Cool to see they're expanding, but I'm disappointed to see that there's no love for the upper Midwest. Wouldn't expect it in Chicago but Milwaukee (where I am), Madison, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and possibly a few smaller cities would all seem like reasonable candidates (although I acknowledge there's issues with all of them).
The future of Fiber
51–60 of 288 posts
Re: The future of Fiber
#52I 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 targeti…
RCN is a solid provider from what I hear. I'm JUST out of their coverage area and am consigned to Comcast. Tis a terrible fate.
Re: The future of Fiber
#53I 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…
Doing any kind of utility work in NYC is a nightmare. There's lots of stuff underground (power, telecom, water, steam, sewer) that has been built up over the years and is in various states of obsolescence and disrepair, and in many cases isn't really marked on any utility maps. It's not a trivial matter to just dig a new trench for fiber.
Here's a interesting story of what happened when an electrician found a 250VDC feed that was supposed to be abandoned decades ago: http://www.electriciantalk.com/f5/fixture-tails-44009/#post8...
Re: The future of Fiber
#54I 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.
You live in Philadelphia, don't you?
Re: The future of Fiber
#55I 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…
Yes. This. Having had FiOS before is the worst part, knowing first-hand just how subpar my TWC service is (there's no going back after getting 35mbps upload speeds). It seems completely ridiculous to me that in 2014 Brooklyn we're still choosing block-by-block where to live based on the internet service.
Re: The future of Fiber
#56It 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? Do you really think Google won't use your data to their advantage?
Re: The future of Fiber
#57Google Fiber will pass Google Fiber was announced almost four years ago and has only a few tens of thousands of subscribers. While it's fun to get excited about what Google Fiber could be, it will be years before any material percentage of the country has the opportunity to use Google Fiber.
Google is still building out small neighborhoods in Kansas City [1]
[0]https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q-sGUEiuT9VN__VPsFeo... [1]https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/#zone=Kansas+City...
Re: The future of Fiber
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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.
Re: The future of Fiber
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I believe so - I have to use a relatively small player that resells Bell infrastructure.
The way it works is pick any two of speed, capped usage or reasonable price, but then forget the last one because it doesn't exist anywhere.
I consider my, still expensive, 4G mobile way better value than the land line ISP, but I need the capacity for work. Frankly I think 4G is going to wipe out land lines in far more cases than people realise.
Re: The future of Fiber
#60Got my hopes up there for a little bit... if only they came to Santa Barbara -- we have plenty of tech people here willing to pay for awesome internet! (and get away from Cox...) I'll keep dreaming :)
I wish they'll come to Santa Barbara so badly (As I'm sure everyone also does for their cities). We do have lots of tech here and even good connections to Google, but I feel we're probably too small. Even Verizon pulled out from installing FiOS.