Kansas City Residents Slow to Sign Up for Google Fiber

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
All right KC people, let’s get on the ball and sign up for Google’s super-high-speed Internet service. The future of America may depend on you. :D Google’s approach to beginning Internet service in an area is a 50% pre-registration within a specified time frame. About half of the areas have failed to meet the quota with two weeks remaining and could influence Google to rethink its venture in other locations.

The net result is that more neighborhoods may become eligible to get Google Fiber. But it also points to another simple thought: a surprisingly large number of Kansas City residents aren't interested.
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What's this for, the porn box?
hillbilly_teeth.jpg
 
Most are simply happy with the speed of their current service. You are trying to convince people to switch from high speed, to really high speed. To member of this forum, it might be a very desirable upgrade. To the average email, youtube, and face book user out there, it is not such a big deal. No need to pretend they are hicks because this is not all that important to them.
 
What you mean the people that sign Internet forums have no commitment? Who would have thought
 
note235 said:
and why kansas city again?
of all the places?
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A better place would have been New York City or Los Angeles, which I'm sure would have been very difficult for Google to roll out this service there, as these are places where such speeds would have been put to good use. Kansas City seems to have been a very odd choice.
 
I have a 30 Mbps connection. I can stream HD to 3 TVs and play online games at the same time without a problem. If a 1 gig connection is overkill for me (still want one though), what is the average Joe who just browses the web going to do with it? This is one product Google is going to have to really get out there and sell, people just aren't going to flock to it in the numbers they need.
 
Dead Kansas City.. you are Fired.. Google, please bring this up to Central ohio.. We'll put that shit to good use..
 
Evil Juggalo said:
Dead Kansas City.. you are Fired.. Google, please bring this up to Central ohio.. We'll put that shit to good use..
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It will probably be met with the same type of greeting KC got. This needs to be placed in very populated areas that are most likely going to be really hard to sell in. Once they get a foothold there they can trickle out/expand over time.

The problem with this is people ARE happy with what they have. But they don't understand that the internet infrastructure of yesterday is good right now, in tomorrows needs its going to crumble (and there is a lot of areas that struggle right now).

People need to support the internet of tomorrow (fiber) if they want better utility out of their internet. What Google and Verizon is attempting to do is actually improve on something thats pretty crappy in the USA right now. Problem is, most people don't want to support jack shit if its working for them right now, if it stops being good for them then they bitch and moan about how crappy it is.

Reminds me of my parents and their last DLP they had. Had it for 6 years, kept paying $500 to have it repaired each year instead of just buying a new one. They kept bitching about how crappy it is despite the fact it lasted 6 years before needing a repair or the fact they went to a person who over charged. I bought the TV off of them for $50, bought the part off of ebay for $70 and replaced it myself to get about 2 years out of it.
 
They need to go to a relatively high pop density area, that currently has really shitty service, or really high prices, or both. Or, they just need to buy a local cable company. And roll out to an existing base. They could do this in a smaller city. Somewhere that still has a smaller cable operator they could buy, but still has enough pop density to make it profitable in a reasonable time frame.
 
Standard ISPs already provide enough bandwidth to stream several HD movies at a time. So, not even a nerd like me would be willing to spend more than tiny premium for gigabit service.
 
I am from Kansas City Mo. Part of the problem is the racial divide in KC. East of Troost Ave is nearly all poor African American neighborhoods. West Is more affluent white neighborhoods. Nearly all the white neighborhoods are above the quota for signups and the African American neighbor hoods are not. I imagine if you are struggling to put food on the table high speed internet is not your top priority. Even the lowest tier service I think the hook up fee is 300$. It will be interesting when google hooks up the white neighborhoods and leaves the African American ones alone. I imagine Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton will get involved soon...

troost.jpeg
 
Bring that shit here to Rochester! RIT alone would meet the pre-registration quota!
 
bulldog08 said:
I am from Kansas City Mo. Part of the problem is the racial divide in KC. East of Troost Ave is nearly all poor African American neighborhoods. West Is more affluent white neighborhoods. Nearly all the white neighborhoods are above the quota for signups and the African American neighbor hoods are not. I imagine if you are struggling to put food on the table high speed internet is not your top priority. Even the lowest tier service I think the hook up fee is 300$. It will be interesting when google hooks up the white neighborhoods and leaves the African American ones alone. I imagine Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton will get involved soon...

troost.jpeg
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They should have included those of us in Johnson County ;)
 
Stone Cold said:
Standard ISPs already provide enough bandwidth to stream several HD movies at a time. So, not even a nerd like me would be willing to spend more than tiny premium for gigabit service.
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Ummm....depends HEAVILY on where you are.

Until this winter all that I had in my state capitol was 6/0.5 DSL. And that was the best in my entire state, so no "standard ISPs already provide enough bandwidth to stream several HD movies" isn't really true at all. TWC finally rolled out cable modem service here *finally*.

