AT&T May Beat Google Fiber to the Punch in NC

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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You just gotta’ love Google for their fiber optic endeavors all over the US. Even the merest mention of bringing the mega-fast Google Fiber to an area makes the competition cringe and spring into action.

Google said earlier this year that it’s also considering expanding its Google Fiber network to the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area in North Carolina, which means that lucky residents in those cities could conceivably have a choice between two different ISPs that offer 1Gbps Internet service.
 
1TB/mo bandwidth limit and let's see their pricing.

If Google Fiber and ATT are both in the area to choose from, I'm going with Google. With how shoddy AT&T net service is, how can I trust them with even faster speeds.
 
I await Comcast/Cox cable to approach congress for a FORTH time now and demand that they stop google fiber because they "Are offering services nobody can compete with thus its stiffling competition because we can't compete with them!"

When in reality they can compete with them, they just are happy holding a noose over the ISP paying american's heads by charging $70 a month for 20mbit internet
 
AT&T offering 1GBPS fiber... with a 250GB monthly cap... roooooofles!
 
AT&T offering 1GBPS fiber... with a 250GB monthly cap... roooooofles!

AT&T has long offered different monthly caps for different service plans. What makes you think they would offer 1GB with a cap no larger than their traditional offerings?
 
AT&T offering 1GBPS fiber... with a 250GB monthly cap... roooooofles!

They offer 1TB/monthly cap with their 300Mbit fiber service.... Why would they drop to the 250GB cap that Comcast uses for basic residential cable service? You must still be on Cable I guess :(
 
They offer 1TB/monthly cap with their 300Mbit fiber service.... Why would they drop to the 250GB cap that Comcast uses for basic residential cable service? You must still be on Cable I guess :(

AT&T has long offered different monthly caps for different service plans. What makes you think they would offer 1GB with a cap no larger than their traditional offerings?

I'm pretty sure the guy was semi-joking. Although I wouldn't put it passed a corporation to find ways of profiting off overages - and something similar to what he mentioned would be one way.
 
I assume they will scale the 1TB farther as they have with previous speeds.
 
I await Comcast/Cox cable to approach congress for a FORTH time now and demand that they stop google fiber because they "Are offering services nobody can compete with thus its stiffling competition because we can't compete with them!"

Oh, the irony in this statement. Seeing how they are a monopoly in many areas (including mine) around the country.
 
What I think is funny.... imagine if Google Fiber was never conceived of, or implemented in parts of the country. Would AT&T have rolled out their plans like they are now? or would they have sat on their hands and just milked the consumers for all they were worth over a crappy 3mbit DSL line?

Bet your ass on the latter. Any bitching from either side is unacceptable, offer the best package for the best price and you will win the battle that's all there is to it.

How I wish Google fiber would come to the Dallas/Fort Worth area
 
What I think is funny.... imagine if Google Fiber was never conceived of, or implemented in parts of the country. Would AT&T have rolled out their plans like they are now? or would they have sat on their hands and just milked the consumers for all they were worth over a crappy 3mbit DSL line?

Is this from some imaginary world where cable providers don't exist? Even without Google, AT&T faces stiff competition from Comcast (and other cable providers) in many parts of the country. Where we live AT&T offers UVerse, but that tops out at ~24Mbps. That was competitive with Comcast a few years ago but now Comcast offers 100Mbit service and is currently in the process of upgrading that to 300Mbps across the country.

We don't have Google Fiber here but AT&T would still need to implement something along the lines of it's fiber service just to compete with Comcast going forward.

If you're only option for an ISP is 3Mbps DSL and you really have no alternative, I'd strongly suggest you consider moving out of Africa.
 
Does anyone remember what happened when the government forced the carriers to lease their lines at reasonable prices? DSL providers galore popped up all over the place with competitive pricing. And, what happened when the providers successfully lobbied to have that repealed? All the DSL providers disappeared because it was too costly, leaving most of us with just a single solution once more. Thanks a lot, D.C.!

The sad truth is that no companies can get a foothold in existing markets because of how expensive and difficult it is. Google can, but it will even take them a long time to really gain ground, assuming they actually intend to keep expanding, rather than just trying to nudge the ISPs to upgrade their networks everywhere preemptively.

