Google Fiber Hits Speed Bumps As Alphabet Looks To Cut Costs

What the heck are you talking about? You obviously don't work in the field. A single aerial span can easily cost thousands of dollars in parts and labor and that's only a couple hundred feet. Underground work is exponentially higher.


What I'm talking about is the consumer has zero ability to know what ISP service infrastructure costs. None. Companies intentionally obfuscate or outright don't tell people what stuff costs. People love to act indignant at the stupid lay person...But the only way IRL to know, for a lay person, what it costs to put down/up a line is when they individually have to pay for it themselves because they live at the edge of town/service.

The fault for consumers not knowing what it costs to build an ISP service out...lies entirely with the ISPs.

It's hard when you have existing companies with regional and local monopolies doing everything they can to stop it.





No, companies buying out governments to prevent competition is not a free market. It's crony capitalism.




No it is called capitalism. Dub it crony all you want. This is how capitalism has ALWAYS WORKED IRL. You want to get philosophical and semantic, fine....then you must admit that "free markets" don't exist now, and never have existed before, and never will again. Because your landlord will ALWAYS take money from a company to be an exclusive provider even were their more competition. He wants to turn a profit, like any capitalist does. That is how he does it. That is what free-as-in-freedom to contract means.

I put $10,000 on a table for you a landlord and tell you that you can walk home with it for being an exclusive dealer of my service....you'll act indignant and aghast at this obvious "cronyism" and "corruption" and be all high and mighty...but you know what? At the end of it, you'll take the money. At the end of it, it is only about $$$, not morals or ethics, or economic theory.


Capitalism and "free markets", where anyone and everyone top-to-bottom-of-the-food-chain can contract....is not about consumer choice. It isn't even about making consumers happy. It is about progressively bigger fish getting more of the action. And in the end, the consumer being boned anyway.
 
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I'm in the Boston area too and I have Comcast. I'm currently paying $40 (heavily discounted) for 25Mbps. I'd switch in a hearbeat.

I'm in Dedham. We have 4 choices for high speed. I can't complain because every 6 months or so they come door to door with some new package. Now I have Verizon FIOS 100/100 3 service for 110 a month. Not bad. In a few months I will swap to Comcast when they come a knocking with a slightly better deal.
 
I live in the KC area, where Google Fiber started, and I never understood their roll out plan. The started in some of the poorest areas and old but rich areas of KC. So you're rolling out to poor people and older people that probably don't see the need of fiber speeds. The parts of the KC metro where all the middle class live and I'd assume most of the tech people live, suburbs mostly, either aren't getting it or they are still rolling out. I live in Overland Park, KS just south of Sprint headquarters and my apartment complex and homes around me are just now getting fiber ran to them.

Google Fiber has had to put up with a lot of drama when dealing with city officials. They had so much trouble with Overland Park, I'm shocked they are actually running cable.
 
That is the free market. Everyone wants and gets a piece. Everyone has a right to contract. Simply sucks to be the smallest losing fish. Welcome to corporatism.

Sorry, you are incorrect.

A free market would imply that anyone could run their own lines. This is crony capitalism in which the state hands out monopolies to large corporations that allow them to exclude competition.
 
No it is called capitalism. Dub it crony all you want. This is how capitalism has ALWAYS WORKED IRL. You want to get philosophical and semantic, fine....then you must admit that "free markets" don't exist now, and never have existed before, and never will again. Because your landlord will ALWAYS take money from a company to be an exclusive provider even were their more competition. He wants to turn a profit, like any capitalist does. That is how he does it. That is what free-as-in-freedom to contract means.

I put $10,000 on a table for you a landlord and tell you that you can walk home with it for being an exclusive dealer of my service....you'll act indignant and aghast at this obvious "cronyism" and "corruption" and be all high and mighty...but you know what? At the end of it, you'll take the money. At the end of it, it is only about $$$, not morals or ethics, or economic theory.


Capitalism and "free markets", where anyone and everyone top-to-bottom-of-the-food-chain can contract....is not about consumer choice. It isn't even about making consumers happy. It is about progressively bigger fish getting more of the action. And in the end, the consumer being boned anyway.

