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Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

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Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#81

Post by cookiecaper »

notatoad wrote: post #34
evo_9 wrote: post #16

Is there any rime or reason to the cities that Google chooses to put fiber into? Is it a matter of more friendly local government, less resistant local teleco's, a combination thereof or some other factors? Just seems the locations aren't exactly tech hubs so I'm trying to get a better idea of how the expansion works.

The reason Kansas City was selected was supposedly because they were the most willing to give access to utility poles and let google dig up streets/alleys where necessary to run the fibre. I don't know if that's the case with these more recent expansions, but i suspect it is.

KC was selected for a lot of reasons -- tons of cities were desperate to be the first Fiber city and would've given any accommodation necessary. KC had the perfect coalescence of geography (quite flat, minimal bodies of water, etc), market availability, and governmental cooperation for the pilot.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#82

Post by danielweber »

rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

I'm in Charlotte and I have two ISPs, and neither of them gives me any data cap or any problem watching 2 Netflix streams.

My neighborhood has buried cable, so I don't know if the fiber will come to my house.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#83

Post by vertex-four »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #10
rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.

Of course, most competition also died. In terms of free email, there's now... I think Outlook.com is the only one I see semi-regularly? Yahoo's email service is utterly dreadful and I seem to remember a lot of kerfuffle regarding them and mailing lists.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#85

Post by ljk »

rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

It' stories like these that's making me not sure if google is evil or not(i'm guessing the least evil of them all)

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#86

Post by rkalla »

bradfa wrote: post #78
rkalla wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you mention 'rural area' -- my in-laws all live in the wooded section of Troy, IL... total population is like 1,000 people. Anyway, they have Charter cable over there - and for the last decade they have been asking me about 'Getting Netflix' - but with a maximum download speed of 3mbps I kept telling them "It's just not going to work well for you..." 2 months ago Charter bumped them from 3mbps to 50mbps. My fir…

To put 'Getting Netflix' into perspective for you, my home connection is 2 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up and I have no issue watching Netflix steams with good enough quality to be enjoyable. We choose to get this slow connection due to the cost ($15/mo) and see no reason to pay for higher tiers of speed from Time Warner.

Really surprising - I would have thought that would be a "total no-go" environment. Thanks for the data point!

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#87

Post by jnem »

avn2109 wrote: post #62
slowmovintarget wrote: post #5

>> It’s been nearly five years since we offered to build a fiber-optic network in one U.S. city as an experiment — and were met with overwhelming enthusiasm. I suspect the enthusiasm had to do with Google not acting like a phone/cable company. My own hope is that this remains true, and that they come to the Boston area.

Excavation projects are famously successful in Boston, so the Google Fiber people are probably chomping at the bit to get their shovels in Beantown dirt. But seriously, your hypothesis about GF's non-evil fundamental DNA is a good one. It makes for a much better user experience.

Lol, I hope that was a joke (i think it was), for those who aren't aware, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#89

Post by danielweber »

wmf wrote: post #73
elif wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that in amsterdam, even though you only have 1 fiber line running to your house, you can choose from many ISPs over that line. Since (I assume) google is not installing an entirely new fiber network, but merely buying fiber rights and doing last-mile construction, it seems like that would also be a reasonable framework to establish here. I'm not saying it would be easy. It would take a lot of legal work. Bu…

Google said they considered the open access model but rejected it. I don't think they explained why, though.

They don't want to dig only to have someone else undercut them.

Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham

#90

Post by higherpurpose »

rkalla wrote: post #6

For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do. Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to show their affection. Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and asked them on the spot "When a…

Even when they do that, you should still support Google Fiber by switching to it. If nobody switches then Google Fiber will die for lack of customers and revenue and the established players will go back to using their old attitude towards the customers, and never upgrade again.
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