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Google Announces Plans, Pricing For Kansas City Fiber Network
Kiyyik writes "Google just announced the details behind their inaugural fiber optic service in Kansas City. They're doing a set of packages including $120/month for tv plus internet, $75/month for internet alone, and regular 'conventional' internet for a one time $300 fee. Rollouts are starting in the central areas and will work their way out on a demand basis: at least ten percent of a neighborhood must sign up for the service before Google will come in and start hanging fiber." Update: 07/26 22:04 GMT by T : Nick Kolakowski points out at GeekNet's Slash Cloud that this Google will probably hinge future developments on how well the Kansas City push works.
I thought the whole point of the competition (that had cities hysterically renaming themselves "Google") was that residents were going to get broadband service for free, or at least at a sharp discount compared to what the robber barron Baby Bells and CATV operators were offering.
Those prices seem unusually high, although depending on what "conventional" internet is, a one time fee of $300 for broadband internet access sounds tempting.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
Kansas City, Kansas City here I come.
They got some crazy strands of fiber there and I'm a gonna get me some!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
If there were a half dozen people in my house, all plugged in, it might be worth it. But I'm paying 1/3 as much and even with all three computers streaming radio and TV and torrents, it's still plenty fast for me.
Not enough to get me to move to KC.
Free Martian Whores!
under either incumbant ISP's or our politicians. Lack of widespread broadband isn't a technical problem. It's purely political.
I posted this on Slashdot months ago:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2497294&cid=37860766
Since it's election season, I posed a question about broadband availability to the 10 candidates for our local state representative. Only 3 responded, and... Outside of Google lighting a fire, my parents are literally going to die of old age before they get broadband.
http://www.mathewbinkley.org/?p=392
They're not burying the cables? Is wind not a problem out there? I thought they had tornadoes...
$15/month is a lot smaller than $75/month. Maybe that's why we haven't seen more fiber installations... people not willing to pay the cost. Sooooo how did Google get permission to install fiber w/o getting sued by KC's local monopolies (Verizon and Comcast)??
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
So 5/1 is free for at least 7 years (with a $300 connection fee), or pay $70/month for 1000/1000.
What if I need more than 5 Mbps down but less than 1000 and I don't want to pay $70/month? Even 50/10 would be awesome!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
$75/mo just for internet seems steep for most people. And very few who really need 1G can't afford it. It's not like the relatively piddle amount of money it's saving them is going to induce a massive wave of job creation.
Now if it were 100Mb for $25 that would be more news worthy in my opinion.
Gcpud.org/zipp
Local county pud has been stringing fiber to the home past decade. (Back of house is a smart bridge). From there cat 5 or whatever to back of your computer.
The gcpud simply whole sales bandwidth for carriers. Problem is some carriers still think 25gb is more than enough for a whole month data transfer. Google could wholesale to other companies that use the base service like tv, voice and such.
I do like the one time connect fee for basic internet, but I also know they are mostlikely monitoring/loging that traffic
I see google's advantage of a better head end and path to the net portal.
So what practical advantage will there be to 1Gbps? Crazy fast bittorrent? 15mbps fast enough for even the highest quality streaming data. It seems like if people can download a movie in less than a minute, piracy will go up significantly. MPAA can't like this.
what happened to the US?
Bring this to Antioch, IL and I am in for the $120 a month.
Half of the channels Dish gives you for that price are ones that they should be paying you for. There's a whole swath of channels along the likes of QVC, HSN, etc. I'd pay a little more not to have to sift through them while I'm looking for actual content...
-1 google, your shiny is now worthless to me
"
Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection
"
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic
"so it's unlikely to make much difference unless you're planning to host a reasonably heavy server..."
Good Luck With That-
-1 google, your shiny is now worthless to me
"
Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection
"
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic [google.com]
Nice to know that net neutrality is alive and well...
Oklahoma city next pretty please!
And actually I think it's a good strategy to start out here in places like OKC and KC. Just a mile or two outside both cities and you can't get anything but dialup, and the cable comapnies (cox in okc) have been loathe to invest in the infrastructure cause it would take too long to get a return.
they ignore the fact that once they dig the wires once, its cheaper the time around cause they can just fish new wire through existing conduit and not dig all new lines.. .. of course that too is thinking too far ahead for them. they'd probably use just barely big enugh conduit the first time cause its cheaper in the short term, thus needing all new bigger ones down the road.
so please google, even if you don't come here next, at least do it right the first time and dont play this same "only short term matters" game.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Like what are the pricing and packaging?
Box costs / fees?
