The Next Big Fiber Showdown: Austin

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google might have big plans to wire America with high-speed broadband, but at least one carrier isn't willing to let Google Fiber have a free run: AT&T has announced that it will deploy a '100 percent fiber' network in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds of up to 1GB per second. That location is auspicious, given how Google's already decided to make Austin the next city to receive Google Fiber. Whereas Google plans on connecting Austin households to its network in mid-2014, however, AT&T promises to start deploying its own high-speed solution in December. But there's a few significant catches. First, AT&T's service will initially roll out to 'tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin' (according to a press release), which is a mere fraction of the city's 842,592 residents; second, AT&T has offered no roadmap for expanding beyond that initial base; and third, despite promises that the service will roll out in December, the carrier has yet to choose the initial neighborhoods for its expansion. Could this be a case of a carrier freaking out about a new company's potential to disrupt its longtime business?"

Comments

competition

[asmkm22]

Funny what a little competition can do. Now if only this stuff could happen in other areas.

Re:competition

[Xicor]

it isnt free if you have to pay more taxes for it.

Re:competition

[Xicor]

att wont be able to compete. google is charging the same price for gb internet as att charges everyone for 20mbit. rolling out fiber and then charging 100$ more wont do anything to compete with google. that being said, maybe eventually att will wisen up and start offering fiber in other cities at a competitive rate (before google gets there), but i doubt that seriously, since att milks their customers for money.

Re:competition

[BoRegardless]

Free market competition in almost all cases, except for absolutely needed government actions, always results in intense competition and ultimately the lowest cost that a good provider can supply and maintain. Government has no interest in providing the best at the lowest cost if they run a service.

Any time the government gets involved they warp the competition one way or another with politcal ends and increase the overhead cost. Cable TV should have always been open to multiple providers so people could order what they want from whatever carrier or carriers.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already been paid for by the taxpayer, only instead of building out infrastructure as promised, it was pocketed, snorted, stuffed down g-strings, and lord only knows what else.

Re:competition

[moteyalpha]

Something funny is right, but the people who are doing it are the only one who know the plan. I was wondering about what the heck is going on in web hosting and was going to post an article about that. I just got a new host for $10 a year and I see GoDaddy is doing a $1.99 special and is this companies consolidating by running others into the ground? There is a game of monopoly going on and I just hope I don't land on Boardwalk.
As far as the build out of bandwidth , there is much more going on there than meets the eye as it serves two purposes and one is bad and the other one is not good.

Re:competition

[jandrese]

Carriers always lower prices when a competitor moves into an area. That's standard operating procedure, if you don't undercut them right from the start they might gain a foothold in the area. Prices will of course shoot back up once the competitor leaves or goes under. Competition is rough on incumbent carriers, which is why they're so nice to each other in general and avoid competing as much as possible.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Having multiple sets of fiber maintained is more expensive than a single set though. I know trash service provided by private companies is far less efficient, much more labor and much more fuel as trucks from multiple companies travel down the same road. If government laid the fiber and treated like a roadway (covering just the last mile) it'd have less cost than google and AT&T competing, then they could compete on the other many miles, with many other companies, because now right-of-ways aren't an issue.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

How much do I need to pay google just to SAY they're going to operate in my area, since that is apparently all it takes to advance beyond circa 2004 internet technology?

Re:competition

[djyrn3715]

Google wins either way. Best case scenario is if 1GB starts to roll out everywhere ahead of Google Fiber. That way they don't have to muck about with the infrastructure, and they still get people using their services at the higher rate.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Prices will of course shoot back up once the competitor leaves or goes under.

So, AT&T just has to wait for Google to go under. They have nothing to worry about.

Re:competition

[dgatwood]

I should be so lucky as to have 2004-era technology. I'm in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and can't get anything faster than basic 1998-era ADSL. If the HOA would let me put up a fifty foot tower, I could probably point a parabolic Wi-Fi antenna towards the Apple or Google campus and get faster service.

Re:competition

[TWiTfan]

It's not competition. Likely, AT&T is just doing a token deployment to either justify some attempt to bribe their way into a local monopoly or some sort of legal challenge. AT&T, like most broadband ISP's, isn't interested in competition. They just want to grab the monopoly before someone else does.

Re:competition

[Squidlips]

Why should I pay to spied on? It should be FREE...

Re:competition

[jandrese]

Just their Fiber division. Google is more than willing to let products go if they're not performing.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

That's crazy talk, since when would Google just start shutting down services?

Re:competition

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Fuck 'em do it any way. Most HOAs a filled with busy bodies who like to think they are important but cave under any real pressure. Then again I am lucky and moved into an neighborhood that doesn't have one but one street over where the new development is does and they like to send complaints to people in my neighborhood and no one cares.

Re:competition

[hermitdev]

I just a government rip up a road, repave only to turn around 2 weeks later and rip up the asphalt they laid to pour cement the next day. Yeah, I want *that* organization as the maintainer of my internet infrastructure. On the flip side, if that does become my internet infrastructure provider, I may look into to government contracts...

Re:competition

[AvitarX]

I know I for one have never seen a private company fuck up and redo their work.

I wasn't trying to claim (I am GP) that government is more efficient though, simply that there are cases where the inefficiency of government doesn't outweigh the cost of having competition.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Fiber doesn't need to make money. Fiber just needs to not lose a ton and bring fast internet to the majority of Americans so Google can roll out all their streaming video and internet of things services that they're planning, which is where they're planning on making money. If Fiber makes money, that's just gravy.

If it succeeds in getting AT&T to offer affordable fiber broadband to the entire country, it will be a huge success.

Re:competition

[sneakyimp]

The telecom industry is already subsidized (see Universal Service Fund) and it doesn't really work. On the other hand, shared infrastructure, something the government could invest in, apparently has great benefits in fostering competition in Korea, for example. The basic idea is that instead of letting ISPs build their own proprietary network, we build open, shared internet infrastructure and let ISPs share the infrastructure and compete for customers. This is sort of obliquely analagous to the breakup of AT&T in 1984. The government mandated that AT&T resell its network to long distance resellers and the prices of long distance plummeted over the next 10 years.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck homeowners' associations and the paper they're written on. You have got to be a fool to join one and have your property rights restricted.

I love where I live - the neighbors and I set off fireworks all the time, I can shoot an AR-15 or shotgun (not an "AR-15 shotgun" BTW) in my backyard without anyone blinking an eye or freaking out with a "ZOMG TER'RIST!" phone call to the police. I have one nutcase neighbor who sets bonfire CONSTANTLY, and his yard has gone to shit, but you know what? It's his property to do with as he pleases, and it's that sort of lack of nannystatism that drew me to NH.

