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The future of Fiber

fiber.google.com

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Re: The future of Fiber

#251

Post by tadfisher »

fuzzywalrus wrote: post #177
tehaaron wrote: post #91

Very excited to see Portland,OR on the list! I'm tired of Comcast and the other options are quite lacking in one way or another.

East Portland is wired up with Fibre backbone DSL from Century Link. Its $30 a month for a connection that's roughly 40 mbps down / 15 mbps up. I generally get 4 megabytes a sec downloads, and my friend who lives south around Holgate and 65th sees about the same. No data caps that I'm aware of either. Its faster than Comcast's two lower tier internet packages. I've heard North Portland isn't as lucky but its certainl…

How far east? I'm east of 82nd, and the fastest CenturyLink offers here is 1.5 mbps.

Re: The future of Fiber

#252

Post by omegaham »

adventured wrote: post #104
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.

"If Google Fiber wants to prove that their model is replicable they need to deploy it at a profit in a politically hostile environment." Well actually no they don't. They're going to prove their model is replicable and profitable, while not deploying to politically hostile environments.

This.

Their goal is to change politically hostile environments by deploying in friendly cities. Then, residents of the hostile cities will start asking, "Why are we paying extortionate rates for shitty service?" Even if Google Fiber never gets to deploy there, the threat of it will hopefully be enough to get cable companies to act more fairly.

Re: The future of Fiber

#253

Post by bakedjake »

CountHackulus wrote: post #58
adventured wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada related question. Do all the major ISPs in Canada have bandwidth caps on consumer broadband?

Yes, every major ISP has bandwidth caps, some of which are prohibitively small (20GB). Even the smaller upstart ISPs, like TekSavvy are forced to have a cap (though at 300GB) due to wholesale laws. At least they offer unlimited for a reasonable amount of money. Canada is definitely behind the US for internet access, it's even behind many (if not most) third world countries.

I've had Cogeco (180down/20up) in the suburbs and currently have Rogers (250down/20up) in downtown Toronto without caps. Rogers charges a bit extra for it, but no-cap plans are definitely available.

> Canada is definitely behind the US for internet access, it's even behind many (if not most) third world countries.

I completely disagree with this. Cogeco kicks the pants off of the options available in downtown SF in my experience.

Re: The future of Fiber

#254

Post by DigitalSea »

Google needs to bring Google Fiber to Australia. The coalition have plans for a fiber/copper hybrid in which the fibre runs to a box and then you connect via outdated copper from the street to your house. It's like driving a sports car 90% of the way and a horse and cart the rest of the 10% — I think what Google are doing is great, they need to expand though. I know New Zealand could use something like Google Fiber as well.

Re: The future of Fiber

#255

Post by ericd »

res0nat0r wrote: post #245
ericd wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're right that that was his point. It wouldn't necessarily come out of their budgets, though, it could be done with debt financing on the project itself, repaid purely from the revenues from leasing access to the network to the customer facing ISPs.

I also don't think it would necessarily be used by a small subset of the constituents - it seems as though it could potentially be much cheaper than alternative high-speed arrangements, since the customer facing companies would actually have some competition. Once the initial construction debt was paid down, the govt. could likely reduce the access lease cost, which would be passed on by the competitive ISPs, further enabling access by poorer residents.

I think it would be great for the long-term economic prospects of those areas as it broadens access and makes heavy uses like remote work more viable.

Plus, a good internet connection is a much cheaper form of entertainment than many of the alternatives, including cable, so it could actually save many people money.

Re: The future of Fiber

#257

Post by brc »

DigitalSea wrote: post #254

Google needs to bring Google Fiber to Australia. The coalition have plans for a fiber/copper hybrid in which the fibre runs to a box and then you connect via outdated copper from the street to your house. It's like driving a sports car 90% of the way and a horse and cart the rest of the 10% — I think what Google are doing is great, they need to expand though. I know New Zealand could use something like Google Fiber a…

Which is precisely why a re-nationalized telecommunications provider was such a terrible, terrible idea. Google cannot install fiber in Australia even if it wanted to, because competition to the NBN is illegal. It's now 7 years since it was announced, virtually nobody has it, and private companies like Google are precluded from filling in the gap, and the local telcos have just let their existing network go to ruin because they are being paid to rip it up. A shocking outcome.

Re: The future of Fiber

#259

Post by geitiegg »

DigitalSea wrote: post #254

Google needs to bring Google Fiber to Australia. The coalition have plans for a fiber/copper hybrid in which the fibre runs to a box and then you connect via outdated copper from the street to your house. It's like driving a sports car 90% of the way and a horse and cart the rest of the 10% — I think what Google are doing is great, they need to expand though. I know New Zealand could use something like Google Fiber a…

While I won't argue that Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) is better than Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) it is, at the very least, much cheaper.

The cost per consumer for "last mile" connections can be an order of magnitude more than those used in the core network because of the economies of scale at play. [1]

Most of the UK is currently being set up with FTTC, representing a dramatic increase in the country's average broadband speed over the past few years. [2] [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/fiber-its-not-all... [2] http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/03/14/average-uk-broadband-sp...

Re: The future of Fiber

#260

Post by pwarner »

res0nat0r wrote: post #69
skyebook wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've heard/seen this as well, they've done it in favor of expanding LTE coverage [0] I'm astounded at how anyone at VZ thinks this could be a good idea. [0] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Again-Confirms-Fi...

I believe the FIOS demand wasn't high enough to justify the costs of expanding it any further.

fios penetration rate is 35% which is not bad. http://www.lightreading.com/fios-slows-but-still-grows/d/d-i...
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