I know it would be painful, and the local politics certifiably insane, but if Google wanted draw attention to the dysfunctional monopoly of the cable industry, there would be no better place to wire than Philly. Take the competition right into Comcast's back yard. Start with a rollout of the Philly 'burbs where the Comcast execs live and work inward toward the city from there.
The future of Fiber
41–50 of 288 posts
Re: The future of Fiber
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish Google Fiber could be deployed in NY. However if you consider the cost of deployment, it's much cheaper to do it in a rural area than in the middle of the dense city. I.e. cost per meter of deployed cable can differ a lot.
None of the cities listed on that page are "rural" by any stretch of the imagination.
Then it's not an issue and Google is not scared of digging the earth. On the other hand they write they want to reuse existing conduits, rather than perform new construction.
Re: The future of Fiber
#43I for one don't trust google anymore. They are in bed with the feds.
Re: The future of Fiber
#44Why 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 can't speak for the other three cities, but San Francisco has a number of problems that would make it difficult for a Google Fiber rollout. First, AT&T is already in the process of rolling out fiber to the home, or in some cases, fiber to the node with last mile copper. They have faced nothing but problems trying to do this from people in the city: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Groups-sue-S-F-trying-... Den…
People have been pushing for municipal-owned fiber for a long time in SF: https://www.change.org/petitions/make-fiber-broadband-a-prio...
But the Mayor thinks that WiFi is good enough. :-(
ATT's last-mile copper solution will barely be better than their current "Uverse".
The City (SF) has tons of fiber running all over the City. With some infrastructure investment, it would not be hard to use that as a backbone for municipal fiber. Residents can then sign up with any of the 3rd parties to jump on to the Internet.
Re: The future of Fiber
#45I currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh. It seems pretty clear that tearing up New York City to lay fiber is a much more expensive and tedious process than it would be in Raleigh. The state and local governments also seem much more friendly to that kind of thing.
Doesn't raleigh already have municipal fiber? I know there is fiber in in the RTP area.
Re: The future of Fiber
#46Wish they had Google Fiber in Toronto :(
It would be quite fun watching the incumbents playing the "but we're Canadian" card in order to prevent such a thing. Hard as it might be for Americans to believe the ISP scene in Canada is in danger of falling behind even them.
Canada related question. Do all the major ISPs in Canada have bandwidth caps on consumer broadband?
Re: The future of Fiber
#47I currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh. It seems pretty clear that tearing up New York City to lay fiber is a much more expensive and tedious process than it would be in Raleigh. The state and local governments also seem much more friendly to that kind of thing.
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 targeting the places with the crappiest service and the most amenable local governments; NYC's service isn't terrible and its government isn't exactly known for being responsive.
Re: The future of Fiber
#48I 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…
Why couldn't they lay fiber to core areas, then setup some sort of wireless redistribution - there'd be some lack of speed due to more users using same connection, but it would mean less construction required. As they could just setup more and more access points throughout the city, and some sort of wireless login for specific users... --Might be a possible solution.
Re: The future of Fiber
#49I 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…
Just ask any NYC folks. How many of us are still waiting for that FIOS? I am waiting and waiting. And they promised to complete by 2014. We are almost three months into 2014 and I still have no FiOS access here. A bit above my area has already gotten FiOS two-three years ago and my area still hasn't gotten any! I am angry. We need to break this franchises. > The company also appears to be blaming landlords for any ho…
VZW stopped rolling out FIOS across the board I believe.
Re: The future of Fiber
#50I 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 suspect they mostly want a compliant political infrastructure and relatively easy construction. NYC and SF aren't really known for either. Also, NYC would probably be biting off more than Google Fiber has any interest in chewing at the moment. They're still scaling up, after all.
Good answer. I always post this: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-... when people ask why SF isn't at the top of the list. Existing telcos already can't easily roll out faster service!