As I understand it one newcomer called on another neighbor for exactly that. The police apparently said "So? It's their backyard and it's their constitutional right, unless they're shooting you." That took place before I moved to the neighborhood so it's just hearsay, but I do believe it because when Massholes move up here they often bring their moonbat baggage with them and try to force it on us. GTFO! Go back to Moonbatachusetts if you want a nanny state, pussy!

Anyway, FUCK homeowner associations. Anyone who joins one deserves what they get when the HOA decides satellite dishes are bad, your American flag is offensive, HAM antennae are bad, you parked your sportscar in the driveway, you own "too many cars" or you simply painted the house the wrong shade of grey or green, or no, you cannot install a pool because your irresponsible asshole neighbor fears his kid might hop your fence, trespass and drown in the pool (which IMHO would be a service to humanity). A fool who willingly cedes his rights deserves everything bad he reaps from it down the road.

Re:competition

[sneakyimp]

Does anyone know how much has been dumped into the USF? And what it's been spent on? I have a sneaking suspicion it would be more than enough to build a nationwide fiber network.

Re:competition

[sandytaru]

I just wish AT&T would offer me something higher than 6 mbps down and .5 mbps up where I am. I don't even need speeds fifty to a hundred times faster. I'd settle for ten times faster and I'd pay twice as much as I am now happily.

Please, any paid AT&T folks in PR who are reading this, pass this along. Don't just pamper the Austinites. Give us some love everywhere else too!

Re:competition

[AliasMarlowe]

Prices will of course shoot back up once the competitor leaves or goes under.

So, AT&T just has to wait for Google to go under. They have nothing to worry about.

Reminds me of an old joke:
The greatest military genius of all time was Emperor Alexander I. He allowed his forces to retreat when Napoleon invaded, letting the enemy deep into his land. Then, he waited for the snows of winter.
The second greatest military genius was Stalin. He allowed his forces to retreat when Hitler invaded, letting the enemy deep into his land. Then, he waited for the snows of winter.
The third greatest military genius was Nassar. He allowed his forces to retreat when the Israelis invaded, letting them deep into his land. Then, he waited for the snows of winter. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Guess which one of these military geniuses is most like AT&T...

Re:competition

[SlippyToad]

I will never EVER purchase a house under an HOA. They sound like the ultimate in horror and misery that one can inflict upon oneself.

Re:competition

[SlippyToad]

If you saw that in the US, (you did miss saying you "saw" a government rip up the road) you saw a private contractor doing it, almost certainly.

You did not see "government" employees doing it. Prove I'm wrong. I'll wait.

Re:competition

[operagost]

Damn, New Hampshire is awesome. Live Free or Die, frikkin' A.

Re:competition

[TWiTfan]

The problem is that, in some towns, the only way to get a house in a neighborhood than isn't in a demilitarized zone is to agree to a HOA. All the good land is snapped up by developers who insist on HOA's (because it's often a continuing revenue stream for them).

Re:competition

[Jawnn]

Funny what a little competition can do...

Which is to say, "not very damned much". Please... Rolling out fiber to the home for a tiny percentage of the customers in a small market like Austin is hardly a game changer when it comes to the mythical free market for broadband providers. Then there's the peering arrangements. Here's betting that AT&T will be far from "neutral" when providing bandwidth to connections outside of their own ring. This is little more than a PR stunt, or perhaps an experiment to see "what the market will bear".

Re:competition

[Jawnn]

Free market competition in almost all cases, except for absolutely needed government actions, always results in intense competition and ultimately the lowest cost that a good provider can supply and maintain. Government has no interest in providing the best at the lowest cost if they run a service.

Any time the government gets involved they warp the competition one way or another with politcal ends and increase the overhead cost. Cable TV should have always been open to multiple providers so people could order what they want from whatever carrier or carriers.

Patently and demonstrably false.
For example, where electrical service is provided by a public utility district, rates are almost always lower and the service almost always better (more reliable). The reason for this is simple - the PUD operates at the pleasure of the voters who elect it's board of directors, not at the pleasure of share-holders. The same would apply to broadband service, You are right though, that cable TV should have been open to whatever carrier wanted to play. Same goes for broadband. Under the public utility model, the government builds, owns, and maintains the infrastructure. Whoever wants to run their traffic over that infrastructure pays a reasonable fee for the privilege and then competes with their peers on a level playing field.

Re:competition

[LoRdTAW]

VT > NH. Just keep away from the towns bordering NY and MA and you avoid all the yuppy pussies. No concealed carry permits necessary, class 3 transfers (any gun built up until 1986 including large machine guns such as the M60 and M2.). Plenty of freedoms in VT along with plenty of land.

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Free markets don't exist without government intervention. So it's more important to talk about what kind of intervention is good instead of talking about eliminating it.

Re:competition

[Megane]

If Google Fiber is a "beta", it'll be gone in two more years, tops!

Re:competition

[Guy Harris]

I should be so lucky as to have 2004-era technology. I'm in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and can't get anything faster than basic 1998-era ADSL. If the HOA would let me put up a fifty foot tower, I could probably point a parabolic Wi-Fi antenna towards the Apple or Google campus and get faster service.

Are you in an area where you could get Fusion from Sonic.net?

Re:competition

[hermitdev]

I never said government employees. It was a government contract. And it's in Chicago, so go figure how corrupt those contracts are.

Re:competition

[smaddox]

Reminds me of "Winter is coming". OT, I know, but I think the unpredictability of winter is probably the most interesting thing about the Game of Thrones series.

Anyways, while I'm at it, great sig quote ;-)

Re:competition

[budgenator]

They're also willing to tangle-ass with the big-boys over some philosophical point that makes no or little bussiness sense, like "We're not Evil(tm), see we're bringing fiber to the unserved masses".

Re:competition

[smaddox]

I live in Austin, where we have municipal run electric utility, Austin Energy, which is one of the cheapest in Texas. In addition, the profits (which are over $100 million a year) go to funding other city services and projects. There are certainly wasteful government-run organisations in the world, but not all government-run organisations are wasteful. Please take your faith-based and ideology-based opinions elsewhere.

Re:competition

[Luyseyal]

It's also similar to deregulated energy markets where a monopoly manages the wires but generators and service providers are competitive on those wires.

-l

Re:competition

[sjames]

Get a half decent internet connection to 1% or so of a single city!

Re:competition

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That is why I chose not to live in one but like I said it doesn't stop the HOA on the next street over from complaining about my very blue collier neighborhood with vehicles and equipment in driveways and back yards.

