91–100 of 157 posts
It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber
I doubt you'll ever really see Google Fiber much outside the neighborhoods in downtown Austin (and maybe some up north). This fits the engagement model they've used in other cities where they wire up the dense / wealthy areas and never get around to the rest of the city. Which is also what Verizon, AT&T and Comcast do. The neighborhoods in Austin getting Google Fiber already have U-Verse and TimeWarner Cable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an email I received 30 minutes ago: "Sign-ups are beginning today in South and Southeast Austin. We’re starting with these neighborhoods, and will be opening new areas on an on-going basis." Also, I'm pretty sure that TWC is available pretty much everywhere in Austin.
TWC is, but U-Verse isn't. Most places in Austin (specifically apartment buildings) your only option is TWC (or Grande, if you're in a Grande area). If you look at other cities (Kansas City) only a fraction of the city (the denser, wealthy area) actually has the service 2 years later. Other large areas have been carved out entirely. Construction is "ongoing" in a number of areas but service remains unavailable. Half…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many types of hard problems. Some are hard because the data just isn't there, and someone needs to connect the dots. The ISP model is hard because it just requires fucking shit tons of money to solve, and there's no getting around the tragedy of the commons problem. With telecom infrastructure, you can either use wired (expensive and with a heavily fragmented regulatory environment) or wireless (expensive w…
BTW, speaking of gigabit disruption in San Francisco: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gigabit-wireless-to-the-h...
Google is offering a "free" (after one-time installation) tier: "up to 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed".
Suppose on that tier, they also offered a temporary "turbo" option, 1Gbps+ for the next hour, or next 5GB, or for the duration of a session with a particular site, whatever. And this "turbo" was available on reasonable, non-discriminatory terms to either the customer, or to remote sites serving data to the customer.
And of course, Google itself would usually enable the "turbo" for bulk and profit-maximizing interactions with its own sites, like HD media purchases, HD teleconferencing, or big software downloads.
Is this an unconscionable and punishable violation of the ideal of network neutrality, or just a boon to all involved: great baseline service for free, and spot acceleration available to everyone at non-discriminatory prices?
What if other upstarts could also offer such a "free" tier in other regions on similar terms – but only by assuming the extra occasional sales of "turbo" to both residential customers and bandwidth-heavy internet services?
The business account is $30 more, which is normal (presumably goes to better support, no word on improved upload/ratios?). But I will say it is a little odd that it doesn't ship with at least one static IP. Plus $30 per IP is kind of crazy. Most host providers, even REALLY inexpensive ones, charge $3-5/month/IP. So I consider $20-30 a massive markup for something pretty useful for a business account.
While I'm excited to see Google Fiber push into Austin, I've been very happy with my 110 mbps down / 11 mbps up from local company Grande: http://mygrande.com/internet/compare . Austin is lucky to have actual competition among cable and ISP providers, unlike many other cities.
It's surprising and unfortunate that they chose Austin then. There are so many other large cities out there with limited choices for fast internet.
It's a lot less legwork to setup shop in a city that doesn't already have red-tape in place.
Damn, one time $300 fee for "Up to" 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. That's like getting free internet for 6 and a half years[1] from current providers after 6 months. And if you want to upgrade you've already got the hardware. I wonder what the minimum time of undercutting at a loss service they can offer is without it being considered anti-competitive. [1] They guarantee 7 years of free service https://fiber.goog…
Is there any evidence that they are operating at a loss? For 2013 Comcast reported 13.5 billion operating income on 64.6 revenue [1]. This means that they could potentially lower their prices 20% without incurring in losses. If we assume that Google is able to operate more efficiently, which isn't such a bold assumption, they could potentially undercut prices even more. On top of that, we could also assume that in te…
Comcast's net margin is closer to 12-14%. And I would say that it's a pretty bold assumption that Google would be able to operate more efficiently than that: Comcast is a mature company in a mature market. Comcast's RF broadcast technology has some limitations, but it also has benefits: relatively low operational costs being a big one of them. Both Verizon and AT&T tried an architectural approach that is quite similar Google's, and their deployments stalled because of platform scalability problems.z
I have been living in Austin for roughly 4 years, but after checking the map it looks like my area may not get fiber for some years to come, as well as much of the greater Austin city limits, based off the progress I see from Google's initial Kansas rollout. The one thing I hope that comes out of this, and the one thing I believe will benefit all Austin residents, would be the ability to negotiate for a lower monthly…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everybody other than Google reports that installing fiber costs over $1,000 per home, but Google is selling it for $300 and saying "trust us".
There are really two costs for installing fiber. The cost to drag it past your house, which is expensive, probably over 1000. And the cost to bring it from your curb to your house. I've heard 500 for that, but it could around 300. Or google could just think of it as an advertising cost.
Google fiber doesn't seem so special to me. Maybe I should read into how the money from the fiber network is made here. I think there are some government loans involved in getting the infrastructure in place, even though there already was a cable network that is currently advertising up to 200 mbit/sec.