Live data from Hacker News

Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

fiber.google.com

321–330 of 487 posts

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#321
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 se…

The idea is that TV is "obsolete" because of the Internet (see Hulu, Netflix, etc).

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why own a game system... There's actually a service called "OnLive" that streams games, it seems pretty cool. It's a mashup between Steam and Netflix; you don't have to have a gaming PC to render the frames, just a fast Internet connection to stream them.

Not until we can push data across distances faster than the speed of light. The input and video latency makes it impractical for all but the slowest-paced of games.

> Not until we can push data across distances faster than the speed of light.

Ok, how is that possible? I genuinely am curious about the science. Feel free to provide links.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#323
post #211
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Google's going to have to do a good job telling people their computers and NICs aren't going to cut it. It's amazing when you're limited by your machine instead of the internet!

Who doesn't have a gigabit NIC? They've been standard for years.

Have you ever tried to actually get gigabit speeds from the crap hardware installed in most PCs? Most companies use low end realtek or marvell controllers which may, if your lucky, have a good switch and have jumbo frames enabled get you to ~650-700 Mbps on a single large continuous stream. Performance only goes down from there are multiple connections are dealt with. If you want to take a look for yourself download iperf and see what you can actually put through standard consumer NICs and switches. The only NIC controllers I've seen actually get to true gigabit speeds are from Intel, and you still need a decent switch.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#324
I looked at their Term * Resale and Redistribution

The Fiber Services are intended for the personal use of you and others with whom you share your residence (including, within reason, guests who are visiting you). You agree not to resell or repackage the Services for use by people other than those with whom you share your residence. If you wish to use the Google Fiber Services to provide Internet service to others, you must enter a separate agreement with Google Fiber that specifically authorizes you to do so. *

I do have some questions though. I get that a Fiber user cannot resell the bandwidth like a VPS provider. But how about hosting his own web server running a HN clone site?

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#325
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…

Yes! This is what happened in Japan. The telcos dragged their feet. Dial up Internet was pay per minute and adsl was $60-$90 a month. Yahoo Japan came in and offered adsl 1mbit speed for $20 a month unlimited. That is the moment Internet usage took off In Japan. The telcos lowered their prices to match. Yahoo doubled the speed for the same price. That continued up to at least 8mbit speed for $20 month Similar things…

I get my internet for under $10 a month for 14Mb (in UK). Paying that little I dont mind providing my own ipv6 tunnel and using google name servers. I used to pay for service instead, but cheap works too.

I might switch back to service if it cost less than $50 per month, but I dont really need support for adsl.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#327
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not until we can push data across distances faster than the speed of light. The input and video latency makes it impractical for all but the slowest-paced of games.

> Not until we can push data across distances faster than the speed of light. Ok, how is that possible? I genuinely am curious about the science. Feel free to provide links.

Well, going faster than the speed of light isn't possible, but if compressed really well, you could theoretically send massive quantities of data really quickly.

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can subsidize it for only so long before deciding to discontinue it... on the pricing page, they commit to providing free service for at least 7 years. So unless google goes belly-up, it won't be discontinued for a while.

IMO, the free plan is brilliant. They get people to front the money for putting in infrastructure, and as digital distribution of everything continues to grow, they'll probably start to see people transitioning over to the faster connections. $300 + $70/month is a hard sell for a lot of people, but if my parents could ditch Comcast for a one time fee I'm pretty sure they'd do it.

Once the fiber is there, google can actively offer free demos of cool bandwidth hungry tech , for people, in their homes. what better way to sell more bandwidth and services ?

Re: Google Fiber Plans & Pricing

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they still provide a regular remote of some sort. I don't want to have to unlock a tablet and go to an app to change the channel.

Yup, there's a standard remote with both IR and bluetooth capability. (I work at GFiber.)

Would you do an AMA while it's still fresh in people's minds?
Post reply on HN