Surprised they want a 1 year commitment and are charging a construction fee. EPB here in Chattanooga offers $69.99 month to month pricing for 1Gbps (and no construction fee).
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Google Fiber Austin
141–150 of 157 posts
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any evidence that they are operating at a loss? For 2013 Comcast reported 13.5 billion operating income on 64.6 revenue [1]. This means that they could potentially lower their prices 20% without incurring in losses. If we assume that Google is able to operate more efficiently, which isn't such a bold assumption, they could potentially undercut prices even more. On top of that, we could also assume that in te…
Google say they are not planning to operate at a loss. Re Kansas: "Several Google executives at the event were very clear that delivering gigabit internet access over fiber for $70 a month (and even free 5 Mbps fiber) is a business that will not only help advance Google’s consumer goals, but also make it money." I daresay it depends on what assumptions you make about future sign up rates, cost of capital and the like…
Google may be factoring in their advertising revenue, averaged per website visited, or something like this. Not purely financed by connectioned fees.
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody other than Google reports that installing fiber costs over $1,000 per home, but Google is selling it for $300 and saying "trust us".
There are really two costs for installing fiber. The cost to drag it past your house, which is expensive, probably over 1000. And the cost to bring it from your curb to your house. I've heard 500 for that, but it could around 300. Or google could just think of it as an advertising cost.
I would happily pay that cost up front in exchange for a guarantee of being charged just the service cost afterwards. If only that was an option on the gigabit side.
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sceptical. There've been a couple of Wifi-based local ISPs who went bankrupt where I live (in Austria).
Monkeybrains has been a WISP at least four years. [0] They also sell service in a Carrier Hotel. I read an article a long while back where they mentioned that: 1) The $250 installation fee, plus the $35/month monthly fee more than covers the costs for each residential customer. 2) The revenue from the stuff in the Hotel would also cover the cost for the residential customers, if the residential customers stopped payi…
Ha, that is an old service map! We have close to 5000 antennas up now. Also, Business WISP is the new revenue hog for us... Colocation is stable, but not growing. Residential WISP is also growing (and has outstripped colocation). - Rudy
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sceptical. There've been a couple of Wifi-based local ISPs who went bankrupt where I live (in Austria).
MonkeyBrains is not quite what we call "WiFi"; it's in the 80GHz spectrum. (I thought it was 60GHz, which is becoming a WiFi spectrum, but their page says 80. So I don't fully understand what they're up to.) Beamforming and directional antennas works really quite interestingly on the higher frequencies. I think their stuff could work. It's not obviously doomed to failure, like most 2.4GHz-based WiFi setups are, in my…
What we are up to is building a high speed 24Ghz/60GHz/80GHz point to point meshed network. MonkeyBrains will continue to pull fiber to our endpoints and continue with more affordable 5GHz antennas for residential users.
Check out Siklu, SAF, AthenaWave, AirFiber, etc to see some of the antennas that talk outside of (normally) consumer grade frequencies.
And yes, we do have an FCC filing in place to deploy 80GHz gear.
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monkeybrains has been a WISP at least four years. [0] They also sell service in a Carrier Hotel. I read an article a long while back where they mentioned that: 1) The $250 installation fee, plus the $35/month monthly fee more than covers the costs for each residential customer. 2) The revenue from the stuff in the Hotel would also cover the cost for the residential customers, if the residential customers stopped payi…
Ha, that is an old service map! We have close to 5000 antennas up now. Also, Business WISP is the new revenue hog for us... Colocation is stable, but not growing. Residential WISP is also growing (and has outstripped colocation). - Rudy
Yikes! I should have re-read my comment. My prose doesn't make it at all clear that I was pointing to a four year old map. (Sorry about that! :( ) An up-to-date coverage map can be found under the "Coverage Map" section here [0].
It's neat to hear how your new revenue sources have changed over the years. Hope you guys keep growing the business and -one day- push Comcast and ATT out of The City!
[0] https://www.monkeybrains.net/wireless.html [1]
[1] Or, a direct link to the current-at-the-time-that-I-wrote-these-words coverage map: https://www.monkeybrains.net/2011/islands-of-san-francisco.p...
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#147Hypothetical for advocates of federal net neutrality regulations: Google is offering a "free" (after one-time installation) tier: "up to 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed". Suppose on that tier, they also offered a temporary "turbo" option, 1Gbps+ for the next hour, or next 5GB, or for the duration of a session with a particular site, whatever. And this "turbo" was available on reasonable, non-discriminatory te…
Hypothetically it hurts the "two guys in a garage" who have to hire a third guy (or pay a middleman Turbo Distribution Network) just to handle dozens of ISP turbo contracts.
How does it hurt them compared to the baseline where it's not even an option - the standard 5Mbps is all the customers have, and if garage-guys-service benefits from bursts of more speed, neither the customer nor the service can easily pay the few dimes it might cost?
Or the baseline where, because there's no revenue from 'turbo', a freemium broadband tier isn't offered at all, leaving customers without even the free 5Mbps, or (having paid for broadband instead) with less budget for garage-guys services?
(Also, if such a upsell were available, from Google or others, it'd not necessarily require bilateral contracts. It could and should be an automated service, discoverable in a standard way.)
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#148Anyone with or otherwise knowledgeable about google fibre: I've heard their normal router is terrible, but that you can put your own in if you configure the VLANs and QoS on it - but as for the TV, my understanding is that the TV boxes go onto your LAN - will they play nicely with a better router, or do they force use of the google one? They also double as wireless APs - can that functionality be disabled in favour of a customer's own APs?
Edit: Did some research, seems it needs IGMP proxying, which should be doable on a decent router. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterG... was a very useful link.
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#149Damn, one time $300 fee for "Up to" 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. That's like getting free internet for 6 and a half years[1] from current providers after 6 months. And if you want to upgrade you've already got the hardware. I wonder what the minimum time of undercutting at a loss service they can offer is without it being considered anti-competitive. [1] They guarantee 7 years of free service https://fiber.goog…
The main issue is finding a way to make use of 5mbit. You get what you pay for, I guess, and if you really can't afford anything better, 5mbit is probably better than anything else other ISPs offer for a similar price.
Re: Google Fiber Austin
#150Damn, one time $300 fee for "Up to" 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. That's like getting free internet for 6 and a half years[1] from current providers after 6 months. And if you want to upgrade you've already got the hardware. I wonder what the minimum time of undercutting at a loss service they can offer is without it being considered anti-competitive. [1] They guarantee 7 years of free service https://fiber.goog…
The main issue is finding a way to make use of 5mbit. You get what you pay for, I guess, and if you really can't afford anything better, 5mbit is probably better than anything else other ISPs offer for a similar price.
As a person living and working with 600k-3mb/s - you can live with it fine.