Even 6/0.5 and high bandwidth penetration is poor in the USA...and 6/0.5 is damn slow.
 
Could they have picked any more of a backwater redneck hellhole? I don't think methheads are all that interested in super fast internet.
 
Also a few suggestions: New York City, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles

You know, places where someone might actually want to live.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
Could they have picked any more of a backwater redneck hellhole? I don't think methheads are all that interested in super fast internet.
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I'm pretty sure KC isn't a part of the southern US. It's not really a redneck hellhole and, unlike a lot of places in the truly deep south, there's still educational institutions, reliable utilities, and segments of the population that are familiar with modern technology and scientific advances made in the recent past.
 
I grew up in Kansas City but I live in Palo Alto now. My parents signed up and are in one of the areas with enough subscribers. I just wish Google would bring it to the Palo Alto/Mountain View area near their HQ. If Kansas City residents can afford the $70/month, Palo Alto certainly can.
 
bulldog08 said:
I imagine if you are struggling to put food on the table high speed internet is not your top priority.
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But I bet they all have cell phones, and quite a few cars with rims on them that cost more than the car!

That said, if they had set up in San Francisco I could easily see me not getting fiber either, too many older Asians living around here to want to sign up for fiber.
 
96% of Google's revenues are tied to advertising, which is fueled by delivering ads to users with highly accurate delivery based on data mining its users.

Google will be selling, from everything I've managed to read, fiber to the home at a loss.

Now, why would Google do that? That's not diversification. That sounds like a great way to support its data mining on users and ad delivery.

I for one would like more information on Google's business models and what exactly they will end up monitoring/interrupting. Though I doubt I'd ever hear the details until someone outs them.
 
note235 said:
and why kansas city again?
of all the places?
Click to expand...

Ashbringer said:
A better place would have been New York City or Los Angeles, which I'm sure would have been very difficult for Google to roll out this service there, as these are places where such speeds would have been put to good use. Kansas City seems to have been a very odd choice.
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Kansas City is a perfect location to test the waters. Plenty of businesses and schools to take advantage of this. Google is even giving free business class internet to schools located in areas that meet the registration quotas. Google wants a centralized hub to get this service going, and eventually they may own part of the internet backbone. No better way to do that than in a centralized location that is already a hub for most of the country's physical goods due to the railroad and highways (I-70 coast to coast and I-35 border to border). Hub and Spoke, Hub and Spoke...

The other major reason is tax breaks. Kansas City, Kansas (smaller and younger of the two cities) initially won the contract due to tax breaks and due to the fact they have a booming business infrastructure (but a lot of shitty residential areas). Kansas City, MO offered Google the same tax breaks to simply cross the border, so Google took them up on the offer. KCMO has a lot more affluent areas than KCK, but it also has a bunch of shitholes.

bulldog08 said:
I am from Kansas City Mo. Part of the problem is the racial divide in KC. East of Troost Ave is nearly all poor African American neighborhoods. West Is more affluent white neighborhoods. Nearly all the white neighborhoods are above the quota for signups and the African American neighbor hoods are not. I imagine if you are struggling to put food on the table high speed internet is not your top priority. Even the lowest tier service I think the hook up fee is 300$. It will be interesting when google hooks up the white neighborhoods and leaves the African American ones alone. I imagine Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton will get involved soon...

troost.jpeg
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I also live in Kansas City, MO. The green area above is known as the "Wornall Corridor" due to Wornall Road running right through the middle of it. For those that don't live here, Wornall Road is the one immediately west of Holmes Road on that map running north/south. I live within a few blocks of Wornall and Bannister Road (aka 95th street), near the souther edge of the Wornall corridor.

"Racial divide" may not be quite the word here. There are plenty of Blacks and Latinos that live in the Wornall corridor, and plenty of Whites that live east of Troost. However, East of Troost, the income levels and attitudes take a drastic turn for the worse. A large chunk of them live off welfare and wastefully spend what little money they have, while the few that manage to pick themselves up with government assistance move out of the area. The public school system has lost its accreditation, and the area north of Blue Parkway and East of Troost is a god damned post apocalyptic ghetto warzone. That part of town is like a Mad Max movie with 24" chrome rims and clown car vaginas.

It truly is sad, Google has a plan specifically for these people. If you pay a monthly fee of a meager $25 a month for 12 months ($300 total), you get 10mb internet free for the next 7 years. Not only that, but the schools in the area would also get their internet for free which they desperately need. Unfortunately, these people are so poor that most of them don't have computers in the first place, and the few that have experienced the internet do so through their phones which they already feel is sufficient.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a brighter note, $120 a month for almost every cable channel in existence and 1Gbps internet is a helluva deal. I've seen all the hardware setup at the Google store at 43rd and State Line road first hand, and its quite a slick setup. On top of the $120/mo you get a free Nexus 7 tablet which has software to act as an interactive remote, a free DVR box that can record 8 HD channels at once, a free 2TB expander drive for the DVR, and a free 802.11N wireless router. $10 more a month and I can add Showtime and Starz. The only minor downside to the whole setup is the modem/router only has 4 ethernet jacks, and one of them is already eaten by the DVR. I will have to buy a cheap switch to add-on for the other machines I have (my desktop, my G/F's desktop, HTPC, and printer). Its evident Google is heavily subsidizing this rollout.

