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Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

fiber.google.com

191–200 of 487 posts

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had nothing but positive experiences on JetBlue

For me, it's not the airlines themselves most of the time, but the airports & governments and the requirements they force on airlines. The airports & government bureaucracy take something that should just be a catching a greyhound within 10 minutes of boarding into a 2-4 hour stressful nightmare.

Which requirements are you talking about, specifically?

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#192
post #102
post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

> contemptible customer support Because Google will be so much better? Look, I hate telcos just like the next guy, but the suckage is mostly due to the nature of the business. They form natural monopolies and that sort of thing doesn't lead to customer satisfaction. The only way that sector is going to get truly disrupted is through gigabit wireless internet. You can have multiple competitors in one space with compar…

I'm pretty sure it's not illegal to pay up front for service. Note that the "free" tier is either $25/month or $300 up-front. I never heard anyone accuse e.g. TIVO's lifetime service of being illegal, or any other such pricing scheme.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah! Think: a harddrive writes at what an average of 75MB/s [1], and 1Gbit internet is 125MB/s [2]. (Note, Google currently advertises 'up to 1Gbit up and down'). This means that dropbox no longer "syncs". It's just another harddrive in terms of how it works. Copies to and from just as quickly as your harddrive. Heck, it seems like if you installed an application to your dropbox, and ran your computer off of an S…

First, even if you "installed an application to your dropbox", it would still be running from your local machine - that's just how Dropbox works. Second, even if it were running the application from Dropbox's server(s) (it seems like that's what you mean?), it would still have to read from their servers - you can't magically eliminate a bottleneck just by moving it to a different physical computer; data still has to…

Though a big datacenter seems like the perfect place to spread the bits around so that you can read from multiple physical disks/computers simultaneously to improve performance. This is unlike your laptop where you are probably not carrying multi-disk arrays around with you.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#194
post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

They are not doing much of a job of disrupting the tv part of the deal. $120/mo with Comcast gets you the same channels, Internet, dvr, and telephone service with no contract. They also have customer service. When you call Comcast about a service outage, they prorate it every single time.

The real disruption here is free Internet. And for that I tip my hat to google.

Disruption to cable would be a la carte channel selection in any market.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, Amazon cloud storage, et al exist today if we could send data across the US at even just 650Mbps?

Oh yeah! Think: a harddrive writes at what an average of 75MB/s [1], and 1Gbit internet is 125MB/s [2]. (Note, Google currently advertises 'up to 1Gbit up and down'). This means that dropbox no longer "syncs". It's just another harddrive in terms of how it works. Copies to and from just as quickly as your harddrive. Heck, it seems like if you installed an application to your dropbox, and ran your computer off of an S…

I'd be interested to compare the "seek time" though. Platter drive seek times can be pretty nasty, but I'd be interested to see if Dropbox or some competitor could serve up better with network latency involved.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#196
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those ads going to pay for the $1,000 of equipment that Google gives you?

What $1,000 worth of equipment? The "free" tier only comes with a network box, and it has a $300 "construction fee". $300 should pretty easily pay for what looks like a wireless router.

That doesn't include (at least transparently): actually running the fiber to your house, getting permits to run the fiber through various properties along the way, installing and maintaining switches routers amplifiers etc to give you the service, etc.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#197
post #102
post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

> contemptible customer support Because Google will be so much better? Look, I hate telcos just like the next guy, but the suckage is mostly due to the nature of the business. They form natural monopolies and that sort of thing doesn't lead to customer satisfaction. The only way that sector is going to get truly disrupted is through gigabit wireless internet. You can have multiple competitors in one space with compar…

I looked up price bashing (using Google, haha) and didn't get satisfactory results. Can you provide a link that gives a good explanation?

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#198
post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

I have experienced everything you said as true in most places where I have lived. But I did also live in a place where Time Warner, Verizon and Comcast all competed with each other. And guess what? Service was great and prices were low!

Yes, thank God Google is entering some markets, but we wouldn't need Google if only local governments had not succumbed to lobbying to kill competition.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#199
post #102
post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

> contemptible customer support Because Google will be so much better? Look, I hate telcos just like the next guy, but the suckage is mostly due to the nature of the business. They form natural monopolies and that sort of thing doesn't lead to customer satisfaction. The only way that sector is going to get truly disrupted is through gigabit wireless internet. You can have multiple competitors in one space with compar…

> You can have multiple competitors in one space with comparatively limited infrastructure investment on their part.

Spectrum and tower licensing is off the hook, and it's unlikely that more than a handful of companies will have the business acumen, capital, and regulatory skill to build up a network of significance. Any 'gigabit wireless' scheme will likely look the same it does today: a handful of key players with reciprocal data roaming agreements, and a few MVNOs which piggyback off the big guys. Wireless infrastructure is so expensive that carriers don't even have full coverage: they share. You're not always on 'Verizon's network,' sometimes you're on Sprint's network shared to Verizon. For CDMA, these are sent to the phone via PRL lists[1].

The MVNO scheme happens in DSL where it is called a CLEC[2], where the local telco is required by law[3] to allow other companies to lease its lines. This is how companies like Sonic.net exist. If I understand correctly, the same forced-lease agreement is not in place with cable, which is why people are talking about a 'cable monopoly' here. There is no such thing as Sonic.net for cable, and DSL is physically limited to about 20down/1up. Thus, there is no competitive high-bandwidth pipe to the home until fiber comes into play. Note that DOCSIS3 can easily push 300Mbps down 100Mbps up[4]. You already have this capability if you have cable, it's simply not turned on. If you were a cable company, why would you?

"In the UK, broadband provider Virgin Media announced on 20 April 2011 an intention to start trials with download speeds of 1.5 Gbit/s and upload of 150 Mbit/s based on DOCSIS3.0.[4]" [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_Roaming_List

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carr...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#200
post #29

Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death. It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls…

I'm actually somewhat content with my broadband options. No, I'm not ecstatic and am glad this is happening but PLEASE someone disrupt the damn cell phone business. My ISP doesn't install software on my computer, doesn't hit me with mystery fees, and doesn't tell MS or Apple what to do, but cell carriers do all these things and more.

>and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls trying to sell me more stuff,

Never happened to me, but all carriers text subscribers "deals" and other marketing garbage.

> intrusive DNS systems that redirect me to their crappy web sites, etc.

Never noticed and if I did its trivial to change DNS.

Cell phones on the other hand do all these things. I mean, Verizon just told google that its Wallet NFC stuff simply isn't allowed. Imagine if Comcast said "You can't install LibreOffice on your computer because we're thinking of entering the office game." I won't even go into uninstallable carrier apps, commercial spying, mystery charges, and billing fraud.

Maybe Google Fiber will the the backend for a future wireless roll out. One can hope.

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