They seem to have a 8 tuner main box and that should be fine for most home use but for some Business use they may need to have more let's say down the road they get NFL ticket that by it self + rezone can take up all 8. Even with just NBA LP and NHL CI can take up 8 or more. Hotels 8 is way to small.
Will they use the pre compressed comcast HITS® (Headend In The Sky) system or feed in channel on there own like dish and direct do?
Will they offer the indemad PPV evnets and sports or do it on there own? Att-U-verse has more HD slots for NBA LP. Directv has more HD feeds for MLB EI, NHL CI and NBA LP. Dish, Att-U-verse and directv have 2 or more HD events slots indemad only has 1. If Google does it on there own will they have CBC HD, and all Rogers feeds + leaf's tv + TSN , TSN 2, TSN JETS and TSN HABS? for NHL CI?
Will they have all BIG TEN HD alt / game feeds? Directv does.
Will you all the same in market sports that you get on directv as they get the St. Louis Blues and Royals with all plus feeds?
The corporations have bought the government and they setup monopolies or work together if there is 'competition'.
I did not see any mention of it will it be supported from day one?
No sir I dont like it.
I read through the linked article, and it doesn't even GIVE ME THE BANDWIDTH NUMBER ... incredible.
Depends where you live in EUROpe.
The 6 months I spend in Belgium was among the worst of my life for internet usage because of data caps. In a house with 9 people you blow through any limit in the first 10 days and spend the rest of the month of 56K speeds. My mother-in-law's (German) DSL can barely handle Skype. I don't know what either was paying for their service, but considering the way most Europeans on Slashdot talk about Europe not only as a singular uniform entity as though Bulgaria and France are identical but it always seems to be the one who are doing the best (Swedes talking about how Europeans have free Gbps fiber at every street corner paid for with rainbows) who comment and never the ones lagging behind.
I assume that this, especially at the free/$300 one time tier, will come with the same snooping/indexing that all of Google's other services offer. Why would I want to pay Google so that they can have access to all of my internet traffic, instead of just the part I do using Google properties?
Don't forget, at Google, you are the product.
HBO, disney, ESPN from a quick glance among the basic OTA ones as well. this explains the cheapness. screams niche product since and totally not worth it if you have kids
Seemingly like everything Google does these days, this is another half-hearted effort which sucks because I would really love to see someone stick it to the telco/cable dualopoly, especially now that Verizon has a back-room handshake deal not to compete with the cable companies for wireline and the cable companies won't start their own wireless network (look it up - VZW is buying spectrum from the cable co's and has terminated all further FIOS expansio, right about the time their old telco/infrastructure CEO retired and their new MBA CEO took over). We also have a bunch of republican state governments (sorry - so far it's 100% republican) that have made it illegal for city governments to deploy fiber, even if they sell access to third-party ISPs and don't run one themselves)
Anyway, Google is only going to roll out fiber to neighborhoods where at least 10% of the potential customers sign up in advance, not to the entire city. I could totally understand running your fiber backbone rings then waiting to extend it into individual neighborhoods until people sign up - limit your capex for deployment - but this seems a bit insane.
I also wish Apple/MS/et al would go after the market... it is obvious that the owners of legacy pipes intend to install toll roads on all internet access and have all made back-room handshake deals not to compete with each other. With billions in cash in the bank there is no reason the tech giants couldn't start an open-access internet utility to string fiber (just to the dense cities) to homes and businesses... Imagine Microsoft, Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, et al throwing their weight behind OpenInternetCo and designating the top 50 metro markets in the US (which would cover a huge percentage of the population) to receive cheap gigabit internet. Once the network starts building up you can run your CDNs on it and avoid interconnect/peering fees. Over time more and more of the traffic can stay inside OpenInternetCo's network.
If they don't jump on some sort of bandwagon soon (deploying fiber, $$millions$$ on lobbying, etc) they will find their internet-based services useless as the gatekeepers ratchet down bandwidth caps and try their hardest to soak up all the profits. We are also destined to see more and more "our video service doesn't count against your cap, but Netflix/iTunes/Google Play sure does! Oh and your cap is being 'enhanced' to a lower and $5 cheaper tier this month but the upper tier will cost $40 more"
The hilarious thing is that people often use the density/rural argument to explain why that's impossible in the US** but Verizon's own FIOS numbers prove that is BS. Once you stop investing in copper upkeep, deploying fiber is a relatively cheap operation. Verizon says they spent 20 billion to deploy fiber across half their footprint, but if you look at capex+upkeep on copper you realize a huge chunk of that fiber cost was offset! Even if we assume 20 billion, then extrapolate from there OpenInternetCo could cover the top 50 metro areas for less than 100 billion, the amount of money that just Apple has as cash in the bank. Presumably they'd kick in cash and bring on investors so I would guestimate 25-50 billion from all the tech giants combined would be enough. If I were them, I'd buy Sprint to get access to a cellular provider to ensure fair competition in that space but also to get access to their Tier-1 backbone and cross-country fiber network. Also add in someone like Frontier or Embarq/Century and you have an existing (and profitable) base to build from. You could eventually roll fiber to less dense markets and cover 80-90% of the US, and turn a profit.
