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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."
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.
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.
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 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!
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 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!
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)
He should apply to Verizon.