If government really wanted competition and broadband access for everyone, they'd reinstate the rules requiring incumbents to lease their lines at reasonable prices. The DSL wars showed us that small companies can undercut the big guys. But, hey, why compete if you don't have to?
 
I'm glad to see AT&T responding to competition. ISPs need to do everything they can to keep people from feeding Google more data that it can mine and exploit. The company is already far too big and needs to be broken up into different, smaller independent companies so it can't be as invasive.
 
All I got to say is don't hold your breath about AT&T. They say one thing and do another.
 
1TB/mo bandwidth limit and let's see their pricing.

If Google Fiber and ATT are both in the area to choose from, I'm going with Google. With how shoddy AT&T net service is, how can I trust them with even faster speeds.

It's not even about trust, of all the markets to bring fiber to, they chose NC? Why? Because google went there? What about markets google has not mentioned? Is the ONLY reason they are EVER going to get off their @ss and build more fiber going to be a foil to google to prevent everyong from bolting?

Pathetic loser company doing the BARE MINIMUM, not trying to drive jack sh*t forward for home broadband. Who would actually choose them over google if they had the chance?

They need to build fiber where it is not being served, not just trying to c*ck block google.
 
AT&T has long offered different monthly caps for different service plans. What makes you think they would offer 1GB with a cap no larger than their traditional offerings?

For the same reason they cap all their other services: because they can, and because there is nothing you can do about it.

For example, they cap their 30mbit LTE service at 2GB, which means you can hit your cap in only 9.1 minutes. By that same logic, the cap for 1gbit would be only 68.25 GB (for the same 9.1 minutes to hit cap).

Getting a whopping 250GB per month would be considered extremely generous, considering what their idea of what "fair" is.
 
Is this from some imaginary world where cable providers don't exist? Even without Google, AT&T faces stiff competition from Comcast (and other cable providers) in many parts of the country. Where we live AT&T offers UVerse, but that tops out at ~24Mbps. That was competitive with Comcast a few years ago but now Comcast offers 100Mbit service and is currently in the process of upgrading that to 300Mbps across the country.

We don't have Google Fiber here but AT&T would still need to implement something along the lines of it's fiber service just to compete with Comcast going forward.

If you're only option for an ISP is 3Mbps DSL and you really have no alternative, I'd strongly suggest you consider moving out of Africa.

If your "competitor" agrees not to compete with you (by offering nearly identical plans and rates), is it still competition?

Despite the existence of a 100mbit plan, I'm certain that comcast still offers the old 25mbit plan, and it's probably still the same price as the at&t 25mbit plan.

Just because one of the dealerships sells sports cars, doesn't mean there is competitive pricing on family sedans
 
out states of internet sucks in many parts of this country. All the apologists for the big ISP's must have good local areas, and good for you. for the rest of us, we get stuck with in many cases effective local monopolies/near monopolies with little progress or new build outs. Moving to a more rural area has really opened my eyes to how the big ISP's treat us as individuals. If we are not "low hangning fruit" they don't care; despite the many many millions gifted to them by our tax dollars supposidly to help support future growth and rural development.

I agree with the poster about how the Gov has screwed us by repealing those laws making big ISP's lease lines similar to how other countries do it. Until that happens again, we are doomed to poor service and local near monopolies. Google may be a "savior" of sorts, but I don't trust them either and as soon as they have us all on board, they will have a near monopoly on data mining both our phones and our home ISP services. WOW, that is scarey. I'm more concerned about the Gov watching us, but I dont' trust the big companies either. Nothing I can really do about it, but complain, but the days of privacy are long gone :(.
 
For example, they cap their 30mbit LTE service at 2GB, which means you can hit your cap in only 9.1 minutes. By that same logic, the cap for 1gbit would be only 68.25 GB (for the same 9.1 minutes to hit cap).

Getting a whopping 250GB per month would be considered extremely generous, considering what their idea of what "fair" is.

Guess you didn't get the memo, but residential internet and mobile broadband aren't the same thing.

If your "competitor" agrees not to compete with you (by offering nearly identical plans and rates), is it still competition?

Despite the existence of a 100mbit plan, I'm certain that comcast still offers the old 25mbit plan, and it's probably still the same price as the at&t 25mbit plan.