**This argument also doesn't account for places like Dallas, TX that is plenty dense enough (and certainly in the city core) to support fiber deployments - the suburbs have it at far less density but that's because the suburbs were part of the initial FIOS deployment but the city proper is ATT territory and ATT isn't going to divert *any* CxO bonuses to infrastructure under any circumstances.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Isn't this pretty much a universal condition for residential internet?
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
You might want to check with FIOS. I was pulling my bill online yesterday and was hit with an ad for FIOS Quantum. Speeds up to 300/65 in some places. The best I can do is 75/35, but it's a hell of an upgrade from 35/35. My bill goes up $20 a month, so I'm paying $59/mo for 75/35 (part of a bundle of course). ANyway, if you haven't logged into your VZ account lately you might want to check. I didn't get any emails or hear a peep about it until I logged in.
Any type? A gaming server for multiplayer games even? That would be ridiculous.
should not != can not
Until a rule is written into the Google-Fiber contracts expressly forbidding servers (and defining what exactly constitutes a "server") I see this as more of a polite request or suggestion.
This signature is false.
"Isn't this pretty much a universal condition for residential internet?"
sadly yes, the only way I can envision that landscape changing quickly would be if google would step up and aspire to be something better than the current 'universal residential internet' service. If those other 'universal' providers were asked about that clause, I'd guess they might plausibly lie through their teeth explaining that shared bandwidth concerns are their reason for not TOS allowing things like a quake3 or alienarena or old-school unix talk server. Tell me google, what excuse do you have? (forgive me for being invested in this issue, but I live in Kansas City, and my older brother is a VP of Engineering at google (not in charge of fiber-to-kc though).
Google needs to bring this to Canada.
I'll admit that there is only one place in the US that is well served by incumbants, that's Silicon Valley, where there are huge numbers of competitors.
Come to Canada (specifically Vancouver), there's exactly one carrier hotel, that's FULL. Want to get a machine in there? 1600$/mo minimum. A competitor can't even start in Vancouver because there's no way to buy bandwidth cheaply. Someone has to literately tear up the streets and build another Carrier Hotel in like Burnaby or Surrey.
Only then can FTTH type of services be rolled out, and trust me, there is very high demand for competition. The incumbents charge no less than 45$/mo for 10Mbits ( http://shaw.ca/Internet/Compare-Plans/ ) to 350$/mo for business for 250Mbps ( http://shaw.ca/Business/Internet-Services/ ) The ADSL provider is 42$mo for 15Mbps ( http://www.telus.com/content/internet/optik/ ) but isn't available on my street.
The resellers:
Uniserve: 6Mbps/39.95 (Telus) max
Primus: 6Mbps/36.99 (Telus) max
Teksavvy: 1Mbps (24.95) to 25Mbps (44.95) on Cable (over Shaw) or 29.99 for 6Mbps (over Telus) to 54$/mo for 25Mbps ADSL
Distributel: 1Mbps (29.99) to 25Mbps (49.95) on Cable (over Shaw)
LightSpeed: 6Mbps/30.95 to 25Mbps (54.95) on ADSL (over Telus)
Slamhang: 1Mbps/24.95 to 25Mbps (49.95) on Cable (over Shaw)
Internet Centre: 6Mbps/40$ to 25Mbps (75$) on ADSL (over Telus)
Novus (this is the only ISP in Vancouver that has it's own Fiber, in all of like 3 buildings, if you're not in those buildings, it's not available): 37.50 for 25Mbps, to 112$/mo for 300Mbps
Leopard Networks: 6Mbps 29.99 to 25Mbps 54.99 on DSL or 24.95 to 44.95 for Cable.
Notice the pattern? This isn't competition, this is price fixing as dictated by Telus and Shaw. Nobody offers any different packages because they can only offer what the incumbent ISP's can provision.
What about wireless? Sure Google's not competing here. But it's laughable:
Rogers/LTE : 100Mbps in theory, but the most data you can use is 6GB. Period. Same with Telus and Bell. All the exact same data plans.
