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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.
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!
You can't put a price on faster porn.
well, Verizon charges, what, $200 per month for 300 Mb/s FiOS? I'd say what Google's offering is a pretty good deal.
Those prices could be competitive, depending on what's being offered. $120 for TV+internet - if it's comparable to Direct TV I'd hop all over it.
What I really want is a good competitor to bring some pain to the existing providers who overcharge, underserve, and have no incentive to lower prices. And that includes content makers like Viacom. I hope Google succeeds.
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
$75 --> 7.5 cents/Megabit
Comcast: $50 for 30Mb I believe? --> $1.77/Megabit
Where exactly have you seen prices for 1Gbps Internet access that make $70/month seem high?
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
*You* seem high, if you really think that those prices seem high for the speeds that they are offering, compared to existing service offerings here in the USA.
Depends on what that $300 "Conventional" Broadband Internet gets you. If it's like the lowest tier of DSL your $15/month you're looking at what? 180 per year vs 300 for Life. I just wish I knew what "Conventional" Broadband Internet would get me.
They do. But a tornado bad enough to knock out the fiber will knock out the power long before (and the phone lines, since they are being run on the same poles). The power is, for residential customers, the bigger issue (not much point in gigabit Internet if your computer, modem, and WiFi are all down as well).
More importantly, hanging is a lot cheaper than burying.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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.
No, it's not comparable to DirecTV. Most of your DirecTV bill goes to the content providers, not DirecTV.
So with this being only $50 for the TV part you'll get fewer channels. It won't be DirecTV's selection, but it might still be worth $50. Heck I know a lot of people who would rather have fewer channels and only pay $50.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Well, sure. $70/month isn't bad at all. But $75!? Come on! That's an outrage!
yvan eht nioj
I'm paying $45/mo for 10/2mbit from Time Warner - that comes to about $4.50/mbit for download speeds. Factor in that the upload speed is even crappier...
Sorry. Forgot the scale Google is introducing here. 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up. Plenty respectable for $300 for 7 years.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
-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]
The one time fee internet looks like it's 5Mbits down/1Mbit up.
https://fiber.google.com/plans/residential/
They're not burying the cables? Is wind not a problem out there? I thought they had tornadoes...
Kansas City resident here ... and a fairly old one to boot.
Tornadoes happen, but each tornado affects a relatively small area. I was a tornado spotter in my youth (yes, we actually train volunteers to do this in "Tornado Alley"), and I've only seen three tornadoes in my life, despite actively looking for them when conditions are favorable to their formation. This is why there are plenty of 100+ year old homes in the area ... the likelihood of a tornado hitting a specific location in any given year is very low.
Kansas City itself is somewhat protected by the "urban heat bubble" effect - the Kansas City metropolitan area is a bit more prone to heat lightning, but less prone to tornadoes than the more rural surrounding areas.
As for just plain old wind ... lines on poles and the poles themselves easily handle the fairly routine wind gusts of up to 35mph. Storms might have 45mph winds, which usually is also fine. On rare occasions wind speeds are higher than that, like last week's storms to the north of Kansas City that had 90mph winds ... those storms will knock out wire-on-pole services to neighborhoods, but having your internet service disrupted for a few days isn't much of a problem since more than likely your power would be out as well for the same period of time.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Not true, the odds are a lot lower because cities tend to take up a lot less space then farm land and small towns.
It's mostly Time Warner they are competing with here.. hey, and guess who's channels are missing from the initial line up of offerings?
Consider the cheapest option, though... $300 upfront (or $25/month for 1 year - hey, free financing!) for 7 years of 5down/1up. That comes out to $3/month for better than DSL speeds (at least last I checked, which has been a while...)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
"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).
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.
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).
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
Well, you could move to canada and get 8mb down 640k up for only $89 a month.
On the other hand, you really don't get close to that for the price.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
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
Who cares? Most of the DirectTV channels are complete crap anyway. When I had directTv, I only watched twelve channels to begin with. DirectTV literally has thousands of channels. Thousands. Complete with duplicates of exactly the same channel in different time zones, tens of religious channels that my hellbound self will never have any interest in, and foreign language channels that I can't watch because they don't have subtitles. I'm not concerned so much about the number of channels as much as I am about the quality of what's there. And if I get a free Nexus tablet out of it? Holy crap, man, it's a no brainer.
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Yeah, but then factor in the bandwidth caps you have with your current provider, and the fact that Google wants "bandwidth to be like water." With no caps. I don't know about you, but I go over my cap with AT&T every month. Just the reality of life with a media hungry spouse, and a two year old.
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My theory is that internet porn is what has us stuck at our current miserable broadband speeds.
Sure, porn drove us all to get even our phones up to the task of streaming real-time titties - but really what more do you need?
Additionally, I'd argue that high-def porn is so repulsive that people are actively seeking to keep their connections slow enough not to enable high-def streaming.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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
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.
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!
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!