Good god I hope these announcements light a fire under the butts of the other US providers.
How could it? Google would own the infrastructure in the city making competition extremely difficult. New monopolist, same as the old monopolist.
Provo actually already has a fairly significant fiber rollout from multiple failed local and municipal coalitions to bring 100Mbps+ residential connections to the area. I believe these lines are owned by the city, and that Google plans on utilizing the extant network as far as possible. It is pretty likely that this won't be the typical municipal telecom monopoly that we've seen to attract cable providers and the like.
I think one of the things I'm most excited for is canceling my absurd Comcast agreement.
Yep. I pay 60 bucks a month for 40 Mbps, and Google offers 1 Gbps for 70 bucks a month. I pay almost the same price for 4% the speed (not to mention horrible customer service).
You're lucky. I have to pay comcast $70/month for 12mbps
iProvo was 15Mb symmetric when it launched. I had it as soon as it was available on my street. Sadly, Utopia is a financial mess (even more than iProvo became).
I had waited forever for them to open up my 'region' and I was pretty annoyed when I found out they couldn't install it in the building. Given the pricing and speed, I'm actually surprised that more people didn't sign up for it. Was it just a marketing problem? (I left Provo in 2005)
I left Provo in 1983, when BYU was not yet on ARPAnet, Ethernet was really new, and I was one of the few who had dialup access to the Vaxes from home.
You're well off. Here in Ontario, I pay ~$75 a month (after taxes & extra fees) for 25mbit. I would kill for $60 40mbit service.
Why does Canada have such terrible internet? Is it a regulation thing, competition thing, or what? Why do you guys have such extreme data caps?
As an American in Canada, I most often hear that a duopolistic system is the root of the country's internet problems. I haven't heard a single suggestion that there are technical limitations or lack of consumer demand.
Downtown Boston. Please. I'm paying $1,500/m for a 50x50mbps primary and $350/m for a 100x10mbps backup. The alterative is DSL from version at 1Mbps peak, or a T1 - 1.5mbps for $500/m.
I think one of the things I'm most excited for is canceling my absurd Comcast agreement.
Yep. I pay 60 bucks a month for 40 Mbps, and Google offers 1 Gbps for 70 bucks a month. I pay almost the same price for 4% the speed (not to mention horrible customer service).
I don't need 1gbps and would love something like 25mbits for, say, $20. They really need a midtier connection between free 5m and 1G.
Yep. I pay 60 bucks a month for 40 Mbps, and Google offers 1 Gbps for 70 bucks a month. I pay almost the same price for 4% the speed (not to mention horrible customer service).
You're well off. Here in Ontario, I pay ~$75 a month (after taxes & extra fees) for 25mbit. I would kill for $60 40mbit service.
Same here on the Central Coast of California. In my town though there is only one cable internet provider (Comcast).
I'm glad that this is gonna be so close to the Bluffdale, UT NSA data center. Now they wont even have to build too much of their own cable to listen in on every single packet!
The fact that this is close to Bluffdale only helps support (just a little bit) the likely thesis that Google has decided to ally itself with the US surveillance state (which is probably has little choice about anyway).
I don't know how you can jump to that conclusion. Provo is one of the few municipalities with a fiber network already in place. Combined with Provo wanting to get out of the fiber business itself makes Provo uniquely suited for Google Fiber. Google probably didn't consider the fact that the NSA building was 20 miles away at all when making this decision because it has very little to do with their deployment. The NSA would tap backbones, not last mile fiber deployments.
You're well off. Here in Ontario, I pay ~$75 a month (after taxes & extra fees) for 25mbit. I would kill for $60 40mbit service.
Why does Canada have such terrible internet? Is it a regulation thing, competition thing, or what? Why do you guys have such extreme data caps?
Many reasons. 1. We're a unpopulous country for the area we occupy. 2. Our investment environment is much more conservative. 3. We gave some sweet deals to telephone companies in order to get 80 percent telephone coverage back in the 70s.
Toronto isn't bad though. You can get 250 mbit for a decent price
Utah has a pretty solid economy, and lots of outdoors enthuiasts love it. I don't know much about Provo, but the drawback to me about Utah is that you have to live in a state that is strongly controlled by the LDS, which is great if you are a mainstream Mormon. Not so much if you aren't. My good friend recently left the Salt Lake City area after several years. When his neighbors found out he wasn't Mormon (LDS to be…
I'm not LDS, and generally dislike religion, but I wonder how bad an LDS-controlled area really would be. I assume it means good disaster/etc. preparation, a relatively strong social safety net for participants (and thus less abject poverty, random crazy people, etc.) The non-LDS or ex-LDS people I know who live in Utah (from Defcon or whatever) seem pretty cohesive as well. Maybe because it's a smaller tech scene th…
I'm very Mormon and I've ended up hiring almost exclusively non-LDS employees, and more of my friends are non-Mormon than otherwise. Most people work together just fine. Some extremist ex-Mormons have problems, and a handful of really, really stupid Mormons may hypothetically have certain problems (though in professional practice I've never encountered these), but pretty much everyone gets along just fine.