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Pittsburgh, Seattle Announce Interest In Google's Fiber Trial
An anonymous reader contributes a link to a press release from the mayor of Pittsburgh that says the city has announced, along with Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the University of Pittsburgh, that it intends to respond to Google's 1Gbps FTTH (Fiber to the Home) request for information. Seattle's mayor, too, wants in on the action, and more cities will surely pile on.
Pittsburgh Tuxes will certainly welcome this service, provided that the modem won't be a winmodem.
Ezekiel 23:20
Troy in upstate NY announced the same on Thursday. http://troyrecord.com/articles/2010/02/12/news/doc4b74e2cd9e36e314599627.txt
I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.
After the overpriced and only moderately reliable service from them, I can only hope that this will be better, if it is implemented. The speeds sound nice, at least.
Google, I too am interested in your fiber trial. Please consider my house in Wisconsin for fiber service.
Love,
Andy.
Madison, WI also announced a few days ago that they wanted to jump onto a trial as well. Given the density, the tech love around the area, and the fact that there is already a small Google office in town, I think there's a decent chance.
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt_and_politics/city_hall/article_05071f04-1819-11df-bbef-001cc4c002e0.html
Several citizens from Burlington, Vermont have contacted Google about this for our city. Someone on the City Council has asked the mayor to approach Google, as well. We actually already have a municipal fiber-optic network, Burlington Telecom. However, they are currently experiencing financial troubles and the City is considering bringing in an outside investor or partner. Google, if you want to come here we've already got the fiber in the ground. Let's talk ;)
Bradley Holt
Oh yes, you'll be seeing Duluth, MN in that list. Minnesota nice is even nicer with fiber-to-home. Does anyone know anything about the specifications of the proposed service?
but WTF for?
why is there an office there? is it for-- i dunno, to be closer to the source on cheese futures?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
1) Diverse community
2) Major bio-tech center
and most important:
3) Make D.C. jealous
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
If Seattle or Baltimore wins, I'd think about it. Seems like whoever wins will get a giant influx of nerds.
Good, I hope we see plenty of FAST google fibre Tor nodes!
Key word there is HOME, not business, not municipality. I also offer to be a trial at my home. FreeNet would just scream.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does this count as municipal fiber, the kind that ISPs love to filibuster with absurd lawsuits?
I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.
And guess what comes next? A reverse-competitive bidding process, whereby various cities write off their taxes on both the profits and the capital equipment, waive requirements like community access programs, and more- just to get google to give them fiber-to-the-home, something that has no proven public benefit. Which is idiotic- I don't want my tax dollars used to fund capital expenditures for corporations!
Anyone else a little more than slightly freaked out by this move? Google now encompasses search, email, instant messaging, calendaring, social networking, blogging (both content production and reading), cellular and telephone services, online payment, and now actual last-mile services? What's left?
Why does it feel like in 10 years we'll be calling it The Gnet, not the Internet?
Please help metamoderate.
How does do you say "f*ck you Micro$oft" if you're Seattle's mayor?
"Google! Please help!"
We've got our EPB FI service already, telephone, television and internet, so to Google I say...meh, you're too late.
Thank you once again Electric Power Board. It's so nice to have you.
And fuck you Comcast for suing over it.
This reminded me of a phonecall i had with a customer when i worked at an company which was isp and network operator. The guy was furious. He had moved to a newly built house and he didn't have a physical phoneline, only optic fibre. I was speechless for few second because I just couldn't comprehend this man's anger. All i could say was: "But... but you have fibre." The situation makes me laugh now. Anyway it turned out that there was no service for that net on his location. When the day comes that I have fibre coming into my home, I think I will cry of joy. It has been my dream for years now, somewhat silly maybe.
Hopefully this will be similar to the wireless spectrum auction. It will just kick a few of the cheap and lazy isp's in to overdrive. Google spends a 100 million, and we get a billion worth of fiber out of fear that Google will beat them to the market. Hopefully.
Living in Chile
On expressing interest to my elected representatives. "We already have internet in this state. We don't need any more."
Everything will be taken away from you.
I love Fiber in my diet too! Count me in!
I didn't read TFA did I miss something?
I want Google to come to Australia and Engineer , Configure and Commission our NBN ( National Broadband Network )- there should be at least 40 billion AUD left in the kitty.
right now all that is happening is our luddite communications minister is handing out 500K a year non-tech jobs to his equally luddite mates.
...I obey the laws of physics....
The RFI documents from Google are pretty clear; they are looking for communities between 50k and 500k in population. Not sure what Seattle and Pittsburg are getting so excited about.
What a joke this whole announcement was. Google is proclaiming that they can just dive right in and do it better than the incumbent players. 1Gbps to every house? What then, 10Gbps to every block and a $100k juniper T Series router to every neighborhood?? You still run in to aggregation bottlenecks. There is no way to make this profitable. This is just a ploy to manipulate the FCC into forcing the hand of the telco and cable companies who actually are trying to run a profitable business.
Did the miss the section of the site that says Google is looking for communities between 50,000 and 500,000 people? I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh and Seattle might be a bit larger than that.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
So far he hasnt disapointed, and its only been about a month. My life pretty much consits of computers, bikes and cannabis. He has come out for legalization, hes getting us better internet, now all he has to do is make it so i dont feel like im going to die everytime i ride across the ballard bridge and ill be a happy camper.
1) Much much much cooler than Baltimore
Gorsh, two of GOvernment OGLE's largest engineering offices want fiber in their respective cities. Nothing to see here.
When "free market" (not that it's actually free... but hey, at least there's "competition") has failed repeatedly for decades, a competent monopoly with a proven track record is more than welcome.
Complaining that the free market has "failed repeatedly for decades" is like standing on an office building and bitching it's not a skyscraper.
Looked around recently? The internet is doing pretty well.
Please help metamoderate.
It makes a little more sense when you consider that the owners of the not-so-tall office buildings have been marketing it as if they were the tallest buildings in the world.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
What about Washington DC?
We're a medium-sized city with a moderate residential population density, and have *no* good broadband options. Verizon doesn't plan to have FiOS working here until 2018 (seriously), and Comcast's service somehow manages to be a tiny bit worse than it is in the rest of the country. Thanks to our low-ish density, we also won't mind if you have to dig up the streets, especially since most of them need to be paved anyway. We've also got a very nice subway and rail network along which Google could run its backbone.
You'd think the telecoms would be bending over backward to impress the regulators, although the very opposite seems to be the case at the moment.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
In Pittsburgh's favor you have a huge medical industry that needs to transfer huge images and an FBI cybercrime investigation facility. I hope it ends up there.