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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

#171

Post by eptcyka »

sfilmeyer wrote: post #154
macshome wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a lot of people the benefits show up because they have more devices sharing that connection. Before our kids moved to school we had 5 people on our home connection. Each with multiple devices, all trying to work or play games or stream content at the same time. For one person with one computer it’s probably delightful overkill. For a modern family unit it can make everyone happy.

But even for your 5 people, a gigabit is plenty to all stream content at the same time, right? How often are all 5 people trying to download a 5 gigabyte file at the same time such that they collectively really benefit from more than a gigabit?

[flagged]

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#172

Post by cwalv »

jhloa2 wrote: post #155
anonymousiam wrote: post #110

I've got a place in Vegas that's presently served by CenturyLink. It has 1G/1G symmetrical fiber at a guaranteed fixed price of $65/mo. 8G is appealing. So far I haven't seen a map or a timeline of where/when. I signed up for status emails from Google over a year ago.

They just raised the price on my fixed for life deal from Century Link. If you look back, there's nothing in the documentation/terms that actually claimed it was for life. Super shady on their end and I'm going to switch to Google Fiber once they're finished installing it in my neighborhood (they're currently in the installation process)

Same here ($65 -> $75); I think it's an "equipment fee." I don't even use the router. My employer covers the cost so I haven't called to complain, but I suspect if you do you can return the router and lose the fee.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#173

Post by AngryData »

MostlyStable wrote: post #37
rconti wrote: 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…

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.

They are probably still making bank on that I bet, my rural area got co-op fiber 2 years ago and its $85 for 250 mbps, which I actually get closer to 350 mbps from, and $125 for full gig symmetrical. And it is rural enough to not even have DSL before now. They have made enough money that they have covered a large chunk of this part of my state which is mostly all rural and have only sped up their area and roll-out of more service.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#175

Post by AngryData »

zdragnar wrote: post #116
lhamil64 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there's my parents, who live in a rural area and have a tiny fiber ISP charging $70/mo for 50mbps. That's not missing a zero...

If it's anything like where I am, they paid little or nothing to actually get the fiber to their house. As with all rural infrastructure, low population density means high costs, especially if not everyone is a customer but you still have to run a cable past their house. My rate is a little better than that- I think $120 for 150 or 200 symmetric- but it's still simultaneously more expensive than what I'd pay in the c…

But at the same time fiber is even cheaper to rollout than copper lines, and we managed to roll out telephone lines all across the US and to every house without nearly as much trouble. Taking into account inflation it wasn't exactly real cheap to but a telephone line at first, but it was at least available.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#176

Post by cwalv »

idontwantthis wrote: post #136
alostpuppy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the other ones?

ATT and Quantum. Those both have fiber in some neighborhoods but don’t seem to be expanding quickly.

I wouldn't hold my breath. At my previous house, CenturyLink/quantum site said it was available. I called half a dozen times to get it installed, each time some contractor would show up and tell me it's not available. I was confused because they spent months very visibility installing it throughout the neighborhood. Talking to some of the contractors, it was interesting to hear stories about why it was available in some areas but not others just a few houses down.

Eventually, one of them did figure out how to get me connected.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#177

Post by sakopov »

My parents have had Google Fiber since 2011 or 2012. It's been a joy. The uptime has been great and the price has pretty much remained the same for 1Gig. In Los Angeles I pay $90/mo for 100mbps Spectrum connection which drops once a week and has gone up from $40 to $90/mo in just under 2 years. Worst of all is Spectrum has complete monopoly and I have nowhere else to go.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#179

Post by kjellsbells »

I cant shake a feeling that above 50pM/1gig, it doesnt matter how fast residential Internet is. Back when WFH really meant FTPing a whole file down, working on it, and then FTPing it back up, sure. But gdrive and OneDrive and so on all seem quite happy to only send you the blocks you are working on, Teams/Zoom uses remarkably little bandwidth, and games distribution seems to use a combination of CDN and JIT downloads, at least after the initial 80G download for the first user. I know this is n=1 sampling, but my house of 5 was merrily WFH-ing on 100M for ages with nary a whimper. Does it really matter, in 2025?

What does seem to matter is variability: latency and jitter, and the stability of the network inside the house (eg wifi contention). The pipe is the least of one's worries, it would seem.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

#180

Post by emmanueloga_ »

cletus wrote: post #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…

> 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.

I worked on the "misstep" with a small team, and it’s wild to see Fiber still around and even expanding to new cities. As far as I can tell, the set-top box software had nothing to do with why Fiber was scaled down. Also, usability surveys showed people really liked the GUI!

The client supported on-demand streaming, live TV, and DVR on hardware with... let’s call them challenging specs. Still, it turned out to be a pretty slick app. We worked hard to keep the UI snappy (min 30 FPS), often ditching DOM for canvas or WebGL to squeeze out the needed performance. A migration to Cobalt [1], a much lighter browser than embedded Chromium, was on the table, but the project ended before that could happen.

Personally, it was a great experience working with the Web Platform (always a solid bet) on less-traditional hardware.

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1: https://developers.google.com/youtube/cobalt

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