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Google Fiber: Why Traditional ISPs Are Officially On Notice
MojoKid writes "A few years ago, when Google was determining which city to launch its pilot Google Fiber program, cities all over the country went all-out trying to persuade the search giant to bring all that fantastical bandwidth to their neck of the woods. And with good reason: Google Fiber offers gigabit Internet speeds and even TV service, all at prices that meet or beat the competition. In fact, the lowest tier of Google Fiber service (5Mbps down, 1Mbps up) is free, once users pay a $300 construction fee. If ISPs were concerned before, they should really start sweating it now. Although Google Fiber looked like it would whip traditional ISPs in every regard, with Time Warner Cable cutting prices and boosting speeds for users in Kansas City in a desperate attempt to keep them, surely other ISPs were hoping the pilot program would flame out. Now that Austin is happening, it's clear that it's only a matter of time before Google rolls out its service in many more cities. Further, this jump from legacy Internet speeds to gigabit-class service is not just about people wanting to download movies faster; it's a sea change in what the Internet is really capable of."
These are our choices: stick with a variety of crappy ISPs, or consolidate on one that's pretty decent, but whose business model consists of stripping us of our privacy and funneling our Internet experience through its pipes.
This is not the 21st century I was told to expect.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Hello,
I think continuing the rollout of Google Fiber is a good move by Google, even if it does not extend to all locations, it forces the competition to upgrade in others to prevent the threat of wholesale abandonment if/when it does arrive. Having a broadband connection connection changes not just the amount of your Internet usage, but what you use the Internet for.
I remember switching from dial-up to cable Internet access with a single-digit megabit speed back in the mid-1990s, and it opened up a whole new world of activities for me. Instead of buying retail packaged software, I could purchase and download it from the author's site. Starting a download of a video and waiting for it to complete became video streaming with services like YouTube.
I really have no idea what sort of change a gigabit Internet connection will bring, but it's just as likely to open up all sorts of new services for consumers and opportunities for revenue for software developers and content providers that were unimaginable a few years ago.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
The ISP oligopoly is not going to sit still. They will get laws passed that put impediments in the way of Google.
1 Gigabit connection for $70 a month?
I understand why we don't get this on average across the US, because population density is low. But why don't we get it in the Bay Area? We have high population density, and surely there is demand. What is wrong with California?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Pfft, those prices are right in line with the total price for a two year contract on an iPhone, which I don't have but lots of people do. I've had Comcast cable Internet (@home initially) for 14 years now, which is somewhat over $15,000 in total. Customers are laying out enough money is being laid out to justify some re-investment now and then.
Lemme try reframing the REALLY sticky question:
Which would you rather have, the ISP whose business model includes Six Strikes programs in league with the Govt, or Google that just might not, but at the cost of stripping your privacy?
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Fiber To The Home (FTTH) is awesome, and how all of America should be connected. Just as the first half of the 20th century was spent wiring all of the homes for the telephone, the first half of the 21st century should be spent wiring for broadband. Gigabit (and higher, in the future) over fiber is what will enable the really interesting applications and increase the entire economic productivity of the nation.
Google Fiber is not the answer. Worse, several replies in this thread have talked about other competitors, multiple people delivering Gigabit to every neighborhood. This is simply crazy. How many water pipes reach your house? How many sewer pipes? How many roads? How many phone lines? How many cable lines?
ONE
Building this sort of infrastructure is a HUGE cost. Much of it is reaching your neighborhood, once there getting to each home is relatively easy. Simply having two competitors comes close to doubling the cost, as the number of homes to bear the cost is cut in half. This is the reason there's no independent company with water pipes in your neighborhood competing for your business. It's also why we granted monopolies for telephone and cable in the past; rather than have government build it we "outsourced" to corporate entities for those services.
There are really two choices moving forward. We will either end up with FTTH providers with government granted monopolies similar to telephone and cable, or with "municipal fiber" where government provides the fiber infrastructure (similar to water, sewer and roads). There is no other viable end game. In that sense Google is a play in the first camp, becoming a monopoly FTTH provider.
Over time I suspect this will be no better than our current monopoly providers. Eventually complacency sets in, and the service degrades. There's no long term incentive for a monopoly provider to be cutting edge.
Unlike water, sewer, and other traditional government services, Government could provide the "pipes" without supplying the "service". Government could operate a Layer 1 or Layer 2 broadband FTTH network, and allow any Layer 3+ provider to connect. Consumers would pay once for the infrastructure (a huge win), and have competition for the service (a huge win). Telephone and cable have no analog. Electricity comes close, where some places let you select the electricity provider; but even there it's fungible asset. Broadband is the only one that provides the layering needed such that the infrastructure can be fully divorced from the service.
In short, is the Google model better than the current telecom and cable monopolies? Yes. Does it compare with municipal broadband with multiple choices of providers? No, not even close. We should all be demanding much, much more.
Opec anyone? You know, the gas station you buy at doesn't make anything off the gas, right?
I do agree on the gov't monopolies suck though. It's really just the gov't paying for the infrastructure and then handing it over to a private citizen for free. If we're gonna have socialism just keep is social. Internet is so useful and essential to better living it should be a public utility. Hell, there was just a story on cnn about how the worst crop yields of the last 10 years are better than the best of the last 50; and it was partially attributed to sharing better farming techniques. Communication is good.
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