My start-up is in LA and we're been talking about moving to SF. This will definitely factor in to our discussion.
Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
81–90 of 223 posts
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
What ISP are you getting 150 mbps at $50/mo from?
Comcast/Xfinity
Meanwhile, my service cost jumped, so I re-upped for another Xfinity 12 month scam where instead of charging me $75/mo for 75mbit internet only, they charge me $55/mo for Internet in exchange for allowing myself to be listed as a "cable subscriber" in a sad effort to keep their TV subscriber numbers up.
That's right, their margins on internet are s huge they'd rather pay me $20 a month, plus pay the content providers (including HBO!) for another customer, than lose a "tv subscriber".
Nevermind that the cable box sits in my attic for another year.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#83As someone a few miles from Google HQ, this doesn't mean very much. Mountain View has been on the "potential" list for at least 2 years, with no movement whatsoever.
The less movement you have, the more you need fiber.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#84As a Chicagoan I'm excited, but also worried it will lead to the incarceration of multiple public officials and a raw deal for the city, somehow.
Fellow Chicagoan here,
Google is going to have to grease quite a few palms to make this happen, if it ever does.
Politicians here have perpetuated the AT&T and Comcast duopoly for quite awhile, and I have no doubt that they are well compensated to do so.
For a new player to come into town who will raise quality of service and lower prices in a way that will force Comcast and AT&T to do the same in order to compete (resulting in lower profits and a lower payola budget) is not going to endear Google to anybody with an established interest in the status quo.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#85If I had to guess, I imagine they would start out around where their offices are in Venice and at least reach to where their Youtube studios are in Playa Vista. Both areas are big for startups along with all new development in Playa Vista.
It might actually emanate out of One Wilshire.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#86Sadly, Seattle bureaucracy has ruined google fiber here: http://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-...
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#87Does anyone know what it takes to start up municipal fiber? There is a dark fiber line about 4 blocks from my house (in Berkeley), I feel that if I got enough neighbors to sign on to helping fund the initial costs of piping a connection to that, we could all get much better internet service -- but I don't know where one would start with that.
Only time + money. But more of both than you likely want to invest. Disclosure: built my own ISP 13 years ago after a similar "how hard can it be??" moment.
Have you written up this experience anywhere? I'd love to read that.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
People will think you're joking, but it's the first thing I thought, too. My parents live in Chicago, and they just roll their eyes about all the way people seem to steal from the city.
Ex-Chicagoan here. This is absolutely, positively not a joke. I can probably come up with a half dozen schemes that would use the fiber build-out as a thinly-veiled excuse to bleed both Google and city residents. Let's try. 1. All network providers would be allowed to charge a new "infrastructure maintenance fee" to their customers. A fixed $2, plus 40% of the amount of the fee, would go to the city per customer-mont…
Speaking of dark fiber in Chicago, I suspect the city owns a lot of it. Their surveillance network includes several hundred miles of fiber.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#89I can't wait for this in LA. I'm currently paying $115 per month for 1Mbps/10Mbps for Time Warner "business class" internet-only service. My company does visual effects work, so I actually have to drive my video files home on a USB drive to upload them since my home connection is 20Mbps/200Mbps for $50 per month. The internet monopoly situation in the US is terrible for businesses here.
This is so ridiculous, it's literally unbelievable. My home city, Kiev(Ukraine), has multiple 1 Gbit residential broadband providers for $6 - $15. Not joking.
the truth can't be literally unbelievable by definition.
My least favorite aspect of these stories has to be all the people who like to list out the price of internet connectivity as if it lives in a vacuum. It's not really a meaningful datapoint on its own for a number of reasons, and the conversation it engenders is almost never worth reading.
Re: Chicago and Los Angeles Are Next Up for Google Fiber
#90I can't wait for this in LA. I'm currently paying $115 per month for 1Mbps/10Mbps for Time Warner "business class" internet-only service. My company does visual effects work, so I actually have to drive my video files home on a USB drive to upload them since my home connection is 20Mbps/200Mbps for $50 per month. The internet monopoly situation in the US is terrible for businesses here.
This is so ridiculous, it's literally unbelievable. My home city, Kiev(Ukraine), has multiple 1 Gbit residential broadband providers for $6 - $15. Not joking.
this is for 'business class' service, which is often in office buildings. metro fiber and ethernet is really, really, really expensive in these buildings because of other monopoly factors - the cable companies wish they could compete here, but they sometimes can't.
for example, symmetrical 10mbps metro ethernet is close to $2k/month here in LA. yes, for real.
commercial service has higher SLA's (which really doesn't mean a damn thing, it's just tradition) and is more expensive.
it's highly dependent on your office building's location. cable companies and fiber operators do not canvas entire commercial districts like they do residential areas.