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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

#121

Post by Retric »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #103
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "competi…

A soft cap on corporate size seems like the simplest solution.

EX: 20,000 employs and or contractors and companies can’t own shares of other companies without being included in that cap. Outsourcing seems like the obvious loophole, but hardly an insurmountable barrier.

Though, increasing tax load as companies scale is probably a much better option. Not that there is a realistic chance of this passing any time soon, but large companies are harmful to both democracy and free markets so it's likely to be tried by someone.

PS: The only real counter argument I can think of is global completion.

Edit: (3 downvotes no responces.) How odd, looks like I hit one of those things you can't say. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html I wonder why?

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

#122

Post by adventured »

rayiner wrote: post #71
evo_9 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that reality one wonder why the incumbents don't raise all their speeds to dissuade google from entering there various markets. Perhaps the shear magnitude of their collective greed obscures their reasoning?

There's no money in building "dumb pipes" to the internet. Verizon's wireline margin over the last couple of quarters has been under 5% ( http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-en... ). Note Google has never revealed how much profit Fiber actually makes. The existing networks are fast enough to service what makes the money: video services. The cable companies will only upgrade the pipes to the exte…

Walmart has 3% net income margins; Costco has 2% net income margins; Target has 3% net income margins; BestBuy in its best days had 4% net income margins. By that premise, nobody should have ever built grocery stores or most retail outlets.

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

#123

Post by saboot »

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…

Same situation for myself currently. Doing some grad work at ORNL also.

I'm really frustrated by comcast, my fiance and I have a hard time doing bandwidth using things simultaneously (netflix/twitch). I constantly watch our data meter to make sure we don't approach the cap.

Although it's kind of baffling because I recently lived in the bay area. AT&T's UVerse I had wasn't much better in terms of the bandwidth and price, I don't recall a cap though.

I'm here for a few years before fleeing back to CA. I've been researching how to start any sort of movement for reasonable service in town but it seems the town council is pretty alright with comcast, even though some tech business have actually moved from knoxville to Chattanooga for the internet. So really not sure what to do other than give up.

EDIT: Wow, I actually didn't realize how bad the situation is here in Knoxville, read more here http://www.metropulse.com/stories/features/downtown-knoxvill...

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

#124

Post by jecjec »

qlikchris wrote: post #84

PHILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYY! We have Cheesesteaks...

Philadelphia is insanely corrupt, owned by Comcast, and will not allow Google to build a network like these other cities will.

Read about the building of Comcast Tower and how a plumbers union forced Comcast to install unnecessary pipes:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-166039.htm...

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

#125

Post by pconner »

mbreese wrote: post #46
daigoba66 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my market (Atlanta) it's not even really about the speed. Granted Comcast is far more expensive per mbps than Google Fiber. It is "fast enough" except that Comcast will cap data usage to about 300 GB per month before charging fees.

Maybe they are targeting area that have data caps? Perhaps that's one reason why Google hasn't announced anything in the Bay Area.

They are considering the south Bay, though. It's close to home for them.

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

#126

Post by adventured »

goostavos wrote: post #21

It's kinda sad that the current ISP climate in America is such that faster speeds being rolled out is at the top of Hacker News. That said, I'm excited as hell for the roll out. I'm not in one of the target cities, but Google Fiber spreading gives me hope that they'll eventually make it to me. I've lived with Bright House and their terribleness for far, far too long.

There's nothing trivial about 1gbps consumer broadband (maybe if we were talking about 100mbps). It's very worthy of attention.

Very few countries have competitive access to 1gbps consumer broadband. You can name them on one hand.

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

#127

Post by pconner »

res0nat0r wrote: post #58
daigoba66 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my market (Atlanta) it's not even really about the speed. Granted Comcast is far more expensive per mbps than Google Fiber. It is "fast enough" except that Comcast will cap data usage to about 300 GB per month before charging fees.

I have 105Mb Comcast internet service with no caps. I don't think the cap applies everywhere.

Atlanta was one of the "test markets" for AT&T's data cap (which is expected to be applied to other parts of the country soon). It might be the same for Comcast.

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

#128

Post by wcchandler »

evanm wrote: post #54

I'm fully aware of the extreme cost of rolling out a fiber infrastructure in new locations, but I still wonder why Google isn't more aggressive with their expansion. While the upfront costs are great, they more or less have guaranteed success in most major cities. Nobody likes the incumbent telcos--they're hated all over the US. I just dream of a world in which we aren't getting raped by Comcast, TWC, and Cox. They a…

> I'm fully aware of the extreme cost of rolling out a fiber infrastructure in new locations,

It's really not that much. I could do my entire town for a little under $9m. Fortunately, Google just announced they'd be coming here (Raleigh-Durham) so hopefully I won't have to.

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

#129

Post by blhack »

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…

Sorry for an unrelated comment (but it's rare seeing Phoenix tech people around here).

Do you (or other Phoenix people reading this) go to Coffee and Code in Mesa on Wednesdays? If not, you should!

It's an awesome coworking event at heatsync labs (a hackerspace I help run).

Okay, sorry again for offtopic comment.

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

#130

Post by fideaux64 »

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…

> the idea of going back to Sincere question. What are the specific functional improvements that you've seen at a much higher mbps? Better youtube performance? Faster p2p? Faster web page load times? More supportive of a multi-device household?
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