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Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

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Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#51

Post by danielweber »

rayiner wrote: post #48
Shivetya wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I can name a few more dysfunctional cities, Detroit comes to mind. Is a city dysfunctional because it fails one segment of its population? Lets face it, high speed internet is not going to appeal or be used by many in any city. Yes there are those who will, but we tend to vastly over estimate the impact the net has on those who are poverty line or lower.

Is Detroit more dysfunctional adjusted for economic condition? Because even a well-run city would be in a bad situation if the local economy declined, for unrelated structural reasons, the way it has in Detroit.

The Free Press had a long-form history about Detroit's mistakes and missed opportunities.

http://www.freep.com/interactive/article/20130915/NEWS01/130...

I like to point out "Pension officials handed out about $1 billion in bonuses from the city’s two pension funds to retirees and active city workers from 1985 to 2008" but there's a lot of other stuff in there.

Detroit had some trouble baked into the cards back in the 1950's, when they were a geographically big city with corresponding fixed costs that would have trouble dealing with any decline in population, but it didn't have to be anywhere near as bad as it was.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#52

Post by cybrjoe »

ansimionescu wrote: post #43
Matsta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the looks of it they are just using Ubquiti wireless gear. http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#nanobridgem That is the ariel in the picture on their site. Crazy how they charge you $350 though, they cost $79 to buy individually (they are probably getting a wholesale discount). I'm guessing for business accounts they are using the Airfiber which is pretty cool and fast. They can't do 10gbps though, don't think their fibre…

Not nitpicking, just honestly confused: do you mean aerial? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial

Aerial is another word for antenna:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_(radio)

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#53

Post by rosser »

nostromo wrote: post #9
george88b wrote: post #3

I don't live in Sf but its city government sure sounds dysfunctional, more so than most cities at least.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-ci...

Thank you for that link. I was trying to find it when another discussion about the idiocy of SF city government came up on HN a few weeks back.

Folks, it really is this bad.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#54

Post by raldi »

a3n wrote: post #45
hueving wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gives sonic more power against wiretapping with gag orders?

He said it's like handing NSA the keys. Google's very business model is analyzing your bits and selling what that reveals about you. They do what the NSA does. Sonic at the moment (as far as I know) only makes money from moving your bits, and doesn't much care what's in them. Any telecom in the future will probably not be able to resist the profit in selling you to advertisers, but at the moment they mostly don't, th…

> Google's very business model is analyzing your bits and selling what that reveals about you.

Do you really think that? What do you think would happen if you called up Google's sales team and said, "Hi, I'd like to buy your analysis of Mike Schiraldi's bits. How much will that cost me?"

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#55

Post by bluedino »

rayiner wrote: post #41
vidarh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The business-friendly environment means that there is constant development and affordable housing prices. The far more likely explanation is the almost five times higher population density in San Francisco (6800/km^2 vs 1391/km^2) due to the natural limitations on expanding due to its position on a peninsula - San Francisco is constrained to a much smaller land area than Houston.

SF isn't dense enough to play that card. The core part of Chicago has 2m people living in an area as dense on average as SF. But comparably dense neighborhoods in Chicago are much cheaper. Part of that is lower demand, but it can't be ignored that Chicago builds thousands of new apartment units per year, while SF builds maybe one or two hundred.

The weather sucks in Chicago and SF is about a hundred times 'cooler', so of course it'll be cheaper.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#56

Post by PaulHoule »

I wonder how much of the problem in San Francisco is Wi-Fi congestion rather than the wired service.

When I am in SF the number of SSID's I see boggles the mind and with people stacked up in small apartments, plus Comcast offering the public Hotspots, even the 5GHz band is overloaded, and it's amazing 2.4 works at all.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#57

Post by dredmorbius »

Matsta wrote: post #30
dredmorbius wrote: post #16

Friends of mine in SF tell me of an existing alternative, though availability varies by neighborhood and building: Monkeybrains is a wireless ISP which offers service from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100+ Mbps not being unheard of. Coverage is mostly in the eastern / hipster side of the City: North Beach, downtown, the Haight, Noe, to Bayview. So Sunsetters and Richmondites are SOL. Reports I've heard are that service is…

From the looks of it they are just using Ubquiti wireless gear. http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#nanobridgem That is the ariel in the picture on their site. Crazy how they charge you $350 though, they cost $79 to buy individually (they are probably getting a wholesale discount). I'm guessing for business accounts they are using the Airfiber which is pretty cool and fast. They can't do 10gbps though, don't think their fibre…

Among the reasons there aren't many DCs in SF are the cost of real estate, and the seismic risks. There is 365 Main, and a second one going into warehouses south of Potrero Hill.

Others are on the Peninsula and San Jose. There are also several in the Central Valley, which is more seismically stable, though flooding can be a concern.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#58

Post by diafygi »

tga_d wrote: post #38
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the abundance of obesity nor intelligent design proponents affects me or my quality of life in any way. So the arguments against Houston collapse to: you have to drive everywhere and weather (essentially). And taking the MUNI isn't much of an upgrade over having a car in an affordable place.

Could be wrong, I interpreted the obesity and intelligent design comments as reflections of the culture. Unless you never leave your house, living in a place that promotes sedative lifestyles and intellectual crutches seems... draining.

The big city culture in Texas is actually quite progressive. Houston was the first major city to elect an openly gay mayor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annise_Parker

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#59

Post by pronoiac »

Oh man! I knew the answer to this before I read the article. After I heard about contentious community meetings about Google Wifi, I went myself, taping them for posterity.[1] The community seemed generally receptive. I was sad when it fell through; in case of an earthquake, I think a wifi mesh would be much more robust than fiber.

The Google wifi FAQs / complaints I remember:

* radiation concerns.

* extra hardware on telephone poles.

* "low bandwidth." I think someone was miffed that YouTube would take time to buffer.

[1] http://pronoiac.org/recordings/category/wifi-for-sf/

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#60

Post by cnlwsu »

pronoiac wrote: post #59

Oh man! I knew the answer to this before I read the article. After I heard about contentious community meetings about Google Wifi, I went myself, taping them for posterity.[1] The community seemed generally receptive. I was sad when it fell through; in case of an earthquake, I think a wifi mesh would be much more robust than fiber. The Google wifi FAQs / complaints I remember: * radiation concerns. * extra hardware o…

"Radiation" should be better taught and understood I think. A local wind farm got shut down in my home town because someone convinced some townies they give off radiation and will give everyone cancer. There's a big difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radaition - A microwave (cell phone etc) can boil your blood with enough power but it will never cause a chemical change to DNA.
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