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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

#161

Post by oldmanjay »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #138
throwaway90999 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"with goals beyond pure financial gains and rock-bottom self-interest." This doesn't paint an accurate picture. Google isn't deploying Fiber out of any notion of selflessness. This is a competitive play, and a very good one at that. You say selfless ideals, I say this is exactly how "the market" and "competition" are commonly understood to function -- in the absence of corruption, regulatory capture and state granted…

> This is a competitive play, and a very good one at that. Absolutely it is, yes. You're just not looking beyond that level.

And you're ascribing purity of motivation based on nothing more than apparent religious belief in your savior Larry. Hardly a more convincing argument.

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

#162

Post by xenadu02 »

cheald wrote: post #141
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You don't think that the core of the issue is regulatory capture, rather than a failing of "the market"? It takes a lot of money to break into a captured market, which is why it takes a large company to do it. Google entering the ISP market has done more to shake up and spur on the incumbents in the past couple of years than anything regulators have done. And furthermore, you can be assured that their doing so is abs…

It's horribly inefficient to lay new fiber for every ISP that wants to enter the market. At some point the economies of scale are such that it becomes impossible to even enter the market; many thought two entrants was the limit, Google is proving that the market can support three.

This is a classic case where government should be laying fiber to cover the last mile and selling access at cost to any ISP that wants it. The equipment on either end can be the ISP's equipment, a fiber is a fiber. Except for cuts, there's nearly no maintenance required.

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

#163

Post by jamesmishra »

cwal37 wrote: post #146
saboot wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pri…

Unrelated to this, but do you guys like board games or really almost anything else? I made the mistake of living in Oak Ridge and I've had a hell of a time meeting people ( I mean, clearly, I'm propositioning a random person in an unrelated HN thread). When my mentor isn't around I can go days without talking to people, and it's starting to drive me a bit mad. I keep buying board games and local multiplayer PC games,…

Hey! I'm currently doing an internship at ORNL and hang out with a bunch of the interns / employees / postdocs. Send me an email if you'd like to join us on skiing trips, hiking, other get-togethers, etc.

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

#164

Post by xenadu02 »

jsz0 wrote: post #144
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 cable industry has been working on ramping up speeds for the last decade starting with DOCSIS 3 to compete with Verizon FIOS. The development of DOCSIS 3.1 for gigabit speeds over cable actually started before Google Fiber existed. It seems like people don't want to give Verizon credit for this because perhaps Google offers a more compelling story or maybe because it would suggest that competition in the telecom…

Yeah, and Verizon couldn't exist without the government taking away the rights to my land and giving it to Verizon to run their cables without compensating me in the slightest. What's your point?

Verizon could be selling gigabit FIOS today but they don't because there is no competition in most markets. FIOS is profitable, just not as profitable as wireless.

Guess what Verizon uses to provide wireless? (Hint: public airwaves, most of which they got for free too)

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

#165

Post by es09 »

squiguy7 wrote: post #4

I'm surprised they didn't choose San Jose. There must be some things outside of their control considering they would have expanded into their own neighborhood.

In the middle of last year, Google announced that they will also look at other bay area cities like Santa Clara for Fiber. I don't see what happened to that and there is no more mention of Santa Clara in the latest post. Maybe it fell through? The last update I see is from the city claiming that the discussions have ended - http://siliconvalleypower.com/index.aspx?recordid=3191&page=...

I wish I knew the reasons for not picking a city.

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

#167

Post by ojbyrne »

es09 wrote: post #165
squiguy7 wrote: post #4

I'm surprised they didn't choose San Jose. There must be some things outside of their control considering they would have expanded into their own neighborhood.

In the middle of last year, Google announced that they will also look at other bay area cities like Santa Clara for Fiber. I don't see what happened to that and there is no more mention of Santa Clara in the latest post. Maybe it fell through? The last update I see is from the city claiming that the discussions have ended - http://siliconvalleypower.com/index.aspx?recordid=3191&page=... I wish I knew the reasons for…

Santa Clara was always included (and still is) in the potential San Jose rollout. As is Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto.

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

#168

Post by mkr-hn »

bsder wrote: post #140
samelawrence wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting that Google isn't doing this because: 1) They want to be an ISP 2) They feel bad for America and want us to enjoy faster internet. They're doing it because they have plans for products which necessitate nationwide high speed internet. I don't know what those plans are... maybe making YouTube the everything-video-delivery-system, maybe massively collaborative work tools as they expand Google Docs et…

> This is a business plan. It is, but not because they have a plan beyond it, though. Cox/Time-Warner/etc. basically shook down Google for money a couple of years ago. Google backed down and the last-mile ISPs thought they won. Google, of course, was extremely unhappy to painfully discover that there was insufficient competition if the ISP's decided to play dirty and block their ads. So, Google now looks at the ISP's…

I learned a new word today.

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

#170

Post by r_edwards »

throwaway90999 wrote: post #116
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"with goals beyond pure financial gains and rock-bottom self-interest." This doesn't paint an accurate picture. Google isn't deploying Fiber out of any notion of selflessness. This is a competitive play, and a very good one at that. You say selfless ideals, I say this is exactly how "the market" and "competition" are commonly understood to function -- in the absence of corruption, regulatory capture and state granted…

but I would argue a bigger hedge against net neutrality -> not banking on defeating what increasingly looks like regulatory capture.
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