Re:competition

[bored]

I lived in NH, now I live in Austin city limits, where much of what you describe is illegal (shooting guns for example).

Anyway, my point is a lot of what you describe is great if everyone has 10+ acres. In my neighborhood, with houses 6" apart those kinds of things can get annoying. So everyone has to understand that and try to be good neighbors. That means bondfires blowing smoke into my house, or whatever are a bad idea. Like for example my neighbor with the rotting cars in the front yard. Everyone else on the street drops little hints like "does that thing still run" or "you can donate that for a tax writeoff" but he doesn't get it and he has a car that hasn't moved for 7+ years. The tires went flat 5+ years ago.

So, I understand both sides of the coin..

Re:competition

[sjames]

So why do the few municipal ISPs that manage to survive against state legislatures being bought by corporate interests and the inevitable lawsuits from those same corporations then end up providing several times the service for a lower price?

As for cable, they now have Dish and DirecTV and U-Verse to contend with and yet the prices haven't fallen and bundling is still the norm.

In theory, in a market consisting of individuals and a multitude of businesses not much bigger than the individuals, the market works quite well. As soon as corporations entered the game, that went to hell just as Smith warned.

Re:competition

[TubeSteak]

Free market competition in almost all cases, except for absolutely needed government actions, always results in intense competition and ultimately the lowest cost that a good provider can supply and maintain.

Then please explain all the monopolies that had to be broken up in oil, rail, steel, meat packing, telephones, shipping, sugar, tobacco, grain elevators, and a bunch of other stuff I don't recall off the top of my head.

All of those monopolies were created during the freest of free market times in American history.

Government has no interest in providing the best at the lowest cost if they run a service.

Yea, the postal service and federal parks suck.

Re:competition

[TubeSteak]

Anyone who joins one deserves what they get when the HOA decides satellite dishes are bad, your American flag is offensive, HAM antennae are bad

FYI - FCC rules trump HOAs when it comes to the legality of satellite dishes and antennas.
Not a lot of people know this, which is why HOAs get away with rules like "no visible antennas"

Re:competition

[dgatwood]

In theory, yes, I could bond two channels together. In practice, our phone lines are excrement. I'd be surprised if there wasn't too much channel leakage for it to do any good.

Re:competition

[Kjella]

Free market competition in almost all cases, except for absolutely needed government actions, always results in intense competition and ultimately the lowest cost that a good provider can supply and maintain. Government has no interest in providing the best at the lowest cost if they run a service.

God, that is so naive it's almost sweet. Just about the first thing any MBA learns about "perfect competition" is that there's no profit in it, which is really bad for a profit-seeking company. Nobody wants to compete that way, all companies want to find profitable markets and if there aren't barriers to competition and entry you build them. Fortunately there's lots of ways to do that, if you're confusing "perfect competition" with free competition you're not even in the right ball park. Granted, you can't have perfect competition in a monopoly but just because technically, theoretically it's a free market it can still be in a company's death grip.

Here's some of the requirements for "perfect competition", depending on whose definition you use there might be more:
* No returns to scale
* Homogeneous products
* Perfect information
* Perfect mobility, no transaction costs
* No barriers to entry or exit
* Profit maximization with no game theory

Roughly all of them are false for any real market and none of them involve the government in any way. The first one is probably the most violated one, if there are returns to scale then big companies will produce at lower costs than small companies, either taking it out as profit or by undercutting smaller competitors. Some ways of throwing your weight around might be illegal like anti-trust but others aren't, if you're a big customer you get discounts. The next one is homogeneous products, if you're buying two cans of Coca-Cola from different stores they're perfect substitutes but if you're considering McDonalds or Burger King then it's two different tastes and brands. People have preferences and they're willing to pay for that, they won't instantly switch like perfect competition assumes.

The third is perfect information, consumers aren't instantly aware of all products on the market, all relevant information about them and all offers and campaign. Those who can get in touch with their market will sell better than those who might have a great product nobody's heard about or know the advantages of. Anything that creates customer loyalty like bonus cards, frequent flyer miles and so on try to counteract mobility so you won't go to a competitor when they're cheaper because of the overall benefits. This is particularly effective at squishing small competitors that only try to compete with one small part of your business.

Having barriers to entry or exit basically means you can threaten to lower prices when and if you're facing competition, perfect competition assume you can "hit and run" any imperfection in the market but in reality you need people, equipment, systems and once you're set up to offer say a competing air line, the ticket prices are set way down and your "opportunity" vanishes in a puff of smoke. Finally, perfect competition assumes business owners are stupid. Two competitors in a duopoly are going to undercut each other cent by cent until they both make no profit at all, does that sound realistic to anyone? Hell no, we'll use price signalling to "negotiate" a good margin for both of us, if you lower prices, I'll lower prices and we both lose. Why don't we both rise prices and make money?

I have a big book with hundreds of pages that explains this and much, much more in detail, don't get me wrong it's not all about tripping up the competition but it is pretty much all about how to find profit and it is found everywhere else but in this "intense competition" of which you speak. If you have a big cash cow you'd be surprised how much business sense it makes to build a moat around it, even if it doesn't bring you any money or is even a direct loss. The more unrealistic you know it is they'll go to the competition, the higher margins you can take. Even in a supposedly free market, there's a surprising number of ways of creating a captive audience. Government regulation is just one of many tools in the toolbox.

Re:competition

[Belial6]

Don't forget that cities like them because it means that after the city collects taxes for things like roads and parks, the residents of the HOA often end up paying for maintanance of those things directly. It is a way for cities and counties to double dip.

Re:competition

[Belial6]

I am pretty frustrated that I can't get it. I live in the same town as Sonic's headquarters. I could walk to their data center. I was a customer when they were just a local dialup. For some reason, they are not spreading to the rest of the city. While Business Class Comcast hasn't been terrible, I would really rather be a Sonic customer.

Re:competition

[Belial6]

Exactly. They specifically said that was why they made Android. They didn't want Apple controlling the mobile market. If they get to control it, that is just gravy.

Re:competition

[Guy Harris]

In theory, yes, I could bond two channels together.

Are you talking about two-line Fusion here? I.e., are you talking about trying to get more than the 20Mb/s maximum for single-line Fusion? (I certainly don't remember getting 20Mb/s from my ADSL back in 1998/1999....)

Re:competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Little or no business sense? Providing extremely high speed internet makes a TON of business sense for Google:

1) They've shown time and time again that faster page loads = more money.
2) If they're the internet provider, they don't have to worry about other providers trying to fuck with them.