If you try to use a reseller of their services, you're also stuck with exactly the same plans as offered, which is typically 60$/mo for an iPhone.
I upgraded to a new fiber service in town 6 months ago with 24 Mbps up/down. I can't say more than that would be at all useful without the ability to run servers. You'd have to have a house full of teenagers torrenting like a ship full of pirates to stress that kind of a pipe.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes, you, Comcast, Rogers, AT&T, Verizon, and every other shitty ISP on the planet. For years now, you've slowly increased the cost of internet access while the speeds have remained largely unchanged for consumers (over 5 years ago, I had a 20Mbps connection for $40/month, now the same connection is almost $70/month). You haven't taken that money and improved the infrastructure, you've just been cashing in big time. I have a gig router with N wireless and cat 5e cables with gigabit nics, and have for nearing a decade. My hardware has been screaming for you to saturate it with bits, yet all you've done is force us to pay more money because you own monopolies (municipality cable, the "last mile" if you will, the telco lines, etc).
This is refreshing. Even though it's hard to identify "privacy, anonymity, and trust" with Google, they're still over 9000x better than any of these other guys. It's nice seeing what a company that isn't a big ISP with hundreds of millions in PURE NET REVENUE pouring in for ZERO WORK AT ALL can do. This really demonstrates what the outcome of spending money on infrastructure is. We have a point of reference now. Look at Google, now look at your ISP. Two orders of magnitude improvement. Two. WTF. This is putting KS on the map with the likes of EU countries and Japan in terms of internet capabilities. And what's more, the cable service is over IP, on top of a Gbps connection. The last time I checked cable prices here, Comcast wanted $89.99 for basic + a few decent channels for digital. For all the good stuff, it's like $139.99, and that's NOT including the internet connection. They'll let you bundle that with a basic 5Mbps for only $39.99 more per month! You're looking at > $200 for a connection > 20Mbps and a decent cable setup.
I really hope Google puts these jokers out of business. All of them. It's time for a revolution from the status quo.
Got a letter just this morninâ(TM) it was emailed from Mountain View
It was PDF'd and neatly written offerinâ(TM) me this better job
Better job at higher wages, expenses paid and an iPhone
But Iâ(TM)m on fiber here locally and I canâ(TM)t quit, Iâ(TM)m a star
Hah-ha I come on webcam grinnin,â(TM) wearinâ(TM) goggles and a hat
Itâ(TM)s a web show and Iâ(TM)m a hero of the Internet set
Iâ(TM)m the number one attraction in every Facebook profile
Iâ(TM)m the king of Kansas City, no thanks, Mountain View, thanks a lot
CHORUS:
Kansas City star, thatâ(TM)s what I are
Yodel-deedle ay-hee, you oughta see my network
I run a big old Juniper with fiber optics, got Ciscos in the rack
I got credit down at the computer store
And my PFY tells me jokes
Iâ(TM)m the number one attraction in every Facebook profile
Iâ(TM)m the king of Kansas City, no thanks, Mountain View, thanks a lot
Sorry, but the quoted clause was from the terms of service, which left itself so vague as to use the wording "improper use" (by whose metric of 'proper'?). The TOS next to that clause, gives a link to the aforementioned section which lays out what defines 'bad use'. So that _is a rule written into the Google-Fiber contracts_ _already_ (as if there were any customers already bound by the TOS).
Vaseline and Kleenex stocks soared 45% on bullish speculations for the 3rd quarter.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
We spend our internet subsidies on guns here.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Did you look at Dish TVs hundeds of channels? It's about 1/3rd audio-only "channels", and about 1/4 free-to-air channels (religious and home shopping).
For $50/month, expect to get about $50/month worth of channels, nothing more. Most of the money is going to the content providers so Google's ability to deliver more value for money for TV channels is limited.
Google isn't magic.
And Dish doesn't even have a $35/month pack. Their DishFamily is $25/mo, their Top 120 is $45/mo and it only gets higher from there.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
mistake 1 ... living in a house with 9 people. quit whining and get a 4G surf stick like everyone else
It makes no sense for a company to offer this to residential clients. They can charge a premium for a business plan which offers official support for servers, and generally grants an unfiltered connection with a static IP. Why cut yourself out of that mark up?
Sucks, but makes sense.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
"should not" is not "can not". They may only be pointing out that since they make little guarantees about up time of your connection hosting anything on it is a bad idea. Has anyone seen any clarification from them on this?
