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The future of Fiber

fiber.google.com

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Re: The future of Fiber

#141

Post by JunkDNA »

300bps wrote: post #128
JunkDNA wrote: post #41

I know it would be painful, and the local politics certifiably insane, but if Google wanted draw attention to the dysfunctional monopoly of the cable industry, there would be no better place to wire than Philly. Take the competition right into Comcast's back yard. Start with a rollout of the Philly 'burbs where the Comcast execs live and work inward toward the city from there.

no better place to wire than Philly...Start with a rollout of the Philly 'burbs As someone who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, I'm not sure if Comcast has the stranglehold in our area that you think it does. I only know one person that has Comcast and the only reason that person has it is because they don't have access to Verizon FIOS. FIOS is faster, more stable and generally cheaper than Comcast Internet. Comcas…

I agree, especially where I live I actually have a choice between Verizon and Comcast. I have FIOS and love it. Best internet service I've ever had. So fast you can almost hear the bits as they blast out of the pipe.

But my point wasn't that Philadelphia isn't a competitive market. My point was that, as a Comcast executive, seeing Google fiber trucks all over your neighborhood and coffee shops is a bit of psychological warfare so to speak. Furthermore, you know Comcast has all sorts deals in place that help them maintain their monopoly. Google would bump into each of those head-on and make hay out of it in the local press and online. At a time when Philly is trying to increase its image in the national tech scene, this would be a very interesting place to shine some light.

Re: The future of Fiber

#142

Post by JonFish85 »

null_ptr wrote: post #119
bertil wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen detailed cellphone signal quality map (sensorly.com) and I can only confirm: the block around the CEO’s houses have far better signal. Having acquaintances rejoice over the ten-fold improvement (and how crisp their grand-children are on Skype now!) at the Club House would indeed hurt.

It would not hurt one bit. You're assuming that billionaire execs care about and take pride in their business. The only thing they take pride in are their fortunes and place in high society - companies are just the means to get there and nothing more. Otherwise they would not allow such mediocrity as can be seen in every mammoth tech company.

Well done sir, that may be the widest brush I've seen used to paint with today!

Re: The future of Fiber

#143

Post by etler »

aetherson wrote: post #9

I guess I fundamentally do not understand what makes a city a good or bad candidate for this kind of service. Why is SF or NY not an obvious candidate? Density means that there are lots of customers for a given physical length of infrastructure rollout, they're both wealthy cities with a large proportion of techies who could use faster internet... I'm sure they're both nightmares to deal with permitting processes for…

I think their strategy is to get it out to as many people as possible in the most efficient way possible. I imagine doing construction in SF and NY is a nightmare so it would be a fight to get it done. If you do it in the easy places first, show all the benefits, and get the big cities jealous, you can drum up more demand than if you go through a painstaking multi year process just to get it in one city.

Their rollout to Kansas City was impressively fast. Had it taken years it would have done terrible things for their campaign.

Re: The future of Fiber

#144

Post by foobarqux »

rayiner wrote: post #120
twoodfin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of folks on forums like this who think networks like FiOS should be regulated into being essentially dumb pipes. Verizon and their investors see some chance of this happening, and even if it didn't, it turns out there aren't a lot of "value added" services you can sell to consumers over a proprietary network; they just want the internet. You can't make the margins as a "dumb pipe" that Verizon needs t…

It's amazing to me how many people here on HN complain on one hand about companies not wanting to make massive capital investments to build out faster internet service while simultaneously espousing regulating such services into low-margin dumb pipes.

Many other countries have built high speed consumer fiber networks, some of them heavily regulated. Something isn't working in the United States.

Re: The future of Fiber

#145

Post by rayiner »

ericd wrote: post #138
rayiner wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me how many people here on HN complain on one hand about companies not wanting to make massive capital investments to build out faster internet service while simultaneously espousing regulating such services into low-margin dumb pipes.

I think there's a simple solution - municipal fiber everywhere with companies allowed to lease access. Internet access looks like a utility and quacks like a utility, so it should be treated like one. The timeline for breaking even on the investment has been pretty reasonably short in the examples I've seen.

The municipalities have no money to build, and more importantly, to maintain and continually upgrade, such networks. Heck, they can barely maintain utility systems that evolve far slower than internet connectivity: power and water. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/us/18water.html?_r=0. People outside of HN won't be anywhere near sufficiently eager to earmark sufficient public dollars to properly maintain such networks, not when pensions systems are underfunded and schools are putting teachers on furlough.