Re:competition

[ruiner5000]

I'm from Austin, and sorry, but the legislature needs to open up competition. That money is largely wasted on moronic projects and our property taxes and business personal property taxes continue to rise with no attempts at really curtailing them as the schools continue to deteriorate to the point where I can not let my kids go past elementary school. So I'd prefer that money we 'save' back in the form of property tax relief instead of paying for a study for ever single dumb thing possible, and relining Shoal Creek for bicycles seven times over.

Re:competition

[PlusFiveTroll]

If you've ever used GoDaddy's economy webhosting you'll see the storage backend of the VM or shared host you get is terribly over committed. Actual bandwidth to machine seems fine, so if your site/web app fits in memory and doesn't do too much seeking around on the disk, you'll be ok.

Re:competition

[robbie73]

What you don't see is that all that "vehicles and equipment" lowers the value of your own house - since your entire neighborhood looks like crap. But hey, it is all yours.

Re:competition

[RivenAleem]

Is this the same government that's currently closed for business?

Re:competition

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I do understand and see that I also don't want to have a monthly bill that I have to pay to some worthless organization that will try to tell me how I should live and what color mail box I can have. Along the same lines I also am not paying a monthly fee so I can pay higher property taxes.

I chose to move into my neighborhood because I saw an environment that I would fit into. So what If my good next door neighbor has his boat and trailer parked in his back yard because his driveway has his daily driver, his wife's car and the garage is filled with his truck, ATVs, morotcycles and tools. The guy across the street has 2 large vans he uses for work as a general contractor that are in his drive way, and the guy up the street from him runs a landscaping business and keeps his heavy equipment in his backyard. We often will have a bonfire at someone's house on the weekends and shoot the breeze over a few beers.

I would hardly say the neighborhood looks like crap, large nicely kept trees and bushes, some very nicely terraced gardens on the hill, flower gardens in front yards, houses that aren't identical, a back yards that open to a park. It isn't like there are derelict vehicles on blocks sitting in the front yard with old washing machines next to them surrounded by tall grass.

Re:competition

[dataspel]

plenty of land.

That's cute. -Texas

Re:competition

[smaddox]

Regardless of whether or not you agree how the profit is spent (you can always become active in the legislative process), Austin Energy is still a successful government-run entity.

Re:competition

[cthulhu11]

So the city contracts with a company for trash service. How do you jump from there to "trucks from multiple companies"???

Re:competition

[dgatwood]

As I understand it, that single-line 20 Mb/s is only possible if you live basically right next to the CO or a DSL-enabled remote terminal (RT). By the time you get to my distance, ADSL2+ is only slightly faster than plain jane ADSL, circa 1998. With two lines bonded, by my math, I might be able to pull off 1.5 Mbps up and 10 Mbps down, but only with Annex M, and only if the two lines don't interfere with each other at all.

Re:competition

[Guy Harris]

As I understand it, that single-line 20 Mb/s is only possible if you live basically right next to the CO or a DSL-enabled remote terminal (RT). By the time you get to my distance, ADSL2+ is only slightly faster than plain jane ADSL, circa 1998.

Well, this blog post by Sonic's CEO says:

We’ve also seen some inquiries about qualification distances for these products. While qualification distance can vary based upon individual conditions, here are the general guidelines. This is subject to change based upon our observations about performance in the field, because we never want to over promise and fail to deliver.

• 3Mbps/2Mbps: 11,100ft (2.1 miles)
• 6Mbps/2Mbps: 9,500ft
• 12Mbps/2Mbps: 8,000ft
• 18Mbps/2Mbps: 6,600ft
• 30Mbps/2Mbps: 5,000ft

for pair-bonded ADSL2+, so divide by 2 to get non-pair-bonded results. That gives 1.5Mbps/1Mbps at 2.1 miles, which is about what I got for download and better than what I got for upload back in the late '90's. How far are you from the CO or RT?

300Mbps for $?$?$

[Sponge Bath]

Initial speed will be 300Mbps, of unknown cost, probably with the current 250GB monthly cap, available in few unspecified areas... oh boy.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Sponge Bath]

I forgot the link showing the initial rollout will only be 300Mbps.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[timeOday]

300 Mbps isn't dogmeat! You "only" need 20-45 Mbps to stream 4k video.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[citizenr]

300Mbit is something you can get with ordinary Docsis 3.0 (400/100Mbit), no need for fiber.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Pope]

300 Mbps isn't dogmeat! You "only" need 20-45 Mbps to stream 4k video.

And there's *so much* 4k video available, :rolleyes:

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[timeOday]

If you had fiber to the curb and that 300 Mbit coax was shared between just a small handful of homes, it would still be very nice. If Comcast did that for $40/month in response to full fiber-to-the-home for $65/mo, for example, I would probably go cheap.

I am really curious what gigabit Internet means, in practice. At worst it could be like living on a 6-lane freeway that extends only the length of your driveway to a dirt road. Moreover the TOS restrictions against using it to run a "server" (whatever that means) really suck. My son would love to run a minecraft server. Actually I am anti Internet-consolidation in general, and would love to see super-simple solutions for people to host their own Facebook replacement, and youtube replacement, and self-hosted email and calendaring, and so forth. These huge centralized commercial databases just hold too many cards. Fiber to the home seems to open the possibility of decentralizing the Internet again.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[timeOday]

Why would content be produced when there is no way to deliver it to most people? I think it's pretty obvious that Internet streaming will lead the way in 4k video distribution. Heck, I'm not a huge fan but I would really love to watch a football game on a 60", 60 fps 4K OLED display. People will pay good money for that.

I'm even hopeful that something like OnLive (i.e. playing games rendered remotely) might become finally feasible.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[TheSync]

20 Mbps 4K with H.264 encoding may have a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels, but it will not have 3840x2160 pixels worth of detail, unless nothing is moving on the screen.

I can honestly tell you that the best live H.264 encoders in the world right now need 100 Mbps to deliver 3840x2160 60p content that looks good.

24p movies get equivalent quality at 10-20% cut in bandwidth, but it is going to take HEVC to achieve good 4K in 40-50 Mbps.

Of course that won't stop anyone from watching really crappy quality 4K movies streaming online, but when people start watching 4K sports they will want more bits.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Urza9814]

I am really curious what gigabit Internet means, in practice. At worst it could be like living on a 6-lane freeway that extends only the length of your driveway to a dirt road. Moreover the TOS restrictions against using it to run a "server" (whatever that means) really suck.

