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90 Percent of Eligible Kansas City Neighborhoods Sign Up For Google Fiber
puddingebola writes in with a story about how popular Google Fiber is in Kansas City. "The company wrote in a blog post yesterday that at least 180 out of 202 'fiberhoods' have already qualified for the super-high-speed Internet service. Google says that it's still processing verification requests, and should be able to hand over the final list later this week. Since bringing fiber to homes can be expensive, Google is charging each home that hopes to hook up to the service a one-time $300 construction fee."
I for one welcome our new gigabit overlords.
Fiber was a big dream of perfection like 5 years ago. Now I get a 10x1Mb connection for like $30 with Time Warner and it pings at about 19ms. I'm a total geek and even I think going any faster would be pointless. Both my roommate and I can watch netflix in HD at the same time with bandwidth to spare. Even Nvidia driver download finish in like 2 minutes. I do website design quite a bit so a faster upload would be really, really nice but that doesn't apply to a whole lot of other customers out there. Giant Steam game downloads apply to a certain percentage but not even that often for hardware gamers. Is the only reason for fiber (in home personal use) p2p downloading? Because I don't see what else would be driving it other than flashy marketing meets stupid people.
Nuff said.... You don't want the real graphic details do you?
(my support email to google fiber-)
Hello,
I've recently filed an FCC form 2000F complaint regarding how your
current terms of service for google fiber prohibit hosting any server of
any kind. I feel this is in violation of paragraph 13 of FCC-10-201
which I believe cements my right as an end-user to provide novel
services to the internet at large via a server hosted at my residence
connected to my fixed broadband internet service. While I have
communicated secondhand with Milo Medin about this, perhaps this is a
more official channel. Please tell me if I've misunderstood the concept
of "Net Neutrality" or your Terms of Service. All I want is to host a
linux lamp server. I.e. web pages and files served with apache via IPv6
to other IPv6 clients on the internet. And probably I'd want to host a
quake3 server as well as other entrepreneurial servers I conceive of and
deploy due to the abundance of helpful free and open source server
software available to me.
A length debate on the subject (57 posts, 15 authors) was recently held
on the discussion forum for the Kansas Unix and Linux User's Association
(ironicly hosted on google groups rather than someone's server at home
running linux+mailman). I encourage an official response clarifying the
situation from Google.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/LxsOtdglNM0
Thanks for any feedback, Regards,
-dmc
Douglas McClendon
da...@cloudsession.com
(note, this online/form tract was reached after selecting that the
target of the complaint was a fixed broadband internet service provider,
believed to be in violation of the 2nd(blocking) of the 3 primary open
internet rules layed out in the FCC's 10-201 report and order preserving
the free and open internet.
--- REF# 12-C00422224 ---
Google's current Terms Of Service[1] for their fixed broadband internet
service being deployed initially here in Kansas City, Kansas, contain
this text-
"You agree not to misuse the Services. This includes but is not limited
to using the Services for purposes that are illegal, are improper,
infringe the rights of others, or adversely impact others enjoyment of
the Services. A list of examples of prohibited activities appears here. "
where 'here' is a hyperlink[2] to a page including this text-
"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"
In my professional opinion as a graduate in Computer Engineering from
the University of Kansas (and incidentally brother of a google VP) I
believe these terms of service are in violation of FCC-10-201.
[1] http://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html
[2]
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic
--- (end of form 2000F complaint text)
If the residents pay the $300 install fee they get 10Mbps speed for 10 years without paying any further fee. For many of the poorer neighborhoods this was the only way to get enough households to participate to justify the buildout.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I take it that it will boost home values? Maybe? I dunno. I do love fiber speeds. Perhaps for $400 you can ask for single mode instead multimode? ROFL!
Google can afford to lose $300 per customer in a limited market like KC. But most customers won't just throw away $300 on something they don't plan to use. By collecting $300 per customer, Google is ensuring that their users are motivated to use their service.
Digging is ok in most parts of the country. But lets pick a 'big city' New York. Do you have any idea how much infrastructure is under those roads already? Oh which is used and which isnt? Not so simple a task anymore is it?
How about Texas. Nice open wide spaces. Did you know there are many areas where digging involves explosives? Dig down 1-2 (sometimes more shallow) ft and you are in bedrock.
