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Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

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Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#31

Post by velodrome »

georgemcbay wrote: post #11

Shaming won't work when so many places in the USA only have one viable cable provider. Here in my area of San Diego I'm stuck with Time Warner. Even ignoring the relatively slow speeds, I'd be happy just to not have my connection randomly disappear for about 5 minutes 2 or 3 times a day. I'd switch to a competitor in a second except there aren't any. The ISPs have no shame, unless you're willing to force real competi…

Canada and Australia have it worse (bandwidth limits, etc).

Anyhow, the US government should make this a national priority. The faster the internet, the better the economic growth. How can the US continue to dominate (and/or influence) the internet if they do not have the proper infrastructure for it?

A clear message needs to be sent: the telecom/cable duopoly is no longer assured. A "put up" or shut up" attitude needs to be put in play. If they don't like it, then don't take subsidies.

There definitely needs to be more players in order for the market to function properly. I welcome Google or any other to change the game.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#32

Post by tcwc »

Lockyy wrote: post #24
georgemcbay wrote: post #11

Shaming won't work when so many places in the USA only have one viable cable provider. Here in my area of San Diego I'm stuck with Time Warner. Even ignoring the relatively slow speeds, I'd be happy just to not have my connection randomly disappear for about 5 minutes 2 or 3 times a day. I'd switch to a competitor in a second except there aren't any. The ISPs have no shame, unless you're willing to force real competi…

I'm assuming that the various ISPs have agreements between each other to not expand onto each others "turf"? Otherwise how does competition not naturally spread? If they do, how do they get away with that? More puzzling to me is how ISPs squash towns plans to implement their own networks. I'm very ignorant on how things got so bad over in the US, I've always had a multitude of ISPs over here in England.

In the UK our situation is much better, although BT owns most of the physical cable "Local loop unbundling" forces them to share their lines with competitors.

It seems in the US the only people you can buy from own the physical infrastructure. Once one company has already built their network in an area they form a natural monopoly - it's not economical for competitors to come in and rebuild the network when they know they'll only be able to get a certain % of households to switch.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#33

Post by velodrome »

rayiner wrote: post #29
Lockyy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming that the various ISPs have agreements between each other to not expand onto each others "turf"? Otherwise how does competition not naturally spread? If they do, how do they get away with that? More puzzling to me is how ISPs squash towns plans to implement their own networks. I'm very ignorant on how things got so bad over in the US, I've always had a multitude of ISPs over here in England.

They don't have agreements (which would be illegal), but they don't need them. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly . When Comcast owns all the fiber in, say Chicago, it's pretty much impossible to encroach on their turf in a cost-effective way. Say Verizon wanted to come in. They'd have to build their own network, and so could never compete with Comcast on price because of the huge capital expenditure…

The US should do what it does for gas mileage (CAFE Rules). A national roadmap for bandwidth speed (and latency).

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#34

Post by cageface »

velodrome wrote: post #31
georgemcbay wrote: post #11

Shaming won't work when so many places in the USA only have one viable cable provider. Here in my area of San Diego I'm stuck with Time Warner. Even ignoring the relatively slow speeds, I'd be happy just to not have my connection randomly disappear for about 5 minutes 2 or 3 times a day. I'd switch to a competitor in a second except there aren't any. The ISPs have no shame, unless you're willing to force real competi…

Canada and Australia have it worse (bandwidth limits, etc). Anyhow, the US government should make this a national priority. The faster the internet, the better the economic growth. How can the US continue to dominate (and/or influence) the internet if they do not have the proper infrastructure for it? A clear message needs to be sent: the telecom/cable duopoly is no longer assured. A "put up" or shut up" attitude nee…

I'm living in a small beach town in Vietnam and I can get fiber directly to my house now. That this is easier here than it was for me in Oakland should really be a source of shame.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#36

Post by 31reasons »

selectout wrote: post #6
darrenkopp wrote: post #2

I have 100Mb/100Mb for $45/month which is pretty decent I think. It's not 1Gb, but still beats the pants off everything else in the area.

what provider and area if you don't mind me asking? I'm stuck with around 15/10 for $60 sadly.

I am stuck with 5 Mbps for $50 sadly.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#37

Post by smoyer »

It's not actually, but ...

I work at Penn State (one of the Internet2 participants) and have blazing fast internet at work. I've clocked it as high as 485MBps. When I go home (to a small village 4 miles from the campus), I have to suffer with Verizon DSL, Comcast cable modem service or a similarly rated line of sight radio service.

Verizon planned to install FiOS in central PA, but the FiOS roll-out has been cancelled. Why can't I have high-speed and affordable Internet at home? Because the ISPs don't want me to get used to it. Nor do they want me to know how much they've been overcharging me the last 15 years.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#38

Post by fnayr »

georgemcbay wrote: post #11

Shaming won't work when so many places in the USA only have one viable cable provider. Here in my area of San Diego I'm stuck with Time Warner. Even ignoring the relatively slow speeds, I'd be happy just to not have my connection randomly disappear for about 5 minutes 2 or 3 times a day. I'd switch to a competitor in a second except there aren't any. The ISPs have no shame, unless you're willing to force real competi…

I'm in San Diego too. Do yourself a favor and switch to ATT Uverse Internet. ATT (maximum) gives you a consistent 3MBps versus Time Warners (maximum) 6MBps that averages closer to 1MBps.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#39

Post by snarkyturtle »

pragmatic wrote: post #14

What would you do with more bandwidth?[1] I've discussed this with several of my friends. In our area, we have multiple providers and can get up to 100MB down/ 30 up with residential service. (You can get all you want if you pay business prices, I work at a company that sells that). 30/5 is the standard. So what would we do with more bandwidth? Netflix streams in high def. Games from Steam download quickly. My Voip p…

Netflix, for one, can lessen their compression which is actually pretty apparent if you pay attention. You see artifacts everywhere and it looks nowhere as good as the HD torrents that I could get.

Also, transferring files between servers would be less painful. Syncing between servers always takes me a minute or two at least and completely throws off my coding flow. Instead of choosing to host it locally and fix things on the server, I could just quickly sync files and fix things on there.

Re: Why Is Google Fiber the Country’s Only Super-Speed Internet?

#40

Post by AnthonyMouse »

velodrome wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have agreements (which would be illegal), but they don't need them. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly . When Comcast owns all the fiber in, say Chicago, it's pretty much impossible to encroach on their turf in a cost-effective way. Say Verizon wanted to come in. They'd have to build their own network, and so could never compete with Comcast on price because of the huge capital expenditure…

The US should do what it does for gas mileage (CAFE Rules). A national roadmap for bandwidth speed (and latency).

This is actually not a bad idea.

Or something similar but maybe even better: Set up a cross-ISP subsidy program. Whoever has the fastest connections in the country receives a subsidy and whoever has the slowest connections has to pay it. Don't even put bandwidth numbers in -- just rank them all by the speed of the unmetered connections they offer for less than $80/month, then the slowest 33% pays a substantial tax to subsidize the fastest 33%. Presto, instant competition to be the fastest, even though they're all in different geographic areas.

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