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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."
ohh wow.
I live in an area that gets fios, 150mbit down/ 65 up.
Sure torrents are faster. Usenet is even faster, but everything is just so much quicker. Those downloads you wait 2 minutes for? Try like 5 seconds on my end. There's really no wait time for things. I have a openvpn set up between my home and a remote location and copying things to my backup site is much quicker and faster. I can even open videos on the other site and watch them real time without having to download them. I don't really get the concept of "ohh this is enough, i don't need any more". There's always a use for more bandwidth and speed. Plus it drives the prices down due to competition. Maybe the fastest speed isn't worth the price, but you'd better bet the competition will take note and offer better deals.
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.
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 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!
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.
Geeks don't actually need valid economical reasons for any of this. Turn in your geek card already..
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)