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Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

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Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#101

Post by avar »

vertex-four wrote: post #83
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.

Of course, most competition also died. In terms of free email, there's now... I think Outlook.com is the only one I see semi-regularly? Yahoo's email service is utterly dreadful and I seem to remember a lot of kerfuffle regarding them and mailing lists.

Most of the competition deserved to die. At the time 10-50MB mailboxes were normal, and Google came out with 1GB (and counting!) from day one, along with a much better UI than everyone else, and kick-ass spam filters.

Nobody's done much more than reach parity with GMail since then, so there's been no big incentive to switch back.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#102

Post by adventured »

vertex-four wrote: post #83
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.

Of course, most competition also died. In terms of free email, there's now... I think Outlook.com is the only one I see semi-regularly? Yahoo's email service is utterly dreadful and I seem to remember a lot of kerfuffle regarding them and mailing lists.

What meaningful competition was there before? What high quality, amazing service did GMail smash?

Yahoo Mail and Hotmail were terrible then, and they're still mostly terrible now.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#103

Post by Florin_Andrei »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10
rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.

> The competition got serious.

It's interesting how pure competition and "rational self-interest" got us the likes of Comcast and Cox and Verizon and all these other awful, awful companies. They quickly locked up the market, injected their own lobbyists into Washington, and then were content to provide a poor service for a lot of money.

What is shaking them out of their complacency now is not "the market" or "competition" as it's usually understood. It's a very large company, with tons of cash, led by someone (Larry Page) with goals beyond pure financial gains and rock-bottom self-interest.

Perhaps it's time to go back to the drawing board, and figure out what's wrong with these purely mechanistic models of society and the markets. It seems like it's time to ask ourselves if a dose of self-less-ness is perhaps required to make the whole system work better. Not a very large dose, mind you, but just a little bit; anything over the current level of zero, really.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#104

Post by b0b_d0e »

evo_9 wrote: post #16

Is there any rime or reason to the cities that Google chooses to put fiber into? Is it a matter of more friendly local government, less resistant local teleco's, a combination thereof or some other factors? Just seems the locations aren't exactly tech hubs so I'm trying to get a better idea of how the expansion works.

As mentioned elsewhere, its a combination of factors at least for here in Provo. Provo does have a sizable number of tech startups like LucidChart and according to this report it was number 11 on the tech startup list http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/moving-up-provo-orem-a...

Also, as part of the deal for coming to Provo, Provo city sold the existing fiber network to google for a single dollar and google's job was to upgrade the system to gigabit. The whole infrastructure was in place for the most part, so it was a good deal that they couldn't pass up. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Google-Fiber-Provo-iProvo-P...

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#105

Post by primitivesuave »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #48
chiph wrote: post #25

Advice to all the folks in the new cities: Google deploys per-neighborhood, once signups reach a critical level. So get your apartment manager, your HOA, your neighbors to sign up, even if they don't have any immediate plans to switch. Post tear-off-tag signs in your community with the url: google.com/fiber

One could use lob.com to send postcards to everyone in their neighborhood about why they should sign up with that link...

People seem to immediately throw away anything that looks like promotional material, but maybe it's just me or maybe I wasn't mailing them something they found interesting. However, I'm pretty sure a handwritten note to your neighbors would go a lot farther.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#106

Post by adventured »

aesthetics1 wrote: post #17
rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

Saw the same thing from Comcast in a very rural area - doubled speeds for free with higher tiers available. Went from 50 to 100. I think we are finally seeing some change.

There does appear to be significant momentum in leaping forward in fixed broadband speeds. It helps that there is now an immense, growing amount of political pressure coming down on Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. I don't see that pressure letting up.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#107

Post by ben336 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #63

I wonder what put those cities ahead, while Portland remains "potential".

I had a chance to hear a discussion with the Durham City Manager about this last year. Basically the cities that are most willing to work with Google (favorable laws/willingness to guarantee removing construction red tape/etc) have a huge leg up. There are strategic reasons too, but Google wants to come in, lay down a bunch of cables and move on to the next.

They have the leverage to ask cities to actively pull down barriers that other ISPs would face, and the cities willing to do that are the ones who get consideration.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#108

Post by cwal37 »

nathanb wrote: post #91
cwal37 wrote: post #44

I am now surrounded by Google Fiber to the east and west, and Chattanooga's public fiber to the south, out here in Knoxville, TN. I really wish we could manage something here. This area has the biggest national lab, and a host of tech industry around it, I was kind of surprised more options didn't exist when I moved down a year ago. It makes sense to me that Google went after these southeastern markets, because we ar…

I'm from Knoxville, though I currently live in the Raleigh-Durham area (one of the areas the fiber gods have smiled upon). You should consider coming out here. I would not go back. (Land prices are super cheap in Knoxville, though!)

Well, I'm only down here for a relatively short bit. Just starting the second year of a postmasters at Oak Ridge National Lab, and at the end either there's funding for me to stick around and be real staff for a while or I'm off to some bigger city.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#109

Post by janesvilleseo »

rkalla wrote: post #72
janesvilleseo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts too. However, I live in a Charter serviced area and when doing my research when switching from ATT, I noticed they only offer 1 speed. There are no tiers. 1 speed, 1 price Also, I just looked up a price quote for Troy (near city hall) and noticed they indicate their speeds start at 100Mbps for 39.99. Granted you said they live out farther, but they may be able to get more. My wife's internet at her studio…

100?! That's phenomenal... I'll give them a call tonight and ask them to check with Charter and see what is available (for a decent price/a price they are OK with). Thanks for the heads up!

I just checked mine too and they doubled it. It was 30 and now it's 60. Not as great. They said it was already upgraded and I didn't need to call, but my speed tests were 30 before I called and 60 after I called....hmm.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#110

Post by vertex-four »

adventured wrote: post #102
vertex-four wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, most competition also died. In terms of free email, there's now... I think Outlook.com is the only one I see semi-regularly? Yahoo's email service is utterly dreadful and I seem to remember a lot of kerfuffle regarding them and mailing lists.

What meaningful competition was there before? What high quality, amazing service did GMail smash? Yahoo Mail and Hotmail were terrible then, and they're still mostly terrible now.

I'm not suggesting that there was meaningful competition before - just that there's no meaningful competition now, contrary to the comment I was replying to which asserted that "the competition got serious".
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