Ok lets pick the one Google picked. Kansas city. They probably can dig. So long as they do not mind the occasional boulder. The soil is fairly soft (being so close to a major river). So they probably will dig.
Or we can make wild sweeping statements like 'always in backwards America'. Those guys putting in those wires sure are stupid aren't they? Putting in wire needs to be tailored for each region. The Americas has a wildly diverse soil, rock, hilly areas. That is putting aside any sort of 'traditional way it is done in the area' and laws.
Where I live just to get wireless signal set up (at little better than dial-up speeds) it cost a $150 installation fee for the antenna. $300 for fiber level speeds would seem like a gift from God in this part of the country.
Let me guess.. you're from New York...
Google gets a comprehensive record of online activity for thousands of individuals living in Kansas City. There's got to be a big benefit in that.
To Google, anyway.
Google Fiber will certainly be useful for people - and if it were available to me, I'd most likely sign up - but let's not ignore the fact there is a tangible benefit to Google as well.
#DeleteChrome
I live in Québec city and we're the lucky ones: Bell Canada decided to start their Fiber to the home program (Bell Fibe) in our town!
I paid 50$ for the install, the tech spend 4 hours installing the fiber in my apartment and told me that it once took him 8 hours to do the install in an old house.
Now I have 50/50 Internet (50 Mbps downlink, 50 Mbps uplink with a 250 GB/month cap) for 63$ per month and I'm really enjoying it!
Granted, it's part of a bitter turf war with the cable provider (Videotron) but that's another example of competition being good for the consumers!
I don't care how it gets to me. I just wish they offered it NORTH OF THE RIVER! It doesn't make sense to not offer it north of the MO where there is a major tech company in the area who employs nerds who are all drooling over this.
In a place like New York, you shouldn't have to dig. Shouldn't there be plenty of space and pullcords in the existing conduits?
Hell, tie the fibre to the copper and yank the copper out.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Why KC and not near Google's home? I live only about 10 miles form Google HQ and my neighborhood can only get AT&T Uverse over copper. It's ok but you would think we'd have at least one fiber provider by now.
I would pay 300$ to get off the DSL/Cable Duopololy....
I know what you mean. I'm south side, and *just* outside of the service area. I swear, I can smell the bandwidth from there. Hopefully they'll come around the other side of 71.
They are going to use the existing power poles here in KC. It was one of the original stumbling blocks. The city is letting them use the infrastructure for less than they charge existing cable and telephone companies.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
I've never seen so many people get so excited about something they don't really understand... actually, yes I have - presidential elections!
But seriously, it's actually relieving to see so many people, even those in the "bad" neighborhoods in KC, actually going out of their way to preregister. It gives me new hope that people might actually be capable of some foresight every now and then.
Of course, then there's that annoying nameless voice on the radio here singing the praises of Google Fiber and urging people to preregister now for "speeds of up to a gigabyte"[sic]... That annoys me every time I hear it. I know it's not Google putting those ads out because they'd actually get it right.
I just read this Wired article a few days ago:
Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City's Digital Divide
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/google-fiber-digital-divide/
Basically, the signup for Google Fiber was split along the line dividing historically white and black neighborhoods.
But Liimatta [who runs a Kansas City nonprofit that works to bring broadband access to low-income residents] says the pre-registration process itself set a high bar for those already on the wrong side of the digital divide. To pre-register, residents needed to be willing to pony up $10. They also needed a credit or debit card, a Google Wallet account, and a Gmail account, which are harder to come by if you never had internet access in the first place. "Many don't even have bank accounts," Liimatta says. "That's why there are so many check-cashing places out there."
The fact that they managed to get these neighborhoods qualified in 3 days says a lot about the lengths Google went to.
The Wired article talks about Google sending out teams to knock on doors and expedite signups for families that don't have internet already.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...those cheap WiFi security cameras, that you put up under around your house, under the eaves, front porch, back patio awning, etc., and have configured via port-forwarding thru your WiFi router to email motion-triggered picts to your smartphone and also allow you to watch them live from your smartphone.... well, they're all servers too.
This was posted by an Anonymous Coward. Sounds plausible enough that I'll post it again to help its visibility-
Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious.
Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to see great garage startups being enabled by cheap access to truly high-speed Internet. Pichette defended it saying they had no intention of trying to enforce it in general, but that it had to be there in case of serious abuse, like someone setting up a large-scale data center.