Re: The future of Fiber

#146

Post by nousernamesleft »

adventured wrote: post #80
CountHackulus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, every major ISP has bandwidth caps, some of which are prohibitively small (20GB). Even the smaller upstart ISPs, like TekSavvy are forced to have a cap (though at 300GB) due to wholesale laws. At least they offer unlimited for a reasonable amount of money. Canada is definitely behind the US for internet access, it's even behind many (if not most) third world countries.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the caps (wasn't sure if they were widespread or not). What keeps the caps in place if they're universally disliked? I've always thought of Canada as a fairly responsive democracy.

>I've always thought of Canada as a fairly responsive democracy.

Nope. We elect one group of corrupt assholes to run things, and then complain about them being corrupt assholes. We keep re-electing them till they do something so hugely scandalous that we elect the other group of corrupt assholes instead. And then keep re-electing them until they fuck up so badly that we switch back to electing the first group of corrupt assholes again. Our government is currently pushing for more restrictive drug laws, including for weed. They are pushing for mandatory minimum sentences for non violent crimes, and for privatized prisons. These things are almost universally opposed by Canadians. It simply doesn't matter, we re-elect them anyways.

Re: The future of Fiber

#147

Post by endtime »

jseliger wrote: post #47
benihana wrote: post #29

I currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh. It seems pretty clear that tearing up New York City to lay fiber is a much more expensive and tedious process than it would be in Raleigh. The state and local governments also seem much more friendly to that kind of thing.

I currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh Howdy neighbor: I live in NYC too. A lot of NYC already does have fiber in the form of FiOS. I'll also observe that NYC's overall Internet situation appears to be much better than many places; right now I'm paying $50 a month for 50 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up through RCN. In Tucson, where I used to live, I was paying $70 for 12 down / 1 or 2 up. Google is presumably targeti…

I'm on TWC and would love to get off it. How happy are you with RCN?

Re: The future of Fiber

#148

Post by ericd »

abvdasker wrote: post #75
jjallen wrote: post #57

Google Fiber will pass Google Fiber was announced almost four years ago and has only a few tens of thousands of subscribers. While it's fun to get excited about what Google Fiber could be, it will be years before any material percentage of the country has the opportunity to use Google Fiber. Google is still building out small neighborhoods in Kansas City [1] [0] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q-sGUEiuT9VN__V…

Google Fiber has so far only been an experiment. I see it as a very expensive, very ambitious proof of concept the likes of which only Google is capable of creating. This new announcement is evidence that their experiment of the last 4 years has succeeded. Google can only move so fast with this given the stranglehold Comcast has on the market right now and the regulatory obstacles. There is a killing to be made by un…

I think it's likely that this exists mostly as a threat to keep the big ISPs from getting complacent. If internet speeds improve via themselves or the ISPs, Google wins either way as internet usage increases.

Re: The future of Fiber

#149

Post by nousernamesleft »

fidotron wrote: post #59
adventured wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada related question. Do all the major ISPs in Canada have bandwidth caps on consumer broadband?

I believe so - I have to use a relatively small player that resells Bell infrastructure. The way it works is pick any two of speed, capped usage or reasonable price, but then forget the last one because it doesn't exist anywhere. I consider my, still expensive, 4G mobile way better value than the land line ISP, but I need the capacity for work. Frankly I think 4G is going to wipe out land lines in far more cases than…

>Frankly I think 4G is going to wipe out land lines in far more cases than people realise.

Even if it were consistently fast and reliable (which it is neither), at $40/month for half a gig of data? Not likely.

Re: The future of Fiber

#150

Post by wil421 »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #136
wil421 wrote: post #130

Nice try Google, I was really happy about Atlanta until I saw the cities listed. Most of the cities they listed are in very sketchy areas that probably dont even know the difference between their regular connection and a faster fiber connection. Avondale Estates - not so nice Brookhaven - will probably benefit College Park - crime area, could care less about fiber Decatur - some areas will benefit East Point - crime…

Yeah, God forbid anyone should bring high-speed networking to poor areas. Fiber should be reserved for rich white people.

When they laid fiber down in KC they had each neighborhood sign up and based on how much interest each community had they would have precedence over the others.

If the cities they choose dont have an interest then what is the point?

Who said anything about white people?

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