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Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

fiber.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#91
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest hotels around, like Caesars Palace, might have 4000 rooms. So if they had, for example, a 10 Gbps link for the building - that's only 2.5 Mbps per room if everyone wants to use it. Fine when 98% of guests don't want to use it, totally inadequate if all your guests want to use it. And as I understand things, if someone's offering you a 10 gigabit link for $150 they're relying on you only using it a tiny %…

Amazon during re:Invent somehow manages to set up fast WiFi networks that service literally tens of thousands of attendees. It's a skill issue from the hotel owners. They can't be bothered to fix their stuff.

I can't speak for Amazon 's team directly but for large events on that scale, totally reasonable to have your own links brought to the facility.

For a casino, they probably already have spare conduit or dark fiber to a close by POP so they don't even need LoS microwave links.

Efficiently distributing all of that bandwidth across the many, many, many different wireless access points efficiently is an art and science all on its own and that's probably the aspect most people are complaining about.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#92
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest hotels around, like Caesars Palace, might have 4000 rooms. So if they had, for example, a 10 Gbps link for the building - that's only 2.5 Mbps per room if everyone wants to use it. Fine when 98% of guests don't want to use it, totally inadequate if all your guests want to use it. And as I understand things, if someone's offering you a 10 gigabit link for $150 they're relying on you only using it a tiny %…

Amazon during re:Invent somehow manages to set up fast WiFi networks that service literally tens of thousands of attendees. It's a skill issue from the hotel owners. They can't be bothered to fix their stuff.

I'd love to know more about how Amazon do that.

How much does it cost to get a 100+ gigabit link set up for a 4 day long event?

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#93
I've had Google Fiber for almost a decade now. It's fine enough. I've had weird issues in the past though and it's been rather unfriendly when it comes to setting up things like a VPN on a router -- though this was many years ago. Perhaps things have changed?

I also had an issue 6 or so years ago where Google Fiber would block sites that did not have both an IPv6 and IPv4 address.

Nonetheless, service has been fine otherwise. I'd say Google Fiber has probably been the second best ISP I have used despite my ever slowly growing hatred of all things Google.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#94
post #53
post #5

I'm surprised Google hasn't forgotten about Google fiber.

They basically did at some point about a decade or so ago maybe. Wimax and LTE were taking off at that time. Then about 2 years ago, Google woke up and started pushing fiber again. It's clear now that high speed fiber is the future. Cable companies aren't upgrading their networks anymore. It's unclear if the wireless companies will be able to support 10gig service. And the single mode fiber laid into the ground a dec…

is there any desire for residential 10g service? it's pretty hard to image how 90% of families would use up 200meg

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, I'm paying 120/month for 150MB down, 75 up to my rural telco-op, and compared to the satellite internet I had before, I'm happy to be paying it.

I have this wacky idea of community fiber kiosks where you stop to fast-download large files/torrents/data dumps Any opinions on this from a user experience point of view?

If you can bring that to kiosk and you live close enough to drive there, the problem is already solved. Even a radio bridge could do.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#96
post #5

I'm surprised Google hasn't forgotten about Google fiber.

It does align pretty closely to their mission statement "to organize the world's information and make it accessible and useful for everyone", so it might be easier to make a case for its continued existence. It also is another branch of Alphabet so not directly in the Google mgmt chain. Though it looks like Alphabet is looking to sell it off, according to a reuters article Feb 5th, 2024.

[deleted]

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#97
post #7

> GFiber service will be available in parts of the metro area later this year. Nevada residents and business owners will be able to choose between Google Fiber’s plans with prices that haven’t changed since 2012 and speeds up to 8 gig. The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing. From the linked price page: 1gig: $70/mo 2gig: $100/mo 5gig: $125/mo 8 gi…

Sorry but this is just incorrect on many fronts. I can speak to this issue as a former engineer on Google Fiber so I got to see just how the sausage was made.

Existing national ISPs just have inbuilt advantages that a newcomer cannot replicate or can't replicate cheaply. This is the result of decades of lobbying state and local governments.

Take something as simple as where you run cables in the streets. You basically have two choices: you dig trenches or you string up cables on a pole. There is no best answer here as it depends on a lot of factors like weather and climate, local soil conditions, natural disaster risks (eg wildfires, earthquakes), distances involved and existing infrastructure and legislation.