No really, Not another house for about a mile away. So does that mean if I signed-up they would be obligated to light my neighborhood up? I'm guessing not. They will most likely say, "Sorry we need at least 30% for your neighborhood."
Yeah but if you read most TOS' they forbid the server route to unless youre paying for a business connection. It's obviously not speaking about a home server that you store your files on and you access.
"
"should not" is not "can not"
"
I might be able to go with your creative reading of the sentence were it not for the use of the very clear word "permitting" in the prior sentence-
"
Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection
"
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic [google.com] [google.com]
IANAL but I don't think that the usage of the word 'permitting' would undo the ambiguity of the word 'should' in any court of law. Historically Google does not care much one way or the other what people do with their services as long as they do not cause trouble. Since they clearly have the power to throttle connection speeds I don't think the high usage of having a sever would be causing them any trouble. I'm leaning to they are just recommending you don't do it, not that it is forbidden. However neither of us will have the information to prove who is right until we see the actual contracts.
Its also about as clear a violation of the FCC Open Internet rules as one could imagine, since it is very much not an application- or use-agnostic rule, and that it prohibits the use of lawful applications, content, and services over a fixed broadband connection.
Its not surprising that the incumbents -- whose rules predate the FCC Report and Order and who are challenging the FCC's authority to issue it -- retain such rules. It is a bit more surprising that Google -- who has generally been a backer of Net Neutrality -- would have such terms.
Google doesn't sell a TV-only plan, and the whole current Fiber effort is a promotional effort to build the new markets for Google's internet advertising, online services, and Google-and-partner hardware businesses. So there's no reason that some of the money that looks like its part of the "internet" portion of the bill can't be subsidizing the TV content being provided in the TV+internet plans (and no reason that Google couldn't -- agains, since the whole effort promotes other Google businesses besides the new TV and ISP business -- be further subsidizing the TV content from outside of the whole Google Fiber endeavor.)
Google may not be magic, but having more ways than just the charge for the hookup and content that you expect to make money off of people that hook up to your data network is a real -- even if not "magic" -- source of incentive to use outside resources to subsidize the features that will attract people to your offering, and TV content is potentially one of those attractive features.
A year or so ago, I actually canceled plans to leave this town, Kansas City, KS, in anticipation of the Gb/s internet roll-out. Actually, I had trouble believing Google would really choose a blighted city for a roll-out, but, living here myself, I wasn't going to object (understatement). Now, after reviewing the latest announcements, I see the poor neighborhoods will be last on the list. Which neighborhood gets it depends on demand, the density of pre-sign-ups. Considering economic status of where I live, I'll have to wait another ten years.
I should have left town, and I should have believed my own analysis rather than the Google public announcements. I had previously been less suspicious of statements by Google, relative to those from typical other companies, because Google was kind of someone in my tech crowd. I now have to face the reality that Google can't be trusted either. If Google says it's going to do something, it doesn't mean anything. I won't even bother with the vain $10. USD pre-signup. I'll just re-invigorate my plans to leave.
(||) Nehmo (||)
"Sucks, but makes sense."
Now do me a favor and excercise your sense of irony by rereading your own comment, but while task switching your brain to the concept of "network neutrality" at the same time.
Any type? A gaming server for multiplayer games even? That would be ridiculous.
And that is why I fully expect at least some level of backpedalling on that language, as long as people like me are able to publicly shame google into doing so by shining a light on EVIL-TOS
They should have picked Omaha, NE. booooooooo
Like Gmail...
www.exede.com
just got it, so far so good, and Verizon can go take a **** at a flying doughnut
This is Google. When did Google ever enter a market with the intention to do something similar to the rest of the industry? Is Google even offering a business plan at a higher price? If they are not, then the argument does not apply to Google. And they already stated this is an experiment just to see what can develop as a result of sufficient bandwidth being available at home, they did not start the project because they wanted to be an ISP. With that in mind why would Google want to put such restrictions on the customers? If they truly want this experiment to lead to new ways of using the net, then putting restrictions in the contract just because the rest of the industry is doing it is defeating the purpose.
Though the project is an experiment it doesn't mean the prices are necessarily set so low that it is going to be a net loss for Google. I'd hope they are at least aiming for a break even. If they are building a network that no ISP could replicate and make money of, then whatever comes out of the experiment is not worth all that much to anybody (except from the few people that got cheap Internet connectivity).
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Sadly, Google is unlikely to ever think out of the box again. They are now hostage to giant institutional investors who absolutely insist that Google not do anything they can't understand. That means they can't do anything that hasn't already been done before. Unless they are willing to take a major hit to their stock price (and there's no sign they have that willingness), Google will never innovate again. It's not allowed.
