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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.
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.
$300 for 10Mbps for 10 years is $2.5/mo. That's less than a penny a day.
$300 is a lot of money? Are you kidding me? Dude, I work a white collar job at like $65k/year. I have a mortgage to pay on an 1800sqft house. $300 isn't a lot of money. They get broadband for 10 years with no fee, that's like $2.50/mo
I spent $350 outright on my Galaxy Nexus so I didn't buy any $50 contract phone for 24 months with a +$20 bill ($480 + $50 = $530 for the phone, no I spent $350). I have a watch that costs more than my mortgage payment. I pay my mortgage and my car payment every month and I still save up an extra 3 mortgage payments and a car payment (I'll have that house paid off shortly).
I mean seriously, the most basic welfare and unemployment necessity costs more than $300 and requires paying more than a $100 monthly fee to use, and burns like $50/mo in electricity.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Google gets a comprehensive record of online activity for thousands of individuals living in Kansas City. There's got to be a big benefit in that.
To Google, anyway.
Google Fiber will certainly be useful for people - and if it were available to me, I'd most likely sign up - but let's not ignore the fact there is a tangible benefit to Google as well.
#DeleteChrome
I live in Québec city and we're the lucky ones: Bell Canada decided to start their Fiber to the home program (Bell Fibe) in our town!
I paid 50$ 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.
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.
$300 for 10Mbps for 10 years is $2.5/mo. That's less than a penny a day.
250 cents / 31 days = less than a penny a day ...
another victim of the public education system.
If you make $65k/year, in some parts of the city, you'd probably be a one percenter. I know people who are on disability, I don't know what they "make", but it's not even remotely near 65K. I also know people with low end jobs that don't approach 65K. What seems reasonable, or even cheap to the average slashdotter, might be quite high for many people.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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!
$300 for 10Mbps for 10 years is $2.5/mo. That's less than a penny a day. Please deposit 12,000,000 of those pennies into my bank account, I will gladly pay you $120,000 USD upon verification from my bank ;-).
In all seriousness, google is charging their "customer" $300 for this service for 10Yrs, and they are then charging their true customer for the ability to know all the online activity of the "customer." It is like Google is reading right from the cable companies play book.
insert inflammatory comment here!
$2.50 == 250c
250 cents \ 31 days != $0.1
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
gerrr slashdot killed my less than sign.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
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.
Poor you with your white collar job and reasonable salary.
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.
I'd love to pay just $300 and get free service. UTOPIA fiber in my area cost 10x that amount as an install cost and you still have to pay a month charge. http://utopianet.org/blogs/news/utopia-remains-a-mystery-to-many-murray-residents
$425 a month rent for 300sq/ft?! My mortgage is $454 (I pay an extra $40 on top directly toward the principle, so the total payment I make is $494 per month) for a 1080sq/ft house with roughly 1/3 acre of land... Plus, I wouldn't call 1800sq/ft an 'oversized superdwelling' considering the far larger homes available in my area (a town of 17.5k people), though I could see where adding 1500sq/ft to what you're living in now could make that seem absolutely huge... :)
bork bork bork!
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.
I see you are an obnoxious, arrogant douche. You should just put that in your signature lest anyone confuse you with someone who has a clue.
Its great that you make $65k/yr. To you, who earns more per year than the median household income in the United States, I am sure that $300 is not a lot of money. The median household income is $51,914 and more than 50% of people in this country earn minimum wage. Since you are possibly ignorant of the fact, that is $7.25/hour. To a person earning minimum wage, that $300 is more than their gross earnings for a week.
Do you consider $1300 to be a lot of money? That about 1 weeks gross income for someone making $65K per year.
You need some Perspective. You gross in one week what someone on minimum wage makes in a month. And those people have expenditures that take up a much greater percentage of their income than your expenditures do. To you a flat tire is a pain in the ass; you just run up to the store and buy one. To them, having to replace a tire means losing water or electricity for a week until they get it turned back on, then having to skip a few meals to pay for the late fees losing electricity cost them.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Is that in Google's TOS for the internet connection?
Of course buying your own home is going to be cheaper than renting. That's one of the luxuries you get when your income and credit score gets high enough. (http://moneyland.time.com/2012/03/21/housing-math-buying-is-now-cheaper-than-renting-98-of-the-time/)
But its not that bad. Rather luxurious by my standards, actually. Before I got my current job and moved here, I was paying $325 a month for a room in a 4-roommate household with broken windows in all the common areas and barely functional heat, in a really bad part of Rochester. I don't mean bad as in 'there's unscrupulous-looking individuals walking about outside in the early morning hours', I mean gunfire and 'look outside and on a regular basis there'd be a small army of cops breaking down a door down the street' bad.
I live in the city close to work, too, which is pretty much mandatory because otherwise this $4/gallon gas crap would literally price me out of employment.
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?