Actually that's not how it works at all. Comcast constantly upgrades it's user's speeds while the bill remains the same. In fact, Comcast is currently in the middle of yet another nationwide speed upgrade which will see anyone still on the 25Mbps "Performance" tier get upgraded to 50Mbps at no cost. I'm currently on 100Mbps and from what I'm hearing that will be going to 150Mbps if not 300Mbps soon.

I wonder what else you are "certain" about? :rolleyes:
 
Guess you didn't get the memo, but residential internet and mobile broadband aren't the same thing.



Actually that's not how it works at all. Comcast constantly upgrades it's user's speeds while the bill remains the same. In fact, Comcast is currently in the middle of yet another nationwide speed upgrade which will see anyone still on the 25Mbps "Performance" tier get upgraded to 50Mbps at no cost. I'm currently on 100Mbps and from what I'm hearing that will be going to 150Mbps if not 300Mbps soon.

I wonder what else you are "certain" about? :rolleyes:

Comcast improves at a sloth pace. What they improve in 10 years is done in six months in Europe.
 
Comcast improves at a sloth pace. What they improve in 10 years is done in six months in Europe.

Sounds like you're just spouting random unsubstantiated bullshit. Feel free to actually post something half resembling a fact to back any of that up.

Speaking of facts, here are some:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-609_en.htm

Research shows that between 27% and 41% of European Internet subscribers claim that their download speed does not match that in the terms of their contracts. And almost half of EU subscribers claim that they sometimes experience difficulties accessing online content and applications due to insufficient speed or capacity.

Europeans consumers are not getting the broadband download speeds they pay for. On average, they receive only 74% of the advertised headline speed they have paid for

In absolute terms, the average download speed across all countries and all technologies was 19.47 Mbps during peak hours. FTTx services achieved the fastest speeds at 41.02Mbps. Cable services achieved 33.10Mbps, whilst xDSL services lagged far behind at 7.2Mbps on average.

I can max out my 100Mbps Comcast connection 24/7 without exception. Never once, ever, have I only been able to use 74% of my connection.
 
Sounds like you're just spouting random unsubstantiated bullshit. Feel free to actually post something half resembling a fact to back any of that up.

Speaking of facts, here are some:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-609_en.htm

Well if you know how to google you can find it easily, but here:
http://phys.org/news170447728.html

"The United States ranks 28th in the world in average Internet connection speed and is not making significant progress in building a faster network"

"US download speed had improved by only nine-tenths of a megabit per second between 2008 and 2009 -- from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps."

Only thing right now that's different is that Google's embarrassing the monopolies, a few cities get massive improvements in reaction to Google's projects, but otherwise same old same old.

Oh and nice spin dude, you're talking about this right?

eu_vs_usa_speeds.gif


Better than us in every category, even their rural DSL is as fast as my current Comcast service, and their Cable's TWICE as fast for much less. (source: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-609_en.htm)


I can max out my 100Mbps Comcast connection 24/7 without exception. Never once, ever, have I only been able to use 74% of my connection.

I can get maybe 50-100mbps down here too, but for 2-3 times the price my cousin pays in Germany.

The recent consumer poll kinda tells it all, rating Comcast number one worst company in America, I think Monsanto should've won it, but still, it's quite telling imho.
 
Too bad our state is run by a bunch of corporatist cronies. The last time Time Warner faced serious competition from fiber was municipal fiber (basically, the city started its own fiber service after both Time Warner and Embarq both refused to upgrade the quality of service in the city even when offered subsidies to do so) and they responded by going to the North Carolina Corporate Assembly and buying a law that restricted muni fiber.
 
Too bad our state is run by a bunch of corporatist cronies. The last time Time Warner faced serious competition from fiber was municipal fiber (basically, the city started its own fiber service after both Time Warner and Embarq both refused to upgrade the quality of service in the city even when offered subsidies to do so) and they responded by going to the North Carolina Corporate Assembly and buying a law that restricted muni fiber.

Pretty crappy.. this happened in my city as well. The entire city is wired up for fiber because the local gov lobbied for huge grants to get it done, and all that comcast/att has to do is finish the final mile to the residential areas. They refuse and now we have like 200ish miles of fiber, just sitting here, not being used for over a year.
 