Right now through Time Warner for $120/mo I get 10Mbps internet, a shit ton of cable channels, and an HD cable box (no DVR). To get the 50Mbps service it will cost an arm and leg extra.

The TV software on the Nexus 7 is sick. You do a search for anything and it will pull up everything related. I did a live demo at the Google Store here in KC. My girlfriend hit a button, said "Supernatural", found all the showings, recorded every show in the series, then proceeded to find every movie that Jensen Ackles (one of the actor's in the show) had ever starred in and recorded those too. Then she started browsing a fansite on the Nexus 7 while the show was playing on the TV. :rolleyes: I was both amazed at that capability and sickened by the thought that I may never get to use my TV again since the G/F won't let it go.:mad:
 
Do families who signed up for the $300 install for free net for 7 years count into that figure? Even poor areas should switch to that if they have net since it comes out to under $4/month while mediacom charges 53. They should really expand this to towns in the KC metro area... Most of Kansas City seems to be lower income areas where people probably aren't as interested in this. My parents live in the suburbs and would jump on the 5/1 service for $300 for 7 years. They don't need more than this and it would be huge savings for them.
 
Jared701 said:
Do families who signed up for the $300 install for free net for 7 years count into that figure? Even poor areas should switch to that if they have net since it comes out to under $4/month while mediacom charges 53. They should really expand this to towns in the KC metro area... Most of Kansas City seems to be lower income areas where people probably aren't as interested in this. My parents live in the suburbs and would jump on the 5/1 service for $300 for 7 years. They don't need more than this and it would be huge savings for them.
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I think there is a silent figure here in the fact that most poor people don't have internet outside of their cell phones.
 
Cmdrmonkey said:
Could they have picked any more of a backwater redneck hellhole? I don't think methheads are all that interested in super fast internet.
Click to expand...

Cmdrmonkey said:
Also a few suggestions: New York City, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles

You know, places where someone might actually want to live.
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Have you ever lived in Kansas City? You ever even been there? Are you the authority on what a Redneck Hellhole looks like? No? Didn't think so.

How about we turn your argument around. Where do you live? One of the above cities that is so large that even their ghetto's dwarf the size of the entirety of KCMO and the cost of living is double what it is in KCMO? For the price of an entire house in Missouri I can make the downpayment for one of equal size in California. Ya, that sounds like a fun place to move to. Be in debt for a helluva lot longer in a state that is already perpetually in debt.

I can assure you it is anything but a redneck hellhole. Small sections of the town are ghetto hellholes, but what town doesn't have those? Millions of people have willingly chosen Kansas City and its surrounding metropolitan area. Overland Park, KS (one of KC's suburbs) was rated 7th best city to live in the United States in 2010. Lee's Summit, MO (another KC suburb) was rated 27th best city to live in that same year. Kansas City has its issues, but its anything some rural backwater town. It is one of the biggest transportation hubs in the country. If you have ever purchased something from across the country (including something in a store that had to be shipped there), it most likely crossed through Kansas City at one point either by rail or by truck.
 
portland in teh last dot com bust had a lot of fiber laid they should have come here and given comcast and verizon a reason to keep the prices down
 
Trimlock said:
What Google and Verizon is attempting to do is actually improve on something thats pretty crappy in the USA right now.
Click to expand...

Verizon quit expanding FiOS. Google has done more expanding of fiber than Verizon has in the past 1-2+ years
 
Trimlock said:
It will probably be met with the same type of greeting KC got. This needs to be placed in very populated areas that are most likely going to be really hard to sell in. Once they get a foothold there they can trickle out/expand over time.

The problem with this is people ARE happy with what they have. But they don't understand that the internet infrastructure of yesterday is good right now, in tomorrows needs its going to crumble (and there is a lot of areas that struggle right now).

People need to support the internet of tomorrow (fiber) if they want better utility out of their internet. What Google and Verizon is attempting to do is actually improve on something thats pretty crappy in the USA right now. Problem is, most people don't want to support jack shit if its working for them right now, if it stops being good for them then they bitch and moan about how crappy it is.

Reminds me of my parents and their last DLP they had. Had it for 6 years, kept paying $500 to have it repaired each year instead of just buying a new one. They kept bitching about how crappy it is despite the fact it lasted 6 years before needing a repair or the fact they went to a person who over charged. I bought the TV off of them for $50, bought the part off of ebay for $70 and replaced it myself to get about 2 years out of it.
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common misconception of Ohio, central Ohio is very densely populated, Ohio itself is the 7th most populated state.
 
I echo the concerns as to what Google will be mining off of the fiber connections. I'm interested in the EULA for this service.
 
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