Which puts anyone with a surveillance DVR at home, like me, in violation. Every ISP has this provision, but seem to turn a blind-eye towards low volume usage like me checking the home cameras occasionally. As long as Google doesn't block ports.
With home automation and monitoring devices coming into more homes, this condition will have to be revised by ISPs.
Yeah and... "640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981 No matter how much space or bandwidth we have we will find a way to need more.
what's the source for bill gates saying that?
"Should not" is not "May not". Google wouldn't want to indemnify for-profit uses and open themselves up to being sued for loss of profits over downtime. Let's wait to read the fine print in the contract.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
also no FSN / FS / Fox sports.
No NHL center ice
No NBA league pass
NO MLB Network Strike Zone
NO MLB Extra Innings
NO PPV movies or evnets
Showtime / movie channel and startz / encore likely are added cost
with Directv you get
FS Midwest / FS Midwest Plus + Fox Sports Kansas City (sub feed)
Altitude Sports & Entertainment
XD
LoL
"I'll admit that there is only one place in the US that is well served by incumbants, that's Silicon Valley, where there are huge numbers of competitors."
Not where I am, in Portola Valley (for those not familiar with Silicon Valley, a rural suburb just west of Palo Alto and south of Woodside, and one of the richest communities in Silicon Valley). We have Comcast - in most locations, only Comcast. If you're lucky, you might be within range of AT&T's pathetic DSL service, but mostly you have Comcast. Miserable service for the price.
And PV's not the only part of SV that's not competitively served - Woodside, the richer parts of Mountain View, Hillsborough - competition is simply not here. And the cost and quality of service reflect that.
what happened to the US?
We live far appart. Makes building and maintaining telecom infrastructure expensive.
Google will never innovate again. It's not allowed.
Strange, I'd have thought that offering an fiber-based alternative infrastructure to a pretty good sized city would have qualified as pretty damn innovative. Who else is trying that?
Google has been publicly traded for many years now, and as such "hostage" to outside investors. In that time they've started this project, the self-driving cars, Google Glass, and a bunch of other stuff that "hasn't been done before", certainly not to the scale that Google is attempting.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Good points.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Not to mention, Android.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
I'm paying almost that for crappy Comcast with ultra basic TV. Could drop the TV, and save a whopping 5 bucks. Yay free market.
You can track their progress here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I should have been more specific. Research projects are allowed to happen. Anything that starts costing money is not. And even research projects are on the decline. Slashdot carried the story years ago about how Google's legendary 20% time was fading away.
Those things you listed are great. None of them are products.
Google Fiber will be one of the first that is a product. I wish them well, I think it could make them money and I think it's an extremely necessary hedge they need to make vs the entrenched last mile providers who periodically float the idea of charging Google extra for the privilege of reaching their hostage customers. In fact, I think the softness in Internet advertising should have them leaping on this idea. They need another revenue stream and operating a network is something they know how to do. Unfortunately this effort seems half-hearted and timid, at best. I place the blame for that timidity squarely on those institutional investors.
The self-driving car is laughable. Google is not going to become an auto manufacturer. Google is not going to become a technology provider to an existing auto manufacturer. The existing manufacturers suffer from Not Invented Here Syndrome worse than almost any other industry. They're the very definition of hidebound, and it's no surprise, as they've been exposed to the kind attentions of the aforementioned institutional investors for generations now. I give Google's project another year before they pull the plug, and that's optimistic.
Google Glass is somewhat interesting, but the device itself is still too intrusive. Bluetooth things that fit in the ear ramped up, then leveled off at a very low rate. People just don't use them much, outside of door-to-door service professionals, and I see few even there. Google Glass is so closely analogous that it seems obvious it will suffer the same fate, if they ever get it off the ground at all. Given the continuously rising expense of cellular data plans, I don't see it ever becoming a product either. Something like it may one day make it, but the Google version is unlikely.
I like Google. I like that they're still trying, despite the albatross around their neck. I'm just looking at the list of things they've already tried and cancelled and thinking those were just software. Wither Google Desktop? Their forays into hardware are even less likely to succeed.
No. Here in Holland providers do not really care what you do with your connection as long as you don't gobble up too much data. What 'too much' is is of course determined by the providers.
-- Cheers!
This offer sounds very exciting. I really hope that this will help bring prices down.
It's a similar to what one ISP here in France has done some years ago and all competitors had to align their prices dramatically. The same has happened with mobile internet more recently, incidentally again triggered by the same ISP.