I have a 50/25 FiOS package. It usually tests at around 56Mbps down and 26Mbps up (Yeah, HIGHER than rated. I was shocked, but I ain't complaining!)

Well-seeded torrents are a blast. I can download an HD movie in five minutes flat. I downloaded two long (5 seasons or so) TV series and two movies yesterday in about four hours. Fantastic. Linux ISOs from decent mirrors aren't a ton better than a solid cable/DSL connection, downloaded a Debian image yesterday, I think it was 1.3GB, took around 20 minutes. YouTube videos still suck. At the HD levels I still frequently have to wait for buffering and outright freezes, which I suspect is more a fault of their player than my connection (or maybe the Linux flash plugin, though YouTube is the only site I ever see issues on.)

Generally, if you're doing peer-to-peer traffic with many peers, it's great. If you're downloading from a single server, I measure below 10Mbps even from what I'd expect to be the most well-equipped datacenters (Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc). It seems that they just can't deliver content at such high speeds (or it's getting throttled somewhere else along the line).

So if you're not torrenting much I expect you wouldn't see much of a change at all moving to a gigabit network, unless you have a below-average connection to start.

As for the server restriction...there's always ways around it, and usually they don't care. I've never *not* run a server from my home network, and every such connection has a clause like that included. Unless you're running the next Slashdot from your basement, I doubt they'll care. And at that point, slap up some ads and it'll pay for hosting. I'm planning to soon be running everything from HTTP to DNS to Tor exit node servers from my FiOS connection, along with my existing public WiFi network (just in my apartment, but it's usually got a half dozen unknown devices connected) -- I'll let you know if they boot me ;)

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[timeOday]

I was consulting this article that says 4k content will shift to H.265. (Although it also claims H.264 4k video would be fine at 45 Mbit/s, so who knows).

Anyway, 100 Mbit is still less than 300 Mbit, and Internet streaming is surely able to be upgraded to new encodings more easily than cable or satellite broadcasts, for example even if only a few people have new sets that support the encoding.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Bengie]

That is because you weren't getting 30mbit to YouTube. I get 30-40mb from them all the time. An entire 1080p 2min clip buffers in a few seconds.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Luyseyal]

How fast is your email? I keed, I keed.

I hate those comparison graphics where email is listed as a service for measuring speed. Uhhhhh

-l

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[timeOday]

Good info. 26 Mbps up would really open some options such as watching DVR content from home while on the road, or sending links to self-hosted video to family instead of youtube where they will get blocked for copyright infringement. I made my dad a video for his birthday and he never saw it because I put a beatles song behind it.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[clarkn0va]

That depends entirely on the compression though, doesn't it? For comparison, Netflix's SuperHD 1080p uses in the neighbourhood of 5-6 Mbps, while a bluray encoding of the same content at the same resolution might consume eight times the bandwidth, and is still compressed (just less so). Multiply those figures by four to estimate what a 4k stream might use.

And I agree that 300 Mbps isn't dogmeat. It's plenty for most people today, but at the same time, I (most geeks, I'm sure) would use it if I had it, and more.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[clarkn0va]

Talk about non-sequitur. Youtube takes forever because it's Youtube. It has nothing to do with the speed of your last mile, and everything to do with the fact that Google is the starving student artist of the tech community.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[clarkn0va]

You just made the GP's point, which is that 300 Mbps is plenty fast, even for tomorrow's streaming needs.

Gig fiber is interesting for media streaming, sure, but what about applications that actually need that kind of bandwidth. Off-site nightly backups, anyone? How about sharing your LUG's collection of Linux ISO's or public domain classic films with your local club without having to wait for some stupid choked file-sharing site middle man? Distributed thin client computing where the terminal servers aren't even on site? The "20 Mbps is fast enough for HDTV" argument is so tired. Can we start thinking 21st century now?

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Urza9814]

Yeah. I've heard that some ISPs sell crap like 50/0.75 packages, which can't be worth bothering with. I've had a single seeding torrent make Google.com impossible to load on upstream bandwidths like that. Even if you don't *think* you need upstream bandwidth...you still need some upstream bandwidth. 26 megs of it is quite fantastic.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[ruiner5000]

So what. It will also force Time Warner and Grande to raise their top speeds which are 50 and 110 respectively, and just 80 for business customers for Grande, but at least they don't rip you off like Time Warner business class does. Uverse for business is affordable.

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Bengie]

Once you include the cost of maintaining DOCSIS3 copper networks compared to an all fiber network, the fiber network would pay itself off in about 5 years just from savings. Then include that 1gb/1gb is brain-dead easy to do with fiber and you got a winner. Now add in that 10gb/100gb/1tb are right around the corner, why not just go fiber now?

Re:300Mbps for $?$?$

[Bengie]

YouTube buffers? I don't get buffering with up to 1440p on YouTube, but 4k buffers, even with 44mb/s coming at me, but I only have a 50mb connection, so I guess 44mb isn't too out of line. That, and my wife was watching Netflix. So yes, YouTube can saturate my 50mb connection, and the time is 9:37p, peak hours.

Strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

Diabolically genius!

Wire the most affluent neighborhoods (a few 10s of thousands) from which Google would getting the greatest profit margins in terms of profile building and actual fiber revenue, spoil the proposition for the entire city.

Re:Strategy

[Rob the Bold]

Diabolically genius!

Wire the most affluent neighborhoods (a few 10s of thousands) from which Google would getting the greatest profit margins in terms of profile building and actual fiber revenue, spoil the proposition for the entire city.

OTOH, the more affluent areas also require more plant -- fiber and other hardware needed on a per-foot basis -- per user. Not that I've worked out what it costs or have a handle on revenue per user vs. household AGI -- any guess there would be PIDOOMA . . . I do know that google started their buildout in KC in denser, more urban areas. But among those areas, they only hooked up neighborhoods where a certain percentage of residents put down a deposit -- $300 payable in installments.

ATT has supposedly been "upgrading" their network in KC with more fiber to the home in more neighborhoods. But their offering is pretty much the same speed, same price as Time-Warner's cable service -- they just promise better download speeds than TWC during peak neighborhood demand periods. Not that that would be bad, TWC does bog down something awful in the evenings. Both ATT and TWC have representatives going door-to-door trying to sign up new customers and glad-hand existing ones, even in areas that google hasn't announced any fiber plans.

Why

[interkin3tic]

What is AT&T's plan here?