I don't think anyone really has to worry about running servers on their residential Google Fiber, as long as they're not doing anything crazy. Then again it's always possible that Page will change his mind or that the lawyers will take over the company, and the ToS is what it is. If I had Google Fiber I'd run my home server just as I do on my Comcast connection, but I'd also be prepared to look for other options if my provider complained.
I suspect you should talk to your city fathers if you have a problem with the situation.
Are they really doing this to record everyone's data? All data. Not trolling, but i don't see why they want to be an ISP unless that is what they're doing.
People and businesses will not be please if they lose internet for more than a few hours. I am going to guess that yanking the backbone lines of copper out and replacing it with fiber is going to take a significant amount of time.
After so many years of getting screwed by AT&T,COMCAST,TIME Warner and others. The people of kansas city can't wait to get google's service, at a much lower cost.
I don't care how it gets to me. I just wish they offered it NORTH OF THE RIVER! It doesn't make sense to not offer it north of the MO where there is a major tech company in the area who employs nerds who are all drooling over this.
Well, the solution is simple; You just need to park your van DOWN BY THE RIVER!
Parent and GP should report back here in sixth months with how much this has affected property values.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Well, hopefully they'll have gotten their butts down here by then, but we'll have to see. Still, it is an interesting question, though I can't imagine too much of a real estate migration being driven by fiber, except by outlier geeks like us ;)
Digging is ok in most parts of the country. But lets pick a 'big city' New York. Do you have any idea how much infrastructure is under those roads already? Oh which is used and which isnt? Not so simple a task anymore is it?
This is much less of a problem then most people realize. My north-Dallas suburb has all underground utilities (including electricity) running under the sidewalks (due to legacy layout there is no right-of-way zone) and Verizon managed to run fiber with zero issues and without digging up the sidewalks. Unfortunately Dallas proper is ATT so no fiber for those inside the city limits, which is funny because the much higher density would make it a better payoff. NYC is more complicated but ultimately it can (and is) being done.
The utilities tend to be segmented vertically, with more sensitive ones buried deeper, then with same-class services being spread out horizontally. The fiber was run by using machines that navigate conduit through the ground without actually digging the entire length up. This also allows you to run new conduit under existing services without disturbing them. I'm not sure how much sensing those machines have but it would be fairly easy to have metal-sensors, radar, ultrasound, etc in the dig head, along with actuation to allow you to steer it. This would let you avoid almost any issues by sensing when you are near a gas line or legacy copper and steering the cutting head around it (the conduit itself is flexible plastic). Funny enough, the densest downtown cores all have underground utility tunnels and the like which makes running lines there even easier.
What we do know is that Verizon was able to reduce their capex spend on legacy copper infrastructure in FIOS areas and that the actual rollout was less expensive and faster than anticipated. It will certainly pay for itself in less than 20 years. They also claim to have spent 20 billion on it, but when you look at their capex budgets over the past few years you can see that a lot of that is offset by less spending on the copper plant.
Think about that for a minute... For maybe 100 billion (less than 1/5 of the defense budget) we could roll out gigabit fiber to 90% of all homes and businesses in the United States. There is a ton of dark fiber criss-crossing the country for backbone purposes.
The problem isn't money and it isn't technical. The problem is that our institutions are dysfunctional (by design). Our Telco companies would rather pump the short-term stock price than invest in infrastructure - the new Verizon CEO killed future FIOS rollouts and did the handshake deal with cable to avoid competing with each other so they can focus on wireless revenue - a place where data caps and high prices ensure huge profits.
Our government has been hijacked by the "no new taxes ever" crowd, who deliberately cut taxes to introduce deficits, to justify cutting government services and reducing the pay/benefits (and thus quality) of government employees**. Then they point to the government they deliberately broke as justification for further cuts.
**Why is it that you only need to spend money to buy a good CEO? Why can't the government spend money to buy good civil servants? Or get more employees to reduce lines at places like the DMV or INS?
No new infrastructure has ever succeeded without massive government intervention. Part of that is you can only get financing when you can show a good chance of return on investment... but with new infrastructure you are stuck with the chicken and egg problem. Without the infrastructure there is no demand and without demand private enterprise won't build the infrastructure.
