Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#21

Post by ibmthrowaway218 » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:14 AM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #18

dredmorbius wrote: post #16

Friends of mine in SF tell me of an existing alternative, though availability varies by neighborhood and building: Monkeybrains is a wireless ISP which offers service from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100+ Mbps not being unheard of. Coverage is mostly in the eastern / hipster side of the City: North Beach, downtown, the Haight, Noe, to Bayview. So Sunsetters and Richmondites are SOL. Reports I've heard are that service is…

If they offer up to 10Gbps, then why are you making 100+ Mbps seem like a big deal?

It makes more sense if they'd said:

    1 Mbps to 10 Mbps, with 100+ Mbps not being unheard of.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#22

Post by a_taylor » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:20 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #16

Friends of mine in SF tell me of an existing alternative, though availability varies by neighborhood and building: Monkeybrains is a wireless ISP which offers service from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100+ Mbps not being unheard of. Coverage is mostly in the eastern / hipster side of the City: North Beach, downtown, the Haight, Noe, to Bayview. So Sunsetters and Richmondites are SOL. Reports I've heard are that service is…

This Monkeybrains outfit also tried to crowdfund $325 million for a satellite last year (http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/monkeybrains-satellite). They fell $324.989484 million short, though maybe that's just because crowdfunding wasn't as mainstream a year ago. That said, SF residents probably wouldn't tolerate a satellite in their air-space... i mean space-space?

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#23

Post by stbtrax » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:35 AM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #20

Contrast SF's dysfunction with Houston, one of the conservatives' model cities. Houston's streets are clean, public parks seem to have the quality one would associate with private ones, there's no graffiti or homeless folks in the streets. The business-friendly environment means that there is constant development and affordable housing prices. You can actually own a huge and beautiful house in a gorgeous and safe nei…

And you have to drive everywhere. Also you would live in a state where people give intelligent design serious consideration, and the weather is unbearable during the summer, and a lack of outdoor activities and an abundance of obesity(houston is #1 in the list of fattest cities).

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#24

Post by timerickson » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:40 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #16

Friends of mine in SF tell me of an existing alternative, though availability varies by neighborhood and building: Monkeybrains is a wireless ISP which offers service from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100+ Mbps not being unheard of. Coverage is mostly in the eastern / hipster side of the City: North Beach, downtown, the Haight, Noe, to Bayview. So Sunsetters and Richmondites are SOL. Reports I've heard are that service is…

Reliability and Monkey Brains is not something I'd put in the same sentence. It's a pretty regular occurrence for it to go down at our office, even after moving to a new space, several streets down.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#25

Post by Decade » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:40 AM UTC

bifrost wrote: post #17

I was born in SF and have lived here most of my adult life. Our city government needs to be thrown away, it really is that bad. That said, Google should never be allowed to run a public network for the city. Its like handing the NSA the keys to the kingdom. Get the city to greenlight a company that actually cares about this stuff ( http://www.sonic.net ) and I'll be much happier.

I'm not entirely pleased with sonic.net. They have a nice business plan, but they don't care about the deep issues.

For example, Dane is against Net Neutrality, and he doesn't think IPv6 is terribly important.

The beta IPv6 service is manually configured, and some time around the weekend they changed my IP address via DHCP, breaking my IPv6 tunnel. I'm going to have to hunt down my sonic.net login so I can get my tunnel back. Or switch to an he.net tunnel.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#26

Post by Bahamut » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:41 AM UTC

stbtrax wrote: post #23

Meekro wrote: post #20

Contrast SF's dysfunction with Houston, one of the conservatives' model cities. Houston's streets are clean, public parks seem to have the quality one would associate with private ones, there's no graffiti or homeless folks in the streets. The business-friendly environment means that there is constant development and affordable housing prices. You can actually own a huge and beautiful house in a gorgeous and safe nei…

And you have to drive everywhere. Also you would live in a state where people give intelligent design serious consideration, and the weather is unbearable during the summer, and a lack of outdoor activities and an abundance of obesity(houston is #1 in the list of fattest cities).

I thought Philly had that distinction about weight?

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#27

Post by sirkneeland » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 9:45 AM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #4

george88b wrote: post #3

I don't live in Sf but its city government sure sounds dysfunctional, more so than most cities at least.

One of the most dysfunctional in america.

Indeed. It baffles me when anyone tries to uphold San Francisco as a model of progressive good governance. SF succeeds in spite of its government, not because of it. Basically it is fortunate to have great weather and an abundance of wealthy educated people who can absorb the insanely high cost of living and tax structure and still have enough left over to pay their way past the lackluster public services they get for all that tax money.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#28

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:09 AM UTC

wyclif wrote: post #8

george88b wrote: post #3

I don't live in Sf but its city government sure sounds dysfunctional, more so than most cities at least.

SF is the NIMBY capital of America for a reason. Loads of people who can't seem to understand why housing prices keep rising while they simultaneously ensure that no new housing can be built.

[deleted]

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#29

Post by SirensOfTitan » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:18 AM UTC

stbtrax wrote: post #23

Meekro wrote: post #20

Contrast SF's dysfunction with Houston, one of the conservatives' model cities. Houston's streets are clean, public parks seem to have the quality one would associate with private ones, there's no graffiti or homeless folks in the streets. The business-friendly environment means that there is constant development and affordable housing prices. You can actually own a huge and beautiful house in a gorgeous and safe nei…

And you have to drive everywhere. Also you would live in a state where people give intelligent design serious consideration, and the weather is unbearable during the summer, and a lack of outdoor activities and an abundance of obesity(houston is #1 in the list of fattest cities).

Neither the abundance of obesity nor intelligent design proponents affects me or my quality of life in any way.

So the arguments against Houston collapse to: you have to drive everywhere and weather (essentially). And taking the MUNI isn't much of an upgrade over having a car in an affordable place.

Re: Google won’t bring Fiber to San Francisco

#30

Post by Matsta » Thu, Feb 27, 2014, 10:26 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #16

Friends of mine in SF tell me of an existing alternative, though availability varies by neighborhood and building: Monkeybrains is a wireless ISP which offers service from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100+ Mbps not being unheard of. Coverage is mostly in the eastern / hipster side of the City: North Beach, downtown, the Haight, Noe, to Bayview. So Sunsetters and Richmondites are SOL. Reports I've heard are that service is…

From the looks of it they are just using Ubquiti wireless gear.

http://www.ubnt.com/airmax#nanobridgem That is the ariel in the picture on their site.

Crazy how they charge you $350 though, they cost $79 to buy individually (they are probably getting a wholesale discount).

I'm guessing for business accounts they are using the Airfiber which is pretty cool and fast. They can't do 10gbps though, don't think their fibre lines can even handle that much.

Speaking of which, I noticed there's not many Data centers in SF which probably because there isn't much fibre around. My Digital Ocean box in SF is really quick however, even less hops to New Zealand than it is from LA which is weird since the Southern cross cable lands closer to LA.