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Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

fiber.googleblog.com

121–130 of 232 posts

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#121
post #43
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, my in-laws in Menlo Park had insanely slow SBC DSL with high packet loss. SBC actually just discontinued the service rather than do anything useful. I once paid that ridiculous $149/mo for the 1gig Comcast service until I got tired of the bill that I was really only paying for bragging rights, and went back to 250Mbps.

I honestly don't understand what the big deal is with the higher speed tiers. I forget what my house theoretically gets but, in practice, it's less than 100 down from Comcast and that's perfectly fine for what I use it for. I'm a bit under $100/mo and wouldn't pay to upgrade.

Pretty nice to be able to download a modern game in a few minutes instead of a few hours.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#122
The comments here are interesting.

Mesa AZ signed a deal with Google in 2022 and I got fiber installed last summer. It was all new fiber in the streets in my neighborhood too. And I still see lots of constructions signs for it around. Definitely seem to still be growing. Two other new competitors are also in the area.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#124
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 feel silly asking, but what do you use 10gig for? That speed sounds insane; I get maybe 800mbps and I've basically never felt like the speed is too slow. Most consumer devices are still on gigabit Ethernet at the fastest, no - or am I just badly out of date?

Heck, anywhere above a few gigs, I feel like you'd start getting bottlenecked by whatever's on the other end of the connection.

Still, pretty cool to hear that the option exists!

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#125
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 feel silly asking, but what do you use 10gig for? That speed sounds insane; I get maybe 800mbps and I've basically never felt like the speed is too slow. Most consumer devices are still on gigabit Ethernet at the fastest, no - or am I just badly out of date? Heck, anywhere above a few gigs, I feel like you'd start getting bottlenecked by whatever's on the other end of the connection. Still, pretty cool to hear that…

There are many use cases:

  - Download games from Steam  
  - Download or upload AI models and datasets from Huggingface and similar  
  - Any kind of remote work where you are regularly working with multi GB files
A little server I just put inside my apartment has dual 10Gb/s ethernet ports.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#126
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…

> The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing.

It kind of is.

In a reasonably competitive ISP market, I'd expect the plans to slowly increase in price over time and significantly increase in speed over time. Keeping the basic tier at $70 is a good thing, even without a speed change. Gigabit is fast enough to still be solid in another 13 years.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#127
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 feel silly asking, but what do you use 10gig for? That speed sounds insane; I get maybe 800mbps and I've basically never felt like the speed is too slow. Most consumer devices are still on gigabit Ethernet at the fastest, no - or am I just badly out of date? Heck, anywhere above a few gigs, I feel like you'd start getting bottlenecked by whatever's on the other end of the connection. Still, pretty cool to hear that…

It's always interesting to read these discussions from a misdeveloped country like Australia.

Where symmetric broadband is a pipe dream. And the lived reality in the city is 100Mps down and something like 17Mbps up. I mean it still works for everything. But in comparison other people are living in some kind of techno utopia.

At least our banking system is modern so we can pay for our shitty internet without having to fax cheques /s

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#128
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ever download a 100GB game? The 5x speed increase from 200mbit to 1gbit is significant. Most families have kids that game.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#129
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 feel silly asking, but what do you use 10gig for? That speed sounds insane; I get maybe 800mbps and I've basically never felt like the speed is too slow. Most consumer devices are still on gigabit Ethernet at the fastest, no - or am I just badly out of date? Heck, anywhere above a few gigs, I feel like you'd start getting bottlenecked by whatever's on the other end of the connection. Still, pretty cool to hear that…

Anything which is front ended by a CDN tends to end up faster than your connection for even the fastest connections. That leaves most of the web, updates (Microsoft/Apple/Google), content services like Steam or cloud storage/backup providers, and centralized piracy like Usenet (decentralized like torrents obviously vary per the seeds for each torrent).

It's certainly convenient my games, AI models, cloud backups, and large file downloads tend to go many times faster than when I had gigabit but I'd by no means be crying on the sides of the road about how long things take to upload/download if I had to go back.

The biggest thing you'll run into is algorithms designed to increase performance for limited connections don't scale infinitely. E.g. updating games on the Epic Games Store tends to be core limited (even on an overclocked 9800X3D) rather than bandwidth limited because it puts so much effort into the encryption and differential updating with the assumption "it'll be fast enough to not worry about". Even in those cases... it's nice to max them out without even having contention on everything else you're doing.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#130
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started in 2010. How much longer should we wait for your prediction to come true?

> It started in 2010. How much longer should we wait for your prediction to come true? Google has already actively started soliciting outside investors to spin off Google Fiber. Don't hold your breath. Nothing escapes the Google Graveyard, its gravitational mass is simply too large. "GFiber has already hired an investment bank to start the process of selling equity in the company, according to a source close to Alpha…

I don't see any reason to think that would involve a shutdown.

Especially because, who would invest in that?

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