He should apply to Verizon.
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
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.
$1750/mo is livable for me, if you mean after taxes. Once I pay off my car loan, lower is livable. It's tough, but that's because I've done things that I shouldn't have done if I had a tighter budget.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
A 42 inch TV isn't huge. I personally have a 32 inch and, while I think it's massive, I recall projection TVs being popular in 2000 that were 6 feet wide. We're talking 6 feet of 3:4, so think 5/3 of 72 inch that being 120 inch diagonal. Now I mean I've seen the $30,000 plasma TVs that are that big, but this is a $3000-ish projection TV. That's gimongous.
I've routinely seen people on food stamps complaining about their $150 cable TV or satellite bills, although now satellite can be had for $20/mo unless you have all the movie channels. I've seen a few people bitch that they couldn't afford rent and can't handle the $300 cable TV bill, which is a wtf for me. This happens in this city. Food stampers with $150-$300 TV bills.
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Not true. I rented for the longest time because owning would have been out of my reach. I had excellent credit, but the P&I on a house smaller than the one I have at 3% would have been $1200(!) and it was only 1.5 times the size of my $750/mo apartment. On top of that came PMI and property taxes, it would have been about $1500/mo, plus maintenance. Home owners insurance is about $400/year too but that's like $30/mo.
Buying is cheaper than renting NOW. It's a good time to buy.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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.
No, I don't consider $1300 to be a lot of money. I'm going to throw about that much to fix the roof and some brickwork. Also sump pump, going to buy TWO furnaces (a hydronic off the water heater and one sized for the house that's dedicated to heating the water heater as a back-up), and install a new 400L water heater (solar driven, so it'll provide solar heating and hot water free, plus I get 5 SREC worth about $200 on the market these days per year; if the tank goes cold, the gas furnace will kick on and heat the tank).
My expenses are high, some $20k/year. I intend to slim that down to about $4000/year within the next 4 years. That includes food, gasoline, my home, car insurance, home insurance, utilities (gas, electric, phone). I'll be eliminating my mortgage, my car loan, a fair chunk of my heating bill, half my car insurance (removing collision since I don't drive much and I'll save up money to buy another car if I destroy it), and part of my food bill (by cooking more at home). Just my rent at the apartment was $9000/year.
Hell at that level I could just buy one of these empty houses, rebuild them, and let HUD rent them out for me. They'll give me $500/mo, that's like $6000/year. The burn-outs around here aren't worth fixing up because you'll never recover your costs (unless you do the work yourself), and the neighborhoods suffer. I could fix several up and rent them or sell them, tidy up the neighborhood some, and in short order the income would make me quite comfortable... then I could quit this white collar shit, pay a management company or HUD to do all the work for me, and just go build houses for a living. Something that feels like I'm actually doing something.
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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.
$51,914 is the median income, I make $65k, and they're like "ok so you're an out-of-touch rich asshole."
Median household income and there's on average 2.6 persons per household. You alone make more than most families. Get yourself a deadbeat wife who shares a kid 60/40 with her ex to support and give $13k to charity, then you're down to being average - and you'd have to give up a lot more to be poor. Besides I've found that the difference in disposable income and total income is two totally different things. If you make say $3000 a month and have $2000 in expenses, then a person who earns 20% less has 60% less disposable income ($1000 vs $400). Those extra dollars on the top make a huge difference.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yeah my disposable income is high. I'm trying to get my yearly mandatory expenses down to a grand total of around $4000.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
$1300 is a shit ton of money. That'd get me 2 classes closer to my degree (I'm only 3 quarters away from finishing, but I hit the financial aid cap--no more loans or grants for me :() and into some real development work.
After living and work expenses, with the current availability of work orders at my job extended over twelve months, I can't even save that much in a YEAR if I spent absolutely nowhere except the gas station. It has nothing to do with being 'bad with money'. The money just doesn't exist for us the way it does for you in a torrential downpour. We don't have to worry about 'principles & interest' on anything, because we're too busy debating things like "Which is more important this month--electricity or car insurance?" and putting off paying the other utilities until the mileage reimbursement check comes from work, then the next month carrying a balance on a different utility to pay off the late fees on the first...
'Rich' is getting enough money injected into your account on a regular basis that you don't have to worry about this delicate financial dance and can afford to use your money to invest and/or add value to your existing assets. Anarchduke was right, you could use some perspective. Do you want to come live in the hood and clean malware off people's computers for nigh-minimum wage with me?
So, just who does Google share all of anyone's activity with?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
180 out of 212 is ~89.1%
-deane
To them, having to replace a tire means losing water or electricity for a week until they get it turned back on, then having to skip a few meals to pay for the late fees losing electricity cost them.
You have an overly romantic view of poverty in the US! This isn't the 1930s era Dust Bowl. Someone too poor to afford a tire is on welfare (or should be). How does skipping meals save you money when you're on food stamps? Why would your kids skip meals if they're in the national school lunch program?