Each time the established companies will complain about price dumping and rising unemployment due to low margins, but then they always magically survive.
Google seems to be the perfect company to pull something like this off.
Sitting it the middle of the U.S.A. mostly patriotic old people
who are set in their ways; they do it as their parents did. and hard to get them to change.
Kansas (City) has always been where products are introduced to see how they fare.
If they are well accepted in Kansas (City) the rest of the U.S. will like it just fine.
If not, you rarely hear of them again.
---
That was 20+ years ago, I wonder if it still holds true and the reason Google has selected that area.
Hey, what about my X server?
Google's objective isn't to become an auto-manufacturer or to become a supplier to them. Their objective isn't to directly make money on this at all.
Their objective is to free up the billions of eyeball-hours spent on driving so they can be used for something else....
Come play Moral Decay!
Did they really say that they would provide DSL for a $300 one time fee?
For how long is this one fee supposed to provide service (I assume for perpetuity is not the answer)?
If I could seriously pay $300 and have internet guarantied for life, it might just be worth moving to KC.
Every time? I mean, their UI may be slicker for web delivered apps, but other than that, they primarilly just go one step further. Better search, then a better targetted ad network, then an iPhone competitor (staying out of that fight), then GMail instead of hotmail, then Google+. Along the way they purchased what they could not outdo, like YouTube.
The only time they look remotely different is when they are offering complimentary goods to their primary business model at a loss/steep discount. And that frankly makes them just like every other company.
If I had to guess, it would be to avoid having to deal with takedown letters. I believe that they would have to instantly disconnect people, and let them fight to get back online. (IANAL, nor do I play one on TV.)
Your ad here. Ask me how!
In the excerpt of the article at the top they changed it FROM ("And people who want much slower but conventional broadband can get it for free if they pay a $300 connection fee.") TO: ("and regular 'conventional' internet for a one time $300 fee."). They beat me to the punch. I was about to comment that "much slower" is a bit, unintentionally I'm sure, misleading. "Up to 5Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speed" [ https://fiber.google.com/plans/residential/ ]
I agree.
A local ISP also has wording stating that hosting a server is against the ToS. They also mention that they will not discriminate or monitor your traffic for any reason other than ordered by law. They also have no data caps.
If they don't monitor your connection outside of maintenance reasons, then how can you find you're running a server?
So I agree with that the "no server" wording is just to cover their butts for legal reasons.
Questions like: Is the Internet service symmetric? How many fiberhoods will Kansas City be divided into? Local channels are included in the television coverage, but which other channels will be included? Will there be bandwidth caps? Will the subscriptions be month-to-month? How good a job will they do integrating the Nexus 7 controller with the TV set? What will be the uptake and response to the fiberhood rollout plan?
And the Big One -- what will be the impact on the ISP industry if Google can make money and succeed at these prices?
(http://cis471.blogspot.com/2012/07/google-unveils-gigabit-innovation-in.html)
...because upstream providers or Google itself may start cutting down on the bandwidth used for certain types of services (ie non-Google ones, for example). Of course their intention is good, but I am glad that in The Netherlands I know what my FTTH (30Mb) is worth because we have a law on net neutrality. Without that a huge bandwidth is simply "a huge bandwidth for all services... that I allow".
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Jump to B. No Unreasonable Discrimination
http://www.solarus.net/openinternet.php
Latency.
Until someone invents faster-than-light communications.
If it takes 100 milliseconds before you get a response from "out there", it could take a full second to do 10 actions/items (unless you can pipelined them).
For all of you impulsive types thinking if you move to Kansas City for fiber and there is going to be all kind of great paying jobs available all over the place take my advise it ain't happening.
Listed below are pertinent questions to ask Google at its Google Fiber announcement July 26th, given Google’s “launch-first, fix-later” philosophy, and its PR practice of omitting material facts and information. (See the Google-Kansas City Agreement here.)
Gag order on City: Why is it appropriate to legally require (Sect. 5o) publicly-elected city officials to obtain “Google’s approval for all public statements or announcements related to the City’s project?” Who works for whom? What is Google afraid that City officials might say?
Fulfilling open access promises? There have been reports Google may be “backing off its commitment to an open fiber” network. Will Google operate an open wholesale network for resellers as originally promised? [Google Official blog (2-10-10): "We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way."]