CEO: "Gentlemen, google's competitive service challenges our freedom, our very way of life, our absurd profits. No longer will we be able to abuse customers and laugh as they threaten to leave us for better competitors, because there WILL BE a better option"
All: "GASP!"
CEO: "We have only one option. Stop them in Austin Texas. Throw everything we've got there. Be better than google."
Member of the audience: "But Sir, how can we keep getting monopoly-level profits for doing very little if we do that?"
CEO : (closes eyes) "We... can't."
All: "NNOOOO!!"
CEO: "But fear not! If we stop them in Austin Texas, they will give up expanding elsewhere! ... Probably? They'll just assume we're going to do it anywhere they announce next and will all hang themselves, at which point we can quadruple the costs for the austin fiber and everywhere else."
All: "AMAZING!!!"

Re:Why

[timeOday]

AT&T's plan is millions of people paying $100/mo wireless plans for their iPhones. I say the party now most threatened by high-speed fixed infrastructure is Comcast, not AT&T.

Re:Why

[FSWKU]

I say the party now most threatened by high-speed fixed infrastructure is Comcast, not AT&T.

Actually, it's Time Warner in Austin...which is far, FAR worse than Comcast, sadly.

Re:Why

[TWiTfan]

What is AT&T's plan here?

I bet they're just trying to make a grab for the Austin monopoly before Google gets it. Then once they get it, it will be the same old shitty AT&T service they offer everywhere, with just a few token fiber deployments in a few neighborhoods. Austin gets screwed out of Google Fiber, a few city councilmen walk away with nice bribes, and the consumer gets fucked.

Re:Why

[internerdj]

I've never had Time Warner but I've got to say I can't even imagine how that is possible.

Re:Why

[internerdj]

Once long ago, Comcast changed my billing date, charged me a month's service fee for a week and a half of actual time and when I asked to have it prorated they told me essentially I could go screw myself. I was in an apartment complex and was not allowed by my lease to have service through anyone else. I have not had Comcast any time I could have a choice not to.

Re:Why

[afidel]

Yep, Comcast were the ONLY ones who made sense when it came to throttling, they basically said during congestion the highest n% of users would get throttled to maintain QoS, if there was no congestion on the headend then no throttling and once a certain percentage of users on a headend were in the throttled category they would reconfigure the headend and backhauls to alleviate the congestion (basically use smaller segments so each user gets a bigger percentage of the total pipes capacity). This is how a reasonable engineer would design a throttling system and it met the business goal of delaying capital costs until it was truly needed. I've never been a Comcast customer so I can't comment on their customer service (or probable lack thereof) but as an outside observer their business practices seem extremely reasonable.

Re:Why

[Somebody Is Using My]

Anecdotally:

Having experienced both, I've concluded the following:

Time Warner is worse with the technology. Slower speeds, crappier equipment, tends to oversell bandwidth more. You'll hate them for their product.

Comcast sucks more on the business side. Billing, technical support, etc. You'll hate them for their people.

So long as your equipment and connection is good, Comcast is the way to go. Woe unto you should something go wrong, though. You'll call up Comcast and not only won't the problem be fixed, they'll probably inadvertently lose your payment for the last three months.

With Time Warner, you'll have a flakier connection but at least when you have to get a guy over to check the cabling it won't take three months and he'll actually fix the problem (at least until something else breaks).

Admittedly, these are just my personal experiences and a wider data set would doubtlessly reveal discrepancies in this generalization. But then, that's the same with most of the comments on Slashdot.

Re:Why

[charlesnw]

No they don't require you to get cable with the internet service. Not in Austin anyway. It's cheaper to get cable+internet, that might be what you are referring to? Please don't spread misinformation, that's really not helpful. We need to have informed arguments with facts about the various carriers.

Re:Why

[slimjim8094]

It's true, I'm afraid. Worse TV/DVR/STB, quality and interface (and I have the good box apparently), less on demand, worse customer service, and more expensive.

I will grant that they have quite decent internet - they do IPv6 properly with prefix delegation, and I even get slightly more (consistently) than I pay for - but Comcast does internet pretty well also, and TWC is still more expensive.

Anecdote - when I signed up, I had to wait *2 weeks* for an appointment to hook it up. All the appointments were 8-5, and I work during the day. I would just go in an hour or two late or come home an hour or two early, but they are only willing to schedule 4 hour blocks and I couldn't take a half day off at the time - especially with no internet to work remotely. And they were all taken anyway. I was around weekends, but they only did Saturday, and they were all full for those 2 weeks. Incredibly miserable experience. I would have run the damn wire myself if they'd let me.

Re:Why

[ruiner5000]

Yeah, they don't. I had just cable for years until they had the HBOGo bundle.

Re:1 GB

[disposable60]

By the time you stream 4 or 5 simultaneous HD DVR streams plus a like number of active HD TVs, you're at a fair fraction of that 1GB. True, that's sproadic, but ATT is counting on nobody consuming anywhere near that capacity on an ongoing basis.

Sounds like Project PRONTO all over again.

[TheHawke]

Remember that disaster in a can? This was during the Big Deal when DSL was the trend maker. The problem with DSL or any ISP service over telecom copper needs to be operating at or on spec. Most of the locations where Pronto was slated to roll out on had crap copper. So guess where the money went? Almost all of it got sunk into infrastructure improvement and service roll out to high income, high density areas, leaving the blue collars and rural folks high and dry.

Take a guess where the FTH is going to be rolled out to. You guessed right, the moneybags districts.

Re:Sounds like Project PRONTO all over again.

[Bengie]

According to a case 2 years ago, it took only 3 years to recoup all costs of going all fiber in a rural town. All profit after 3-5 years. Look at Chattanooga, they just announced dropping 1gb from $300/month to $70/month because they've finished paying off their network, so now they can offering prices as if they don't have a ton of debt.

They haven't decided because Google hasn't...

[rahvin112]

They haven't decided where to install because Google hasn't. It will be predatory installation. That means they will install the system only where Google does and will only offer competitive prices to those who can get Google service. They do this to anyone that tries to overbuild.

As planned?

[Dega704]

This sort of thing was Google's intent all along; not directly competing with ISPs, but doing just enough to light a fire under their seats and demonstrate how full of it they are about the cost of network infrastructure.

Re:As planned?

[luciano.moretti]

The other interesting thing here is that, at least in my city, there is a "comparable performance clause" in the agreement between the city and AT&T/Time Warner for the Phone/Cable monopoly.

It basically states that if another area gets quantifiable better speeds/options, they need to justify why it's economically infeasable to provide the same level of service in my community or they risk losing their license to a competitor who can. There are some limitations (like the deployment being in the same state) and it would mean that the city counsel would have to fight it and likely a legal battle afterward, but it is a route where a door could be opened to requiring big players to upgrade service to levels equivalent to Google if they try to fight in select areas instead of their whole service area.

