Slashdot Mirror
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."
(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.
25/5 or even 10/2 is good enough for most people - but right now, at least near me, it's $55 per month - so you're getting 1-3% of the Google Fiber bandwidth for 80% of the cost. I'd be totally satisfied if I could get 1-3% of the Google Fiber bandwidth for even 10-15% of the cost, but Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner haven't moved substantially on cable internet pricing in ten years and clearly have no interest in moving much on it until competition appears.
For that reason alone, this is cause to celebrate - you can guarantee that every additional major city that gets Google Fiber will have a real price war on high speed internet access. Kansas City has no such price war, at least so far, because Time Warner has been caught with their pants down. But they won't fold without a fight - maybe the next city to be offered Google Fiber will have Time Warner offers of 10 down/1 up for $20 per month, or $15. That's something to celebrate. And of course many of these providers have monthly transfer caps, and Google Fiber does not.
But separately, the DVR service for Google Fiber television service ($120 per month instead of $70, but no $300 setup fee) carries a DVR that records 500 hours of HD video and can record 8 shows at once, and your television remove for it is a Google 7 inch tablet. I don't know of any other service that gives you both that much storage and also 8 show simultaneous recording and lets use use a tablet as your primary television remote. Here again, it's a shot across the bow aimed at the other television companies, showing consumers what we could be getting but are not because they other companies would rather have higher profits than focus on better features for their customers.
And maybe if you had 1Gbps home download and upload bandwidth, hosting your own website would be something 'normal' people do for fun. Few non-geeks do it today because of the cost and complexity. Free software for building your own website is getting better and easier to use every day, and if 1 Gbps upload speeds with zero bandwidth restrictions are part of your default home internet connection package, then the cost for hosting your own site drops dramatically.