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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

#91
post #44

I am now surrounded by Google Fiber to the east and west, and Chattanooga's public fiber to the south, out here in Knoxville, TN. I really wish we could manage something here. This area has the biggest national lab, and a host of tech industry around it, I was kind of surprised more options didn't exist when I moved down a year ago. It makes sense to me that Google went after these southeastern markets, because we ar…

I'm from Knoxville, though I currently live in the Raleigh-Durham area (one of the areas the fiber gods have smiled upon). You should consider coming out here. I would not go back.

(Land prices are super cheap in Knoxville, though!)

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

#92
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.

Dude, Raleigh is home to the Research Triangle Park, one of the largest research parks in the country. Pretty much all the major tech companies have a presence here. Plus, three major universities all in the same general area. It's not some podunk little town.

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

#93
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…

in the meantime, here in baltimore, comcast still has it's monopoly which was initiated in 2004.

Knoxville is a Comcast test market, so we get data caps. You can buy a faster connection, it just means you hit the cap faster. Just a heads up on what Comcast is planning on doing to you next...

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

#94
post #71
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that reality one wonder why the incumbents don't raise all their speeds to dissuade google from entering there various markets. Perhaps the shear magnitude of their collective greed obscures their reasoning?

There's no money in building "dumb pipes" to the internet. Verizon's wireline margin over the last couple of quarters has been under 5% ( http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-en... ). Note Google has never revealed how much profit Fiber actually makes. The existing networks are fast enough to service what makes the money: video services. The cable companies will only upgrade the pipes to the exte…

"There's no money in building "dumb pipes" to the internet."

Not for Verizon, maybe -- but Google never struck me as a bunch of chumps or wild philanthropists. I'm betting they're getting more eyeballs in front of Adsense and YouTube ads...

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one I'm friends with uses yahoo, but out of a class I taught of 160 university students, I'd say about 20% of those who actually emailed me were using yahoo.com.

And for older folk, I still see plenty of @aol and @ addresses.

Don't mistake what youre friends are doing for what the world as a whole is doing!

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

#96
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…

In Austin AT&T and Grande (Local ISP) both started offering Gigabit shortly after the time Google announced Austin as a fiber city. It's working.

And TWC upgraded most of the city while keeping prices the same (for now at least, since at least on my bill they credit the difference in plan prices). They started the same process in San Antonio around the same time SA started wooing Google Fiber as well. Definite win for consumers at east.

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

#97
post #78
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.

I'm sure I don't have access to your specific provider, but what kind of service is that? I've been looking to go cheap, all I really need is decent latency.

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

#98
post #44

I am now surrounded by Google Fiber to the east and west, and Chattanooga's public fiber to the south, out here in Knoxville, TN. I really wish we could manage something here. This area has the biggest national lab, and a host of tech industry around it, I was kind of surprised more options didn't exist when I moved down a year ago. It makes sense to me that Google went after these southeastern markets, because we ar…

Hey cool! I grew up in Knoxville! :) I still have family there, so I'm up there several times a year. Last time I was up there I saw a billboard for gigabit connections being offered by TDS Telecom, but I'm guessing that's in a reeeeeally small area there near Farragut.

FWIW, It's the same way down here in Huntsville. Google Fiber in Nashville and Atlanta, fiber in Chattanooga, and I'm stuck with a 25 megabit cable connection that I pay out the nose for. We're trying to get something together here with the local utility[0] (a la Chattanooga), but it's still in the very early conception stages. It's still years away, if ever, from actually happening.

[0]: http://launchfiber.com/

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

#99
post #4

I'm surprised they didn't choose San Jose. There must be some things outside of their control considering they would have expanded into their own neighborhood.

A lot matters. For Charlotte, RST was installing a bunch of fiber and then they disappeared. GF is probably going to buy that up and use it.

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

#100
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.

Certainly true... I have a 50' inflatable arrow on the top of my roof that says "I need Google Fiber" so I'm at least doing my part to get the message across...
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