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80Mbps down & 30Mbps up: $69.95 /mo. for first 3 months then $100.95 /mo.
50Mbps down & 30Mbps up: $29.95 /mo. for first 3 months then $83.95 /mo.
20Mbps down & 15Mbps up: $29.95 /mo. for first 3 months then $68.95 /mo.
Seems to be not that far from Google's prices.
> For comparison, where with Comcast I can download a 1080p Breaking Bad episode (1.86 GB) in about a half hour, Google Fiber would get it done in under 3 minutes.
On Google Fiber, that Breaking Bad episode would be downloaded in about 15 seconds at max throughput.
If Google cracks the bandwidth nut, they can essentially replace TimeWarner, Comcast, etc. in one fell swoop because they can easily replace 100% of the services those companies offer at a fraction of the cost.
Kansas City is essentially giving Google free reign to perfect their rollout and implementation processes. The next city that Google wires up will probably cost them a fraction of what Kansas City does because I'm certain that Google will automate every last detail that can be automated.
No the sums don't add up. Tax payers will subsidise some of the costs and Google will undoubtedly analyse the traffic to deliver yet even more personalised advertising. The local government will subsidise parts of the installation and make it legally as smooth as possible. Google will probably get cheaper offices or easier planning application processes, and who knows, they'll probably have some sway when it comes to local lawmaking, like any major contributing lobbyist...
... But in return Kansas City gets a bloody gigabit network for pittance. Free ADSL for anybody else.
It's practically unimaginable the services you could deliver to people with that sort of bandwidth because for a very long time it's been considered rude to assume anybody has anything faster than a 2Mbps connection. Google Fibre could stream 4k (with h.265). Even being able to assume the user has some upstream bandwidth for once is a complete boon to developers. In the UK the ratio is 10:1 almost everywhere unless you're on a business line (for four times the price) or the new FTTC options that are available in like 2% of the country.
tl;dr: you get a lot in exchange for letting Google in, not least that you will probably become the testing bed for all sorts of snazzy new technology. Stop moaning, pay your taxes and enjoy being able to watch all the porn at once.
What are the prices of competitors in the US? Here in New-Brunswick Canada, prices are: 80Mbps down & 30Mbps up: $69.95 /mo. for first 3 months then $100.95 /mo. 50Mbps down & 30Mbps up: $29.95 /mo. for first 3 months then $83.95 /mo. 20Mbps down & 15Mbps up: $29.95 /mo. for first 3 months then $68.95 /mo. Seems to be not that far from Google's prices.
That doesn't make sense to me.
*I'm judging from a speed test posted on the blog post that the line is asymmetric and down and upstream add up to 1Gbps.
Google Fiber is supposedly about 10 times faster than that. Presumably, the bandwidth test server was being maxed out. His comparison based on the 91 Mbps result makes current ISPs look better than they should. > For comparison, where with Comcast I can download a 1080p Breaking Bad episode (1.86 GB) in about a half hour, Google Fiber would get it done in under 3 minutes. On Google Fiber, that Breaking Bad episode wo…
It's not the "way to good to be true vibe", it's just that people in the US think that they have the best of everything so how can we have something out there so much better for the same. When in reality the US is far behind in infrastructure in a whole. So why this upgrade looks amazing the truth is its the only thing on par with the rest of the developed world.
I fail to see how any of the things you mentioned are negative.
Taxpayers paying for a commercial service whether they use it or not sounds like one. Special privileges and fast-tracking is another.
"To get that in writing, that’s 91.58 Mbps down and 35.01 Mbps up." No. That's how fast speedtest.net is. Google Fiber is much, much faster. Try it again with http://speedtest.googlefiber.net/
An Ethernet→router→fibre→local-speedtest node trip should be closer to 5ms, if that.
Remember reading all those articles about how SpaceX was 'cheating' or risking safety because their costs were so much less than what 'people who knew how to build rockets' charged? Its a simple rhetoric technique, compare X to Y when X and Y aren't correlated or even have a casual relationship.
Anyway, rather than devolve into some sort of ad-hominem rebuttal, lay out what the costs are for putting fiber into an area. There are easement costs (ok the City covered that), there are facilities (cooling and power for a bunch of switches and routers), IP transit costs and general IP costs (like routable addresses or not). Then there are the sunk costs of installing this stuff.
So one source [1] puts getting fiber to the home at less than $1,000. How many homes are there in KS? The census puts it at about 463,200 [2]. So lets say the average house hold is 2.0 people so that represents 231,700 homes? or $231,700,000 to install fiber to all of them? A lot lower than the estimates put out by the OP.
What is the long term value of customers there? Well we can pretty much assume nobody would be stupid enough to pick Comcast or a bell company for Internet service (10x the cost for 1/100th the bandwidh) so lets say that Internet penetration is 60% [3] so 139 thousand homes, if they got the 'cheap' stuff at $70/month that is $9.73M / month. So how much does Google earn on that revenue? We don't know but we can work it backwards, lets say all up it cost Google 4x what it costs Verizon to lay fiber so $1B, lets further say that fiber is good for 20 years of lifetime. $9.73M$/month times 20 years of 12 months is $2.3B. That is double the investment of $1B back in 20 years. Now not a great rate of return, most would like to see it double twice in 20 years. But not an insane proposition either.
Personally, if ComCast is right and Google is making a huge mistake, I think they should just sit back and watch it happen right? So clearly going to fail at this, their job is done, they can just eat popcorn while the big G sinks under the waves and stops being a thorn in their side. Me though, I would not bet against Google on this one.
[1] http://connectedplanetonline.com/mag/telecom_riding_fttp_cos...
[2] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&#...
[3] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/06/us-20th-in-broadb...