"The United States ranks 28th in the world in average Internet connection speed and is not making significant progress in building a faster network"

Yeah yeah, average in all the rural areas in the US and it makes the averages look bad. It's the same tired argument people have been making for 15 years, and it's just as meaningless now as ever. No one who doesn't live in the boonies is ever limited to what they quote as the "average" that people in the US are supposedly limited to. If you actually live in the middle of nowhere, sucks for you.

"US download speed had improved by only nine-tenths of a megabit per second between 2008 and 2009 -- from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps."

You quoted a 5 year old study that covers one year?

Better than us in every category, even their rural DSL is as fast as my current Comcast service, and their Cable's TWICE as fast for much less. (source: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-609_en.htm)

What "rural DSL" are you referring to? What cable do they offer that's twice as fast for much less? Note: I'm not talking about misleading averages from BS studies, I'm talking about prices people actually pay, for services that actually exist.

I can get maybe 50-100mbps down here too, but for 2-3 times the price my cousin pays in Germany.

What does your cousin in Germany pay?

The recent consumer poll kinda tells it all, rating Comcast number one worst company in America, I think Monsanto should've won it, but still, it's quite telling imho.

Comcast has a lot of issues and they certainly aren't perfect. They are also a TV provider that charges stupid high prices for an aging form of entertainment. You can't pretend that has nothing to do with the hatred aimed in their direction. I still feel they deserve credit where due, especially in areas where they offer the fastest internet connection around and continue to upgrade their speeds despite not having any real competition that would force them to do so.
 
Gotta love competition... meanwhile in places like Silicon Valley.. or well any other major city out there we're stuck with cable, and MAYBE Uverse... but not with "GigaPower"

as to pricing though, engadget says $70 if you allow AT&T to target ad you based on your browsing/search history, $99 if you don't want them to do it. Not horrible, but meh. I can't get excited for any of these fiber sources because I live in San Francisco right near Silicon Valley, birthplace of just about every thing internet related (bit of a stretch) and we're lucky to get Comcast Infinity 105Mbps service for like $120/month
 
Comcast is currently in the middle of yet another nationwide speed upgrade which will see anyone still on the 25Mbps "Performance" tier get upgraded to 50Mbps at no cost.

So, according to you, comcast will (at some point in the future) upgrade everyone from 25mb to 50mb. But it hasn't happened YET.

Don't call me a liar on the basis of what will (potentially) happen in the FUTURE, when I'm talking about the PRESENT.

Right now, today, both comcast and at&t provide the same 25mbit service, at the same price. Which sounds like a non-compete agreement to me
 
So, according to you, comcast will (at some point in the future) upgrade everyone from 25mb to 50mb. But it hasn't happened YET.

Comcast always starts it's upgrades in a certain few markets, and it's usually about a year between when the first market gets the upgrade, and when it's fully nationwide. They already did a similar upgrade last year, so for users getting another upgrade soon it will potentially be quadruple the speeds they had less than 2 years ago.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...ses-Internet-Speeds-13th-Time-12#.U0sFs1ePs3s

The increase marks the 13th time in the past 12 years that Comcast has increased its speeds

Don't call me a liar on the basis of what will (potentially) happen in the FUTURE, when I'm talking about the PRESENT.

It is happening right now, following the exact same pattern all their previous upgrades have followed.

Right now, today, both comcast and at&t provide the same 25mbit service, at the same price. Which sounds like a non-compete agreement to me

You are quick to blurt out BS like this, but unsurprisingly you don't include any actual data. In my market 25Mbps Comcast is $42.95/month. 24Mbps UVerse is $71.00/month. 25Mbps on Comcast used to be price competitive with 24Mbps Uverse, back when 25Mbps was the fastest speed Comcast offered. Those 25Mbps users have now seen several upgrades and are likely on 50 or 100Mbps now (paying the same price they paid when they were on 25Mbps). Unsurprisingly, the Comcast 25Mbps tier is cheaper now, being one of the slower tiers they currently offer...
 
They should deploy Google Fiber in Brazil. Not only heads would spin, the whole friggin' Internet would turn into a powerful vortex full of...

HUEHUEHUE.png
 
wish some of these companies would stop doing 'upgrades' and get service out in to other areas that need it.
 
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