So imagine in a given area trenching is uneconomical. This could be just because there's a lot of limestone rock in the soil so it's difficult, slow and expensive to actually dig the trenches and this may be complicated by local noise ordinances, permitting, surveying, existing trenches and so on. So you end up stringing up cables on poles.

Who owns those poles? Is it the city? Is it AT&T? You may have rights to string up cables on those poles but the devil really is in the details. You might have to apply for a permit for each and every pole separately. They might be approved by the city but then how does the work happen? Can you do it? Maybe. But you might need AT&T (or whoever) to do something first like move their own cables. Maybe several other companies have to move cables first. Maybe each company has 90 days to do that work and this can add up so it can take over a year just to be able to put a cable up on a pole. And you can't really do any work until all the poles are available. That's just how fiber works.

And where do you run the fiber too? Do you run it back possibly several miles to a POP? There are advantages in that but obvious disadvantages like cost and just overall cable size and weight. Or do you use local substations? If so, what kind of building is that? Is it a large building that residents find "ugly" and object to on aesthetic grounds or maybe even environmental grounds that means more delays? How much does that cost? Is AT&T grandfathered in with their substations and nodes?

And then after you've done all that and you have your last mile fiber, how many customers do you get? Roughly 30-40% of houses get fiber by how many companies are you splitting that pool with? You have to amortize your entire network build over your projected customer base and it makes a massive difference if it's 10% of dwellings or 15% or 30% or 40%.

In industry parlance this is called an "overbuild" and is inherently economically inefficient. It'll actually raise the cost of every ISP because each will get a lower overall take up rate.

That's why the best solution is municipal broadband that either provides service or acts as a wholesaler to virtual ISPs.

The cost of running a fiber cable from a POP to a house has only gone up over th eyears and it's the majority of your cost. That's really why Internet costs haven't come down. And also why the best Internet in the US is municipal broadband and it isn't even close.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#98
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered Monkeybrains? For the price the service is fantastic, and with some of their new upgrades speeds are pretty good for most of SF. Caveat: I work from home so I keep my comcast subscription as a backup and have a router with automatic failover. I would say this is not worth it for most people and just Monkeybrains is sufficent.

Yes, but it requires landlord cooperation.

I would recommend talking to Monkeybrains they should be familiar with the law, I don't think landlords in San Francsico are allowed to limit isp choice https://www.sfexaminer.com/our_sections/forum/san-francisco-...

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#99
post #7

> GFiber service will be available in parts of the metro area later this year. Nevada residents and business owners will be able to choose between Google Fiber’s plans with prices that haven’t changed since 2012 and speeds up to 8 gig. The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing. From the linked price page: 1gig: $70/mo 2gig: $100/mo 5gig: $125/mo 8 gi…

I can't get Sonic because apparently they don't have permits to operate in the underground conduits in my neighborhood. For some reason, AT&T has that. It's frustrating to say the least.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#100
Speaking as a former Google Fiber software engineer, I'm honestly surprised this is still around.

In 2017, basically all the Google Fiber software teams went on hiatus (mine included). I can't speak to the timing or rationale but my theory is that the Google leadership couldn't decide if the future of Internet was wired or wireless and a huge investment in wired may be invalidated if the future Internet was wired so rather than guessing wrong, the leadership simply decided to definitely lose by mothballing the whole thing.

At that time, several proposed cities were put on hiatus, some of which had already hired local people. In 2019, Google Fiber exited Louisville, KY, paying penalties for doing so [1]. That really seemed like the end.

I also speculated that Google had tried or was trying to sell the whole thing. I do wonder if the resurrection it seems to have undergone is simply a result of the inability to find a buyer. I have no information to suggest that one way or the other.

There were missteps along the way. A big example was the TV software that was originally an acquisition, SageTV [2]. Somebody decided it would be a good idea to completely rewrite this Java app into Web technologies on an embedded Chrome instance on a memory-limited embedded CPU in a set-top box. Originally planned to take 6 months, it took (IIRC) 3.5+ years.

But that didn't actually matter at all in the grand scheme of things because the biggest problem and the biggest cost was physical network infrastructure. It is incredibly expensive and most of the issues are hyperlocal (eg soil conditions, city ordinances) as well as decades of lobbying by ISPs of state and local governments to create barriers against competition.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/googl...

[2]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/06/googl...

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