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Google Fiber To Come To Provo, Utah

Posted by Soulskill on from the stop-making-me-jealous-of-cities-i've-never-heard-of dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today that they intend on purchasing the existing iProvo fiber network to make Provo the third U.S. city to have Google Fiber. If approved by the city council, implementation would begin later in 2013. 'As a part of the acquisition, we would commit to upgrade the network to gigabit technology and finish network construction so that every home along the existing iProvo network would have the opportunity to connect to Google Fiber.'" Also at SlashCloud

4 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Not fair to call it Google fiber by TWiTfan · · Score: 2, Informative

    AFAICT, Google hasn't laid a single foot of fiber themselves. They've just been buying up existing fiber that has already been laid by earlier projects and calling it Google fiber.

    --
    The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
    1. Re:Not fair to call it Google fiber by tlhIngan · · Score: 2, Informative

      Google, Microsoft and Apple do the same thing. If it's something bought from someone else, they re-brand it. Examples include Google Fiber, MS-DOS and Siri.

      Siri wasn't re-branded. It was always called Siri, named after the original company, Siri Inc, which was spun off from SRI International (Stanford Research Institute) - a company created by Stanford to commercialize Stanford's research.

      Of course, there were dozens of other things that were re-branded. Like Thunderbolt (though Apple licensed the trademark for free usage, after seeing what happened with FireWire)

  2. Can't wait by ekimd · · Score: 3, Informative

    As a current iProvo fiber user, I can't wait to welcome my new Google overlords.

    --
    'Impossible' is a word that humans use far too often. -- Seven of Nine
    1. Re:Can't wait by jensend · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's true that this is basically a "take this away from Veracity" move.

      iProvo was a great idea. It was killed by politics.

      The extreme right-wing folks who think there should be no public services managed to force Provo to not provide services directly ("retail model") but rather to cut corporate middlemen in on the deal ("wholesale model"). That privatized all the profits while socializing all the costs. Unsurprisingly, it failed.

      Given the political realities in Utah right now, I suppose the Google Fiber deal is the best we could hope for. But we would have had something at least as good way back in 2006 if it weren't for idiotic politicians.