Being poor is unfortunate and difficult but let's not pretend that people are out there starving or going without electricity because of inconveniences like flat tires. If someone is in that bad of shape that they have no heat and they skip meals it's probably because of drugs, alcohol, lottery tickets or other gambling, smoking, etc.
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?
So wait, people making $125/week at Foxconn factories are rich now, right? I mean they get a lot more than $17/week like other Chinese factory workers and it's more than enough money to get by. I hear all this outrage that the yellow working class gets $125/wk but it's like they spend $100/mo on rent and now they have $500/mo...
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Also, what about our senators? They get $179k paychecks, should we give them more? A US Senator must reside in his state, he must be present in his state, but he also must be in DC. Because of this, they spend tens of thousands of dollars a year just flying around, plus hotel, food, etc. $179k goes quick when every 2 days or multiple times a day you're getting on a private short-notice jet to fly between Iowa and Washington DC.
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That would be nice if they existed. The infrastructure here is OLD.
your financial situation isnt everyones, so stop epeening your money situation around.
I make twice as much as you. I still think $300 is a lot of money cause my budget cannot spare it. but then I probably also have 3x or 4x the bills you do.
so take your "insightful" mod and stick back in your pants.
---
now. as to the $300 itself, think of it as a real estate investment, cause a home with google fiber (or any fiber) access is obviously going to have a huge advatange on the home market vs houses without it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Whoa, you make $130k and you're broke? Curious what you have dragging you down.
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Suck with money? You need a reality check cause you are leading a damn blessed life so far and should count yourself lucky. You really do not appreciate how good you have had it.
grew up poor. Joined military, pissed away all my money like most young 5 and out military kids. Used GI Bill for college while working. But still not enough so we got student loans. welcome to the in debt life style. in the middle of that there was the car dying, not repairable, so car loan for a used car. more debt.
credit card bills. emergency medical stuff you dont need to know about bills. not getting a job after graduation cause graduated in the middle of the recession. Get married and add wife's debt to your own.
Life happens. You've just beeen lucky that it hasnt happened to you yet.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Eh, I've been jobless, drained my savings, dug into backups on top of backups, gotten to the wire in credit card debt and had a big car loan. I can live on my own in the big city on entry level salary; I have mid-level junior salary right now.
The community I'm moving into is kind of crime ridden, but 11 shootings in 2 months in a 2 mile radius versus 31 where I live now. My parents hate it, it's full of blacks, they say blacks will shoot me and hit my car a lot and slash my tires ... the neighbors are all nice, I talked with them while surveying the house.
Long story short, found out the burned down house next to mine has been down 3 or 4 years, and everyone wants it fixed, but nobody will fix it because it'll cost more in labor than you can sell it for. I'm thinking, maybe I'll buy it and rebuild it from the inside out for a hobby, get some work done, have a contractor drop by once in a while to survey it and tell me what needs to be done structurally/to code/etc. I have a guy that's got a normal hourly rate of $30/hr and can help with the work, I've seen his work--in fact I've seen a whole building he's built (multi-room, full attic, electrical wiring, etc) that's held up for around 15 years without so much as a roof leak. I'll get him to lend some labor and supervision, since I'm inexperienced--it'll be like an apprenticeship, I can pay for an education, $30/hr is like $240/day.
I figure I can rebuild it and let HUD rent it out, they'll give me a little over $500/mo and they'll find tenants, maintain it, even pay for repairs if it's damaged. In the mean time, I'll at least get that overgrown yard cleaned up. Two buildings across the street too, one bricked shut (no idea on price) and one falling apart (selling for $80,000 and my ready-to-live-in wet for $50k? I'll buy it for $30k, if that, maybe $20k). That right there is $1500/mo, I can live on that but I can't afford to build houses on it.
Maybe I"ll quit my job when I have 4 or 5 of these. Less income sure, but I can build out the neighborhood. Make the place a bit nicer, you know? That's a real job. My job you don't see shit from, I keep www.yourfavoritenewsco.com up and get paid $65k for it.
You think "life happens"? You haven't had "life happen" yet. Wait until you realize you've got endless disposable income and your life isn't worth shit. Enjoy raising your stupid, worthless kids and putting them through the public social conditioning system so they can get diplomas and be good little functional members of society doing stupid, worthless jobs like Web design. But at least there's whiskey and your hollow, empty marriage to your hot trophy wife that's probably screwing the mailman, right?
Everything I've ever done no longer exists. I've been a hero, I've created the most amazing things, solved complex problems with a wave of my hand, pulled everyone's asses out of the fire. All that shit doesn't matter, and it's all been torn out and replaced. It never mattered, we would have always just worked around the problem some other way. And they pay me good money for this... I didn't even go to college, I went to a community college and got an associate's degree in goofing off and getting As.
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