I don't think anyone is faulting the landlords; it sucks but you're right that it's normal capitalism. The issue is when the local governments make exclusivity deals with the big ISPs that have no desire to ever improve their infrastructure because no other ISP is allowed to come in and compete.
 
Google should never have gone at it alone. It would have had a better chance of success if they partnered with Facebook, Netflix and Microsoft to create this initiative. Those companies combined would have enough resources to allocate for much faster deployment and it would help their businesses in the long term if they had some sort of ad sharing built into the cheap but super fast service.
 
Google should never have gone at it alone. It would have had a better chance of success if they partnered with Facebook, Netflix and Microsoft to create this initiative. Those companies combined would have enough resources to allocate for much faster deployment and it would help their businesses in the long term if they had some sort of ad sharing built into the cheap but super fast service.


Well, if you recall, when they started everyone es theory was that they didn't REALLY want to be an ISO. They just wanted to start deploying in order to scare existing ISP's into offering better service.
 
Google Fiber has been BLOWING UP (in a good way) in KC, I love it.
Half the damn city is wired up and all of the local ISPs have had to scramble to increase speeds. My home TWC conenction went from 50/4 to 200/20 without a price increase.
They expanded to include small business late last year and they charge the same price as residential customers, however we just received an update a couple months ago saying they are going to go with a tiered setup and the full gigabit price will go up, even with the price increase its still a HELLUVA lot cheaper than anything else in the area (TWC charges $900/mo for 30/30 dedicated fiber)
 
Maybe Google should focus on Internet and not TV?

Because at some point whoever owns the lines owns the internet and if you aren't a player in that space you will run out of negotiation power.
 
Sorry, you are incorrect.

A free market would imply that anyone could run their own lines. This is crony capitalism in which the state hands out monopolies to large corporations that allow them to exclude competition.
stop voting for Democrats its not hard
 
i dont know about this report, but i do know that as soon as they finish setting up their hardware in the triangle, every nerd in NC is going to switch from TWC, guaranteed, overnight.

If we end up with the wireless version in downtown Durham because of construction costs, they can keep it. There's no way I'm switching to wireless anything. Hell, my VPN for work can't even keep up with 100/10 TWC/Earthlink. Wired > wireless. Period. Only concern right now is the Charter takeover.

Also, as horrifying as it sounds to consider Frontier, they actually installed a fiber line to the basement of our condo building last year. Problem was, the price for their gigabit plan was completely out of whack, their plans were asymmetrical, and well, they are Frontier ;) Maybe Google Wireless will give them a reason to deal and we'll light up the line.
 
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These are some AT&T dedicated fiber quotes I just got a couple days ago in Kansas City (granted they also would cover our phones):
10M dedicated symmetric fiber circuit, 10 call paths, 3000 minutes of long distance and 15 static ip addresses: $525 per month

20M dedicated symmetric fiber circuit, 10 call paths, 3000 minutes of long distance and 15 static ip addresses: $804 per month

50M dedicated symmetric fiber circuit, 10 call paths, 3000 minutes of long distance and 15 static ip addresses: $1386 per month

I keep waiting for Google Fiber to run fiber to our building as it'd be 1/10th the cost. Unfortunately, per their blueprints and fiber node zoning, even though there is a box 50 feet from us across the street, we are supposed to be on some other node that is two blocks away and would require ripping up lots of sidewalk and Google's been dragging their heels. This article sounds like bad news for my workplace.
 
Maybe Google should focus on Internet and not TV?
Why do you think AT&T bought DirecTV? It's not because they found it a good investment, it's because they realize people don't want to (or have a hard time) with having to make conscious decision about what to get, they want a "package" deal, fast food does it, cable does it, why shouldn't Google do it?

People here who comment here have to realize that we are not the "norm", the "average", we are the 1%ers of this field who actually have some bit of knowledge about it, so all the shouting "I TOTALLY WOULD GET IT!!!!" means nothing because 99 of your other neighbors don't give a fuck about 1Gbps fiber, they have their triple-play package, everything is one bill, and they don't need to think about it (and these are the people that these companies love to have, because they sit and eat all the rate increases without ever suggesting leaving).