Whoosh!

[Arker]

You'll be at a fair fraction of 1Gb, not 1GB.

GPs point.

>

Your head.

Re:Whoosh!

[disposable60]

You're right - I forgot to include the upstream bandwidth for the surveillance gear this comes with :)

As a long-time Austin resident...

[drdread66]

I have a few observations to make.

1) "So what" that AT&T is only going to roll out this service to "tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin". Google is not promising to do anything more, with a plan to deploy it to select neighborhoods based on expressed interests from residents in those neighborhoods. The real question is whether AT&T tries to roll out AT&T fiber to the same neighborhoods or if they pick other neighborhoods. I would prefer the latter just so there's more high-speed coverage around the town.

2) I am currently a RoadRunner customer. RoadRunner sucks horribly, but AT&T's service sucked so much worse the last time I used it that I fired them as soon as I could. I'm not sure I would trust AT&T to make G-bit service work, given that they couldn't make dial-up or DSL work right in the past.

3) BRING IT ON! Competition is a good thing on all fronts. I also expect (hope?) to see other communications outfits (most notably Grande) try to get in the same game, which would be *great*.

I can't help but think of AT&T's announcement as a good thing...

ARGH!

[bennomatic]

Why does Austin get everything before Portland? By the time I get my fiber, all those f'ing hipsters will be saying, "I had fiber before it was cool."

We do have Verizon FIOS out here in the metro area, but it's way the heck out west by Beavertron, presumably because of Intel. East of the Willy, the choices are Qwest (CenturyLink?) DSL which is slow as F, or Comcast, which is fast and reliable, but with a little more competition, I'm sure they could afford to drop the price by a few bucks.

Oh, and speaking of Qwest/CL's DSL, they keep sending me mailers suggesting that I could get up to 20 Mbps on their enhanced DSL. Once a year, I take the bait and call them, and every single time, the max they can offer me is a virtually trogloditic 1.5 Mbps. You'd think that, if their mailing system is database-driven, and their bandwidth availability lookup is database driven, they could do some cross-referencing and only bother sending out mailers to people who either can get great bandwidth or who don't have any other options...

OK, end rant.

Re: ARGH!

[colinnwn]

As opposed to those hipsters in Portland? It's like watching 2 hens fight for a coc. But don't feel too bad, Austin is so wealthy douche now they couldn't be hipster if Andy Warhol came back from the dead and slapped them.

Re:ARGH!

[halltk1983]

They likely pay a company to do the mailers for them, which doesn't have access to any of their DBs. At most, they'll include a list of addresses to exclude based on current customers, but most don't even bother to do that.

Re:ARGH!

[lmnfrs]

Oh, it's so difficult to avoid ranting about ISP's. I have a friend from the East (which means Portland because I'm from Beavertron) who works downtown at an ISP and is excited by CenturyLink's connections. He didn't believe me when I explained my speed was symmetrical and limited at 25Mbps, because I told him that was the slowest available. Another friend informed me of Comcast's new modems. They're the 3.0 version of modems.

Technology is going too fast for average people to understand, and many think these "fast" DSL and cable speeds are an amazing jump from initial DSL and cable speeds. It seems our options are finding a magical way to overpower the sparkly wires in Comcast ads and the moronic experts in CenturyLink ads, both of which are believed, like witch-hunting experts, or wait for the gradual expansion.

Maybe it'll be like Dallas

[ThatsNotPudding]

In AT&T's Dallas HQ parking garage, you can get four bars in every elevator as it's critcally important all their execs be in constant contact.

But for their customers? Ha! This will be just more cobbled-together Uverse hybrid garbage.

I sortof doubt that AT&T will deliver

[Squidlips]

It would be hard to believe that their long track record of cost-cutting employee moves and incompetence will be reversed in few months. When I was at college, we could not believe the dregs they send in for network work.

Will they have better TV bitrates and more streams

[Joe_Dragon]

Will they have better TV bit rates and more streams in the same areas as well?

Natural monopoly

[Strange Attractor]

Digging duplicate trenches to lay parallel fiber is wasteful. That's why utilities are "natural monopolies". Getting economic efficiency in such situations usually requires regulation or community ownership.

Re:Natural monopoly

[kimvette]

It works for electricity and methane because new electricity or natural gas technology and major standards changes ever require upgrades; they just need to replace pipelines and cables as they rot or snap, and are relatively low maintenance and remarkably reliable, all things considered. The same is not true of telecommunications.

Re:Natural monopoly

[Bengie]

Fiber Optics for long-haul communications have a relatively short shelf-life because of the long distances, so about 10-20 years, but they have shown to be able to use 30+ year old fiber with new tech.

For the last mile where distance are relatively short, so no repeaters or re-generators are needed, they're saying fiber has a useful life of about 40 - 100 years. Short of a line getting cut, there is little reason to ever dig up fiber.

Good luck to them

[Mabonus]

I really enjoyed calling up to cancel after Google connected our house.

"Why are you cancelling?"
"I found a better service."
"Can I ask what?"
"Sure, I found 1,0000 Mbps for $70/mo"
"Well. I can offer you 14Mbps for $40/mo"

They followed up with a letter just yesterday saying how they were surprised I canceled since they have such a great service and offering a $300 gift card for re-upping. As far as I can tell they have no strategy for dealing with competing fiber rollouts and Austin doesn't sound like one either.

Re:Good luck to them

[swillden]

"Sure, I found 1,0000 Mbps for $70/mo"
"Well. I can offer you 14Mbps for $40/mo"

I suppose for a lot of (non-geek) people that might look like a compelling alternative, so it's not totally silly of the rep to offer it. However, I suspect that most of those who'd prefer 14 Mbps for $40 over 1000 Mbps for $70 would find 5 Mbps for $0 even more compelling.

Re:Good luck to them

[swillden]

If 1000 Mbps is $70, then 14 Mbps should be $0.98.

Nonsense. The utility of bandwidth isn't linear.

I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[Anonymous Coward]

it isn't free if you have to pay a communications surcharge fee for it for a decade and get nothing to show for it.

Re:I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[sneakyimp]

+1
Check your telephone / internet bills people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_service_fund

Re:I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[operagost]

Yeah, that was signed off by the notorious Republican, Bill Clinton. Vote Democrat, people!

Re:I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[sneakyimp]

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was written by a Congress with a Republican majority in both Senate and House (the first time since the 50s this had happened). Blaming Clinton for it is pretty weak. It reminds me of blaming a certain other POTUS for a certain government shutdown that happened because Congress passed a law and then wanted to un-pass it.

