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The future of Fiber

fiber.google.com

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Re: The future of Fiber

#241

Post by ericd »

rayiner wrote: post #145
ericd wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know enough about fiber to have a very intelligent discussion about it, but from what I've heard, one of the nice things about fiber is that you can run increasing amounts of bandwidth through the same fiber once it's laid as the endpoints improve.

I would expect that the buildout could be funded by a municipal bond issue, with the repayment being handled via the revenue from the customer-facing companies that lease access to the infrastructure. I've heard of municipal networks like this being run profitably and being repaid in a reasonable timeframe (on the order of a decade or two), but unfortunately I don't know more than that.

Re: The future of Fiber

#242

Post by jusben1369 »

"announce the next round of cities who’ll be getting Google Fiber by the end of 2014."

- announce which cities are chosen by the end of 2014? or those cities that will have fiber in them by the end of 2014?

Re: The future of Fiber

#243

Post by jusben1369 »

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.

I suspect wmf lives in a city that he might define as politically hostile :)

Re: The future of Fiber

#244

Post by jusben1369 »

how do people feel about mobile networks? In a lot of locations the speeds are getting as good as or better than broadband. They're cost ineffective right now for anything but short term tethering but that problem could be solved in 2 - 4 years. I just wonder if laying down fiber house to house is going to seem outdated in 5 years or so for anyone except the hard core work at home dev.

Re: The future of Fiber

#245

Post by res0nat0r »

ericd wrote: post #241
rayiner wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know enough about fiber to have a very intelligent discussion about it, but from what I've heard, one of the nice things about fiber is that you can run increasing amounts of bandwidth through the same fiber once it's laid as the endpoints improve. I would expect that the buildout could be funded by a municipal bond issue, with the repayment being handled via the revenue from the customer-facing companies tha…

I think the point is: local governments can barely pay for essential services (water, power) that most everyone in their district needs. High speed fibre that a small subset of their constituents would use is way down on the list.

Re: The future of Fiber

#246

Post by jseliger »

endtime wrote: post #147
jseliger wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fairly happy. We had the option of TWC or RCN and chose RCN based on reputation: TWC's is horrible, and anything I can do to avoid paying them money is probably a net Good Thing.

Re: The future of Fiber

#247

Post by atwebb »

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.

I'm interested to see where it would start to spread from (if it comes here at all), any thoughts?

Re: The future of Fiber

#248

Post by wmf »

jusben1369 wrote: post #243
wmf wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect wmf lives in a city that he might define as politically hostile :)

Actually I'm in Austin where we're theoretically going to witness three-way fiber competition between Google, AT&T, and Grande (although I suspect they will all find ways to avoid serving my house). I do find it sad that any thread about broadband seems to devolve into whining about how crappy it is in $MY_LOCATION.

Re: The future of Fiber

#249

Post by nandhp »

rufugee wrote: post #56

It always surprises me how excited people get about Google Fiber, yet how up-in-arms they get about GMail, Google+ and other Google services which tend to invade and/or expose your privacy. Do you really think that using a advertising company's fiber as your gateway to the internet is going to offer a private experience? Don't you see how much easier it will make it for them to gather your personal details and habits…

The Google Fiber Privacy Policy seems relatively strong in the "Google Fiber Internet is a dumb pipe" sense:

Technical information collected from the use of Google Fiber Internet for network management, security or maintenance may be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, but such information associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber will not be used by other Google properties without your consent. Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.

https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html

(Google Fiber TV, not so much)

Re: The future of Fiber

#250

Post by arg01 »

Deinos wrote: post #5

Love to see challenges to the pathetic cable monopolies. I'd be willing to pay more than I am now if it meant sticking it to TimeWarner.

Don't worry comcast will make you pay more after the merger, so you'll get your wish granted by an evil genie.
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