Government financed, cleared the way for, and rolled out the army to protect the trans-continental railroad. Without the largesse of the federal government the railroads would have only built the profitable lines to certain areas, on incompatible track gauges (check the history books). Without government-mandated air brakes and knuckle couplers we'd sti
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Also a lot of tree-lined streets in KC. I doubt that would actually impede things, but I'd imagine some concerned neighborhoods association would make a lot of FUD about that regardless of the truth. When I lived there, Kansas City defeated a light-rail proposal largely due to suburban concerns that it would bring people from downtown to the suburbs to rape, pillage, and murder. I wouldn't say as a city, they're particularly ignorant or paranoid, but they're not perfect obviously.
Is competition heating up there despite the fact that google isn't coming there yet? I was wondering if comcrap or anyone else would be trying to up their offer and keep customers from being lured away. Maybe you'll get some of that?
Parent and GP should pitch in and set up a proxy/cache server with a colo inside the service area.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
This gets modded insightful +4 on this site? Has the slashdot readership finally gone full retard?
No... The ISPs in KC are Time Warner and AT&T. I'm barely outside the "fiberhood", so perhaps the rest of the city is getting some awesome deals. Perhaps I should give AT&T a call and see what they can do for me to prevent me from going Google (despite the fact that I'm a few blocks away from the fiberhood).
Digging there isn't the expense, the issue is going to be the installation of the fiber into publicly owned access points ("manholes", subway tunnels, cross river tunnels, etc.). There's a lot of rules and regulations there, and you have to use certain labor organizations to do the work (i.e. mafia owned, union run, expensive, slow and always overbudget). You may question my politics, but I lived there for most of my life...nothing in or around NY can be done legally, without a lot of money being spent.
Must be different in different cities. In Boston, Verizon will not install FIOS in the city. It might be political since the city always has its hand out for contributions, or it might be the expense. DSL is the only thing available and its 7 mbs service maxes at at about 5 for me, 3 in our old building. Cablevision is literally digging holes to each building that signs up to lay cable (and it's trying to sell phone and TV services as well). MaxWifFi might be the only way to go in Boston.
hey I developed with a trial version of Adobe Premiere since I was only testing the software a 2 gigabyte 7 second UHDTV (7680 x 4320) avi video @ http://www.haloink.com/movies/uhdtv/uhdtvtest.avi I do not have a UHDTV monitor or video card... I want at least a 1 TB per second internet connection...
My fault, I modded it "Funny" thinking he was sarcastic. Posting to undo that.
We've had fiber for a few years now. It's blindingly fast. It has forces even Comcast to wake up and smell the revolution. This is not only great for Chattanooga and Kansas City but hopefully will be emulated across the country. Good job Google!
Well, TW just mailed me a flyer for free TV service for one year if I buy into their Ultimate Internet package, but their connection is dodgy at best, so I don't see that happening. And AT&T fiber isn't even close to gigabit here. So at this point I'm just waiting.
Or, they could simply "blow" the fiber through one of the existing conduits/pipes.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Can't yank the copper, most of the time copper is responsible for 911 services, and removing it is a huge, huge liability, no matter how many people use their cellphones for it these days.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Will this have huge, ugly, distribution boxes placed in inappropriate areas, like people's front lawns? The many in differing areas, or even countries, have railed about?
180 out of 212 is ~89.1%
-deane
You're speaking the truth, but not in a language most americans can understand.
Then why pull the copper lines out? Just leave them in for emergencies, out-of-band signalling, or lease them to alternative service providers (if they are government-owned lines and they haven't been already) - you know, ensure competition so market forces can actually work?
That would depend on whether or not there is room available for both.
at least 180 out of 202 "fiberhoods" have already qualified for its service
In just six weeks, nearly 90 percent of eligible neighborhoods around Kansas City have signed up for Google Fiber.
How is "qualified" == "signed up?"
The article goes on to say that it is still processing verification requests. So, how does this mean the neighborhoods have signed up? Looks to me like 202 signed up, and so far only 180 have been verified. The article goes on to say, some won't qualify, and they'll have to qualify again next year.
Could they have been a bit more clear?
That would be nice if they existed. The infrastructure here is OLD.
I live here. The marketing hype and misinformation about whats really going on here with this is getting funny. About the only thing Google is giving us right now is free Ice Cream "sammiches" from their Google ice cream trucks.