That said, the focus is irrelevant if you RTFA, it's about getting people to actually adopt fiber, which means switching and people don't for the most part (and companies like Comcast and AT&T don't exactly make it easy to switch either)
 
Come to Canada. We only have 3 telecom companies nationally and everyone despises them. I'm pretty sure any other option will be welcomed with open arms.
 
I don't think anyone is faulting the landlords; it sucks but you're right that it's normal capitalism. The issue is when the local governments make exclusivity deals with the big ISPs that have no desire to ever improve their infrastructure because no other ISP is allowed to come in and compete.

The exclusivity deals were part of capitalism and contract-making also.

ISPs (everywhere) spending tons on infrastructure would not build unless they got the honey pot of exclusivity. So should the cities have told their residents: sorry no internet for you at all as every ISP wants to exclusively own you?

stop voting for Democrats its not hard

Troll worthy post is trolling. This is why the same ISP exclusivity shit happens in bastions of freedom and self reliance and GOP voting...like Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and so on.

Why are so angry at your politicians anyway? In a capitalist system everything is for sale, including votes and policy.
 
The exclusivity deals were part of capitalism and contract-making also.

ISPs (everywhere) spending tons on infrastructure would not build unless they got the honey pot of exclusivity. So should the cities have told their residents: sorry no internet for you at all as every ISP wants to exclusively own you?


You are forgetting that the Federal Government spent BILLIONS to pay Verizon, AT&T, MCI, Sprint, <insert Telcom here> to fund broadband rollout nationwide going back nearly 30+ years ago..They all happily took the check, then did nothing until they went to state and local governments and demanded exclusive contracts to do what they had already been paid to do. It was theft on the largest scale this country has ever seen.
 
Perhaps the solution is to create a city fill with people who care as a magnet to drain the caring from the surrounding areas, leaving them to wallow in the gutter speed internet they seem contented with, while the tech focused city is offered faster speeds and lower latency. It would be an actual realization of this image.

gloriouspmr13_2048x2048.jpg



Right now the people in the know, the master race who actually desire and crave faster internet are too dispersed among the zombies of the world. We need to gather together and create out own shining city on a hill.

Can we get rid of the spandex though? Especially the fat due is gross. I want 0 moose knuckles in my tech city.
 
The exclusivity deals were part of capitalism and contract-making also.

ISPs (everywhere) spending tons on infrastructure would not build unless they got the honey pot of exclusivity. So should the cities have told their residents: sorry no internet for you at all as every ISP wants to exclusively own you?



Troll worthy post is trolling. This is why the same ISP exclusivity shit happens in bastions of freedom and self reliance and GOP voting...like Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and so on.

Why are so angry at your politicians anyway? In a capitalist system everything is for sale, including votes and policy.

Can I like the bottom half of your post only? :p

The top half is why we need community internet. Cut out the need to reward investors and CEO's and you have top speeds at a tiny fraction of the cost.

The ISP's have a golden cash cow. No wonder Comcast is privately held. They don't want people to know just how ridiculous profit margins they run.
 
Well, I'm getting it next week here in Charlotte so they better not change it before then!!!!!

Oh, Steve I take offense to the 'crappy town' statement.
 
Well, I'm getting it next week here in Charlotte so they better not change it before then!!!!!

Oh, Steve I take offense to the 'crappy town' statement.

Charlotte is a great city. The amount of growth since we used to hangout in Charlotte in the 80s in high school is amazing.

Do you have any idea if Google is using any of RST Fiber's fiber in your area? I know they ran hundreds and hundreds of miles of fiber and then abruptly stopped after inking deals in Wake Forest, Asheville (maybe not signed, but all but signed), etc. Evidently a couple of the founders just stopped working on it and left everything in the lap of the other partner. I live about 50 miles northwest of their office in Shelby and they even had a bit of fiber here also (I am 1/2 mile from RST fiber, Charter fiber, Frontier fiber, old DukeNet fiber that was bought by Time Warner and now Charter, A.T.&T via old Bell South, and ERC...but will likely never see any of it on my street).
 
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