Quantification of subsidies: Given the agreement Kansas City gives Google for 10+ years: free central office space, free power, no charge “for access to the City’s assets and infrastructure” (Sect. 2c-d, 3), no charge for rights of way, permits and inspection fees (Sect. 3), free city office space (Section 5c), settlement-free interconnections with anchor institutions (Sect. 5q), and free marketing and direct mail (Sect. 5p) — substantial business subsidies not available to competitors — what is the estimated total, and per-subscriber-amount of public subsidies that Google extracted from Kansas City taxpayers?
Level playing field? Why should only Google get special multi-million dollar subsidies from Kansas City taxpayers that are unavailable to Google’s broadband competitors: Time Warner Cable, AT&T-UVerse, and SureWest? Were large city taxpayer-subsidies always part of Google’s plan to “offer service at a competitive price?” And why should all city taxpayers be forced to subsidize luxury broadband service that they don’t need or want, and won’t subscribe to?
How many KC Google employees? Does Google plan to hire any more than the 2-3 Google Kansas City employees they indicated they would hire at a town hall meeting?
Deep-Packet-Inspection: Will Google’s terms-of-use for this fiber service be similar to Google’s terms-of-service for Android, YouTube, Chrome etc., so that Google is granted de facto “deep packet inspection” rights to all the traffic on Google Fiber?
Surveillance & Tracking: Does Google have any plans to scan, inspect, filter, track, place cookies, or record the traffic on Google fiber for any Google purpose other than the neutral transmission of Internet packets?
Privacy policy: Will Google Fiber fall under Google’s controversial unified privacy policy that EU regulators and most State Attorneys General objected to, or will it have its own privacy policy? And is there any opt-out provision for users to enjoy the additional speed of Google Fiber without giving up the privacy protections they expect?
Six Strikes Copyright Infringement Enforcement: Will Google, like some other ISPs, send several escalating notices to users determined to be downloading copyrighted material without permission in order to discourage online piracy? If not, why is Google so aggressively protecting Google’s own intellectual property rights (Sect. 7) in the agreement?
Increasing Digital Divide? As a vocal proponent for universal broadband and ending the digital divide of digital-haves and have-nots, why isn’t Google building out 1 Gbps broadband to all Kansas City citizens (Sect. 2a) irrespective of their socio-economic status?
Meeting Advertised Speed? After publicly advertising 1 Gpbs broadband speeds to generate excitement for over one thousand cities to bid to host the Google Fiber Experiment, why is Google walking back on that signature public rep
legally you may be right, in which case- cool. But supposing your not, or just setting legality asside- Why does google express the desire that I "should not" be hosting "any kind of server"? I mean, what reason, that lines up credibly in any way with there prior sentiments about net neutrality, internet entrepeneurship, or anything, could possibly justify that they feel that every user "should not host a server of any kind?" What kind of vision is that for the current and future internet they hope to deliver? I don't think there is a good reason. My brother is a VP at google, and having just played pokerth(.net) with him, an OSS GPL'd texas holdem server, I asked him what good reason there could be for their TOS expressing the intent that all users 'should not host any kind of server', including things like pokerth, quake3, etc. I'll make a slashdot submission if I get an answer that helps me to better understand why I shouldn't be grossly offended by that clause, and amongst other things, how it relates to quake3 servers and the concept of network neutrality, and the idea of what it means to be an "internet service provider". Can you really call yourself an ISP if you disallow such basic functionality as a generic tcp/ip service provided on a port on your computer?
Why does google express the desire that I "should not" be hosting "any kind of server"? I mean, what reason, that lines up credibly in any way with there prior sentiments about net neutrality, internet entrepeneurship, or anything, could possibly justify that they feel that every user "should not host a server of any kind?" What kind of vision is that for the current and future internet they hope to deliver?
You know what would suck? If people started hosting web sites from their home that were down half of the time. That would be worse for the internet then if an ISP just said "Please go else where to host a server".
This is a new service. Google has no idea what problems they are going to run in to and are taking it slow. How stupid would they have sounded if they came out and said "Hey guys we are starting a new ISP division. Who wants to sign up their mission critical servers to be hosted by us?". It's fine for the internet if a home goes down but not if a business's servers go down. That is why that phrase is perfectly reasonable. You CAN host servers out of your home but you SHOULD not since Google can't guarantee any reasonable QOS yet.
Can you really call yourself an ISP if you disallow such basic functionality as a generic tcp/ip service provided on a port on your computer?
Here is something in my Optimum Online terms of service
Users may not run any type of server on the system. This includes but is not limited to FTP, IRC, SMTP, POP, HTTP, SOCKS, SQUID, DNS or any multi-user forums
So yes they can. At lest Google did not say I can't they only said I should not. If you want server support you need to get a business class internet connection, Google is not selling that yet.