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Google Invite Hints Fiber Project Expanding To Austin
New submitter paulbsch writes "With its technology-centric culture, the Silicon Hills of Austin, TX could have been the perfect city for the first iteration of Google Fiber. Austinites will just have to settle with being only the second city to get the ultra high speed service." Right now, this is well-founded supposition, rather than confirmed fact, based on an invitation from Google to a joint event this Tuesday which promises an announcement which will "have a positive impact on Austinites and the future of the city." Another possibility, as PC Magazine points out, is that Google will announce a new Austin office.
So Google are inviting hints now?
Or is it a hints fiber project?
Can we have headlines we can understand please
I think Google may announce that the weed on 6th street is exceptional, but the cover charges at the bars are ridiculous.
as it keeps the riff-raff out. i don't party with peasants.
After years enduring the tender mercies of AT&T and Time Warner Cable, broadband consumers in Austin are feeling reamed. I expect competition will result in improved offerings and lower prices from the existing duopoly, as it has wherever municipal or other alternatives are available.
I recently investigated upgrading my speed and just getting basic pricing information is difficult (AT&T) to impossible (Time Warner). So how much will it cost after the promotional period? "We can't tell you that, sir." Are you fucking kidding me?
You can get comparable prices in the US for similar service (except we can't seem to break 25megs down.) They are just not advertised and you need to specifically ask and work with a customer service person to get your bill down that low. The problem in the US is the public, not the businesses. Most people are content to pay the huge prices to the telecom companies because they generally do not know any better or different. Many people in the US also have been duped into think they "need" more than 30 TV channels. We prefer several hundred channels of nothing to watch to 30.
So you are saying that:
* cheap plans exist
* companies hide the existence of these plans
* people don't know about these plans and have no way to find out about these plans, and for some reason don't ask for these plans
And from this you decide that the people are the problem, not the companies? Sure, that makes perfect sense. In related news, it's my younger brother's fault that he keeps hitting himself.
I live in Austin, and about a year ago I switched from AT&T DSL to TWC with a decent promo rate of (with taxes & modem lease) $56.66/month for 30 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. I was expecting the promo rate to expire and my bill to increase by $25, but the other day, TWC sent me a nice letter stating that they are extending my promo rate for 3 months. That really surprised me. No negotiations or threats to switch or bitching. Maybe they heard that Google Fiber is coming to town, and are trying to take preventative measures. The thought of going from 30 Mbps to 1 Gbps for $70+taxes/month has be excited. Come on in, Google. We've been waiting for you.
By the time I'm done with taxes, fees, and the price hike after 3 months it's $95. I guess I can pay $50/mo for over the air if I want.
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the real benefactors of this will be business clients. Time Warner Cable charges out the nose and any other orifice they can find if you are not at a residential address ... Also many are accusing Time Warner of not playing nice when it comes to peering and network neutrality
Note well that GoogleFiber also is well entrenched into the EVIL "business class" service tactics. Never mind that users at home VPN-ing into work, or trading their visual attention (aimed at google ads) for advanced computing services (gmail, ghangouts, et al) are clearly engaged in "business". I tend to believe that Google Fiber's current published FAQ that has business clients "contact us for details", instead of transparently publishing consistent data rates and prices, is in clear violation of the transparency prong of FCC-10-201/NetworkNeutrality. I also believe that their current terms of use barring any residential user from hosting any kind of server is a clear violation of the blocking prong of NetworkNeutrality (though somewhat in inverse of the way network neutrality is most commonly thought. I.e. blocking of services by residential ISPs can happen in both ways, the residential client blocked from the remote server, or the remote client blocked from the residential server. cuz like, ya know, the internet was like, designed to be symmetrical where every node could behave as both client *and* server.... So in the end Google gets to have its cake and eat it too hypocritically with network neutrality. Sigh.... I'm less than entirely hopeful that my current complaint (2000F) about this with the FCC (ref#12-C000422224-1) will come to anything when it finally emerges from the "enforcement review" procedural step it is in. But who knows...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3503531&cid=43033891
They started buying it up in 2005 or before, when all the long distance telecoms were going belly up and they could get it for pennies on the dollar of the installation cost. They have also been buying Peering points. This is not just in the US, but globally. In 2010 they were rumored to have more network than all but two global ISPs, and there is reason to believe that estimate was way low.
The point of these purchases was to get out ahead of a deep pocket competitor (guess who) who might try and lock them out of the Internet, drive up their transport costs or otherwise "cut off their air supply". It was defensive insurance, but they use it to keep their network costs down, investing in hardware technologies in-house to the point where nobody moves bits cheaper than Google. They have been wondering what to do with the excess for a long time, since bandwidth of this fiber has increased at a logarithmic rate due to progress in signalling technology and is now many hundreds or thousands of times Google's own considerable needs.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My sister can get Grande South of 2222 a 5 minute slow walk from my house. 7 years later they have not jumped 2222
Cause its part of the franchise agreements with the city. There isn't a single place in town where you can choose between TW or Grande, its one or the other. Basically, TW is in all the locations that were considered desirable and high penetration 25 years ago. Grande has the scraps TW didn't want.
Wow, you guys have serious envy there don't you? And bored, maybe you should do some research the next time you post. You are clueless.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com