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The future of Fiber

fiber.google.com

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Re: The future of Fiber

#201

Post by x0054 »

nousernamesleft wrote: post #146
adventured wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corr…

> 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.

WTF!?! Is it that US is trying out National Healthcare, so now Canada is going to try out some of the worst American ideas? I don't know much about Canadian politics, but the things you listed are some of the worst policies United States ever implemented. Why on earth is Canada trying those things, I can assure you, private prisons and mandatory minimum sentences are NOT working here in US.

Re: The future of Fiber

#202

Post by chimeracoder »

jimbokun wrote: post #195
chimeracoder wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> right now I'm paying $50 a month for 50 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up through RCN And I'm paying $54 for 20 Mbs/down on Time Warner, which is already a "discounted rate". (I'm in Manhattan). The building next door to me has FiOS, but my landlord has no incentive to let them wire my building too. I agree that New York City isn't the best target for Google Fiber, but the Internet situation here varies very heavily based on whe…

"The building next door to me has FiOS, but my landlord has no incentive to let them wire my building too." Is your building rent controlled? If not, I suspect your landlord is short sighted. I am curious to see whether property values will start to diverge based on quality of internet access. With more people wanting to work from home, I think availability, speed, cost, and quality of Internet access will have an im…

In New York City, buildings aren't rent-controlled (or rent-stabilized); individual apartments are. I highly doubt that any units in my building are rent-controlled (that's very rare in NYC these days). There may be one or two that's rent-stabilized, but given the neighborhood and the tenancy of the building, I doubt it.

> I think availability, speed, cost, and quality of Internet access will have an impact on property values.

In New York, that's vastly dwarfed by the many other factors that affect property values. As much as you and I think Internet access is important, most NYC tenants care more about location, bedbug history, sunlight, etc.

Re: The future of Fiber

#203

Post by Zigurd »

wmf wrote: post #81
27182818284 wrote: post #35

I'm really, really glad they chose Kansas City as the pilot city despite not living there. If they had just gone and chosen San Francisco, Chicago or New York, it would have been no more of an experiment than offering more cable channels to the big cities in the 1990s—It just is completely uninteresting. On a side note, If you haven't been to KC's Startup Village, the climate is electric! It feels like something real…

I see it the opposite way: Deploying fiber is easy if the city gives you carte blanche as KC did. Doing something easy proves nothing. If Google Fiber wants to prove that their model is replicable they need to deploy it at a profit in a politically hostile environment.

> If Google Fiber wants to prove that their model is replicable they need to deploy it at a profit in a politically hostile environment.

Sun Tsu would flunk you out of strategy class. Why should Google engage with an evil, bribery-based, rent-seeking competitor, and their bought politicians, until they run out of relatively easier conquests, and have the revenue from those conquests funding further expansion, and their relationships with independent content creators at a much higher value from a larger customer base?

Particularly when those competitors are not seeking to confront Google, and are preferring to play rent-seeking games with anti-neutrality in their networks, thus making their end game even more brittle?

Re: The future of Fiber

#205

Post by rayiner »

foobarqux wrote: post #187
rayiner wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. is ranked #8 in average broadband connection speed in Akamai's most recent State of the Internet. That puts it ahead of most of Europe: http://www.akamai.com/dl/documents/akamai_soti_q213.pdf?WT.m... (page 13). If you look at more densely populated coastal states, the U.S. looks even better. Yeah, South Korea has widespread fiber internet. More than half the country lives in the Seoul metro area. You can't c…

Nation-wide averages tell a story that no one is interested in. Do you have data on densely populated coastal states? I want to compare speed and speed/Mbps to areas like Warsaw and Stockholm with high density cities in the US.

The problem with drilling deeper is that America is organized quite differently than European countries. It is typical for a European city like Stockholm or London for 40-60% of the people in a metro area to live in the denser, core city. In the U.S., that number is more typically 10-20%. Moreover, because of historical reasons, the dense inner cities in the U.S. that are most geographically amenable to building out fiber have huge proportions of poor people who couldn't afford it. Middle class people who might buy fiber are disproportionately more likely to live out in suburban areas less suitable for building such infrastructure.

Very concrete example: Delaware is one of the fastest states in the U.S., with average connection speeds in Akamai's study comparable to the top 5 countries in the global list. I live in the largest city in the state, a major rail hub, in the heart of downtown, and can't get fast internet because the area is so poor. But the suburbs right around us have fiber.

Per-city breakouts aren't in Akamai's most recent report, but here's one for Q4 '11: http://tumblr.thefjp.org/post/22270191498/the-worlds-fastest.... The fastest city in Sweden at 11.3 mbps wasn't that dramatically faster than the fastest in the U.S. at 8.4 mbps. Asia of course dominates, but that's because Japan and Korea have tons of very densely-built cities.

Re: The future of Fiber

#206

Post by peter303 »

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 wonder if the existance of "dark fiber" is a factor. In the late 1990s a half dozen fiber companies tore up our industrial park street laying new fiber. I doubt if much of it is used. One new fiber was laid last year since then.

Re: The future of Fiber

#207

Post by rybosome »

help_wanted wrote: post #64

So excited to to see Nashville on this list. Our technology scene has been thriving recently and this only adds fuel to the fire.

Nashville is a great city...I was totally unaware of the tech scene. Startups, big companies? I have no idea if I'll ever move away from the west coast, but Nashville is one of the few places in the eastern US that I could imagine living.

Re: The future of Fiber

#208

Post by imgabe »

malandrew wrote: post #10

Why not San Francisco, Washington D.C., Boston and NYC? San Francisco, NYC and Boston because they are big tech hubs where a lot of Googlers live and Washington D.C. because it is the seat of politics in this country and the best way to show what good can happen when we have broadband connectivity. In fact, rolling out Google Fiber in the capital cities of each state makes the most sense in general. You lobby the pol…

I live in DC and I'd love to have Google fiber. We supposedly have a municipal fiber network here, but as far as I can tell it's doing diddly squat and I'm stuck with Comcast.

Re: The future of Fiber

#210

Post by BlackDeath3 »

lifeformed wrote: post #197
davesque wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Meanwhile a sleepy hacker is waking up and making breakfast in the kitchen. The climate is wonderful." ...really? It sounds more to me like that hacker in the kitchen is being overworked and feels compelled to not even go home at night. Going straight from the bed to the computer (or vice versa) is an unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyle.

Sometimes its fun. It's a different situation for everyone. As a young person with no obligations, I love working late into the night on big crunches, followed by some slower, relaxing weeks.

Your music is awesome :)
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