI numbers work. I doubt whether it was ever intended to be economically viable. It was a PR stunt. You simply can't promise gigabit class last mile service to every residence in a city, and actually build it with a reasonable dollar-per-house cost, and make a return on inv…

If you have to borrow money, it's expensive. If you just have the money sitting in your treasury, it's a lot more viable. I never saw the Google Fiber cancellation as a cost issue. It felt to me like more of a scale issue. You have to live in Kansas City to pay Google for fiber, but you can buy an Android device from anywhere in the world. Thus, one of those things is going to make more money than the other, and it m…

As for #2, I don't see high speed residential broadband (fixed line, whether VDSL2/g.fast, DOCSIS3.0/3.1, or fiber based) going away any time soon in the North American market.

In developing nation environments where there is no pre-existing wireline infrastructure, and incomes are much more limited, it's now incredibly common for people to only have a phone with LTE radio in it, and no fixed internet at home. Examples would be in Rawalpindi, Pakistan or in small cities in Turkey.

But I don't see people downloading 90GB xbox one games on LTE last mile connections any time soon, even with carriers' advancements in fixed LTE and coming "5G" stuff. The capacity of last mile wired connections will always be much greater. And the typical residential consumer in the US or Canada has much more ability to pay a $75 monthly recurring bill for proper home broadband, on top of their cellphone costs.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#96

Post by sesutton »

yingw787 wrote: post #37
yingw787 wrote: post #25

When I interned at AT&T a few years ago, I asked a manager I respected whether they were worried about Google Fiber coming in and eating their lunch. "No", he said. "We'll sue them for every mile of fiber they lay down". I can understand why they would make that play. It's kind of the only play they have. AT&T and Verizon innovate enough to remain...okay...but they're not exactly Google. The only way they would win i…

I do think the significance of this is cities realizing there is no Disney prince riding in on a white horse to save them, and taking their own futures into their own hands. I'm hoping there's enough "anchor cities/regions", like Nashville/RTP/Kansas City, that have contingency plans and referendums ready for an infrastructure push at the local level if Fiber pulls out there, to prevent all white-collar talent from d…

I think people here in Raleigh would hardly notice if Google Fiber pulled out. They only ever offered it in a very small area and AT&T has been offering gigabit to to large parts of the area for several years now.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#97

Post by 908087 »

shmerl wrote: post #56

Very irresponsible behavior. If they have commitments, they should have stuck to them. The way they behaved with Google Fiber is atrocious. Networks can't be built without long term investments and Google knew well about that when they started.

The "Google never actually meant to be an ISP, they just wanted to kickstart competition" spin I hear pushed on this reminds me of the "they were just trying to start the conversation" spin when people get caught faking racist/sexist/homophobic attacks on themselves.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#98

Post by ilovecaching »

Let’s not forget that the real issue here is that American ISPs are a complete monopoly by Comcast and AT&T, companies made of pure greed. Small end sub ISPs have to claw for every strand of dark fiber. Google really shouldn’t be the answer though. We need to demand that politicians address the issue in the upcoming election before they start looking at the Silicon Valley giants.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#99

Post by 908087 »

tzs wrote: post #53
paxys wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying new products in small markets as an experiment has been a thing forever, and is something literally every company does regularly. There is nothing weird about it. As for the fallout, IMO the city is to blame for it more than Google, since the company is obligated to do exactly what the contract entails.

Yeah, but when a soda company, say, tries out one new flavor in my town, and different new flavor in your town, and mine flops and yours succeeds, they don't just stop selling soda in my town. They start selling the flavor from your test in my town, too. It would have risked much less bad publicity if they had done the 2" experiments in a city they were willing to use 6" trenching in. Do part of the deployment with 2…

Soda companies also don't leave deteriorating trenches behind on the roads in town when their tests fail.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#100

Post by jedberg »

edwhitesell wrote: post #91
jedberg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I believe even ATT only does fiber to a neighborhood and then coax to the home, right? No, I have a fiber going right to my dmark. I watched them string it and terminate myself.

In the past, the answer was sometimes. About 6 years ago I lived in a Dallas suburb where I had ATT fiber directly to my house. A friend a few miles away, in Dallas, had copper. We had the same services, same prices, same hardware, etc.

That was their DSL service though right? like 100MB? Not gigabit? I'm talking about the gigabit service specifically. I don't think they run those with copper, because the spec says you can't go more than 100m on copper and get gig speeds.
Post reply on HN