Re:I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[operagost]

So Clinton had a gun to his head, right? Try reading this.

Re:I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[sneakyimp]

I merely wanted to point out your idiocy in blaming only Clinton for the bill when in fact the very text of the Bill was written and passed as law by a Congress with a Republican majority in both house and Senate. Nobody had a gun to their head either. This particular idiocy of yours is a lot like the idiocy where of blaming Obama for Congress passing a law and then shuts down the entire government because a minority of one house doesn't want the law that it helped to pass in the first place. Nobody had a gun to their head either.

Also, I feel I should point out that the post you initially responded to was not partisan in any way. What the fuck do you want to make it partisan for? Agenda much? You're doing it wrong.

Re:1 GB

[citizenr]

30Mbits per mux = 5-8 TV channels
you can have 160 TV streams on 1Gbit, thats a lot more than your "4 or 5"

die in a fire at&t

[Dan667]

They had their chance to take care of me as a paying Customer. At this point, no matter what at&t or time warner do at this point I will dump them the first opportunity to get Google Fiber.

And who cares?

[Okian Warrior]

Digging duplicate trenches to lay parallel fiber is wasteful. That's why utilities are "natural monopolies". Getting economic efficiency in such situations usually requires regulation or community ownership.

In the magical land of the oompa-loompas, where Willie Wonka is a benevolent dictator and everything is done for the betterment of their society, this would be important.

Any real issue has arguments both for and against. It's like a mathematical function with many variables, and you have to choose the combination of variables that gives the function the highest value.

In this case the highest value is utility for society, and the variables are the amount of weight you assign to each argument.

Specifically in this case, we assign little weight to "being wasteful because we're digging two trenches" because even though that argument is valid, the utility to society is much lower if we let that consideration drive our choice.

Yeah, I'd *like* to not have to waste effort to have good things, but that's not the world we live in.

Having fiber is more valuable than the expense of digging an extra trench.

Re:And who cares?

[Pinky's Brain]

It's not just wasteful, it's generally subsidized by the community (ie. traffic delays).

Re:And who cares?

[Bengie]

Having fiber is more valuable than the expense of digging an extra trench.

But the natural monopoly is keeping that from happening, especially when those trenches cross both public and private property. Want to build your $1bil network? My land is in your way? Pay me $100k or your network won't get built.

Re:And who cares?

[smaddox]

Are you one of the extreme libertarians that think all road systems should be privatized, and we should have 3 highways to everywhere with competing tolls (which would inevitably be higher than the tax cost of building one highway)? Because if you aren't, I don't see how you think the corollary for internet access is preferable.

Re:And who cares?

[halltk1983]

There's a whole lot of soft shoulder out there. And if you really wanted to go there, then the government could have just laid conduit and rented space in it to companies. Then it matters less what's run. To make it easier, they could also lay the pull cables ahead of time.

Re:And who cares?

[Miamicanes]

> Fiber has zero value as a "utility for society".

Bullshit. The value of fiber isn't just the value it brings to people willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars per month for an OC-12 today, it's the value it brings to people who'll find cool ways to enjoy having the equivalent of an OC-12 for slightly more than they're paying for shit DSL or cable today, amortized over the next 25-100 years (since buried fiber is basically a 50-100+ year capital investment).

If the federal government had any common sense, it would be taking advantage of its ability to borrow money at near-zero interest rates and making low-interest loans available to finance laying open-access fiber across America like there's no tomorrow. AT&T won't spend $10,000 laying fiber to a customer, because any horizon more than 5 years away represents too much capital risk, few customers could afford to cough up $10,000 (or even pay it off over some short period like 5 years that's a fraction of its useful life), and AT&T won't voluntarily share a fiber with anyone, because it likes keeping customers locked in. Even if the government burned $20,000 laying the same fiber and passed along the cost, it could be financed over 50 years for less than $60/month, interest included. And with inflation, by the time those last 10 years arrived, $60/month would seem as silly as a 12c/month luxury surtax on telephone service to finance the Spanish-American War.

Re:1 GB

[pr0fessor]

Netflix or hulu streaming on a couple TVs, Xbox Live, tablet and a couple android cellphones playing games and checking facebook, a pc, a laptop, fairly normal in my busy household all on 50mbps. {5 out of 8 devices are usually doing something} Sure sometimes I think I should upgrade to 100mbps since it is now available but I haven't had enough problems w/bandwidth to make me spend that extra $$.

Re:1 GB

[disposable60]

160 TV streams - is that TV, HD, 3-DHD 4kHD or 3D4kHD?

Re:great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Austin... ironic that fiber can be dropped so quickly when there hasn't been a major road improvement (183) since 1995, other than Perry's tollways. Well, MoPac going from a congested highway to a congested tollway where the price to sit in the parking lot goes up with the cars on the road isn't really what one calls an improvement.

Re:at&t guy came by my house the other day

[internerdj]

We are getting the Uverse rollout in my neighborhood. You'd think I might know from some advertising email or a mail flyer, but not with AT&T. We found out after several hours on the phone with support about our resulting internet outage, the unnecessary purchase of a new dsl modem, and a in-house visit they threatened to charge us for.

AT&T is retarded.

[kellin]

Wow. Yet another example of AT&T rolling out a half-assed hastily thrown together technology upgrade. Go Google!

No, but seriously.. when AT&T first started rolling out U-verse to some test neighborhoods, the one I lived in at the time was given a free month to check it out. We had Dish Network at the time. To say the feature set for U-verse was laughable is an understatement. Oh sure, you could get a box for every tv, but only one had a DVR on it.. the rest were stuck with "live tv only". Who does that? The system also felt a little sluggish compared to Dish Network, and I was used to actually useful "information" in the info section of each tv program.

FUD, Microsoft-Style

[ewhac]

A press release is not a fiber rollout. I seriously doubt they have any genuine plans for an actual fiber roll-out, except possibly to the most lucrative neighborhoods.

Also, this mealy-mouthed "up to 1Gb" sets off my bullshit meter, and leads me to suspect that AT&T are going to try and do this on the cheap. OTOH, GFiber starts at 1Gb, and there's plenty of upside built in to their backbone.

What I would be very careful of is the agreements AT&T manages to strong-arm out of Austin in "exchange" for promsing to think about maybe deploying fiber someday. I could easily see AT&T wresting an agreement that grants AT&T exclusive access for 50 years to municipal poles for deploying new information services (as an "incentive," of course). Oh, and the agreement will have no or an extremely vague performance clause. Once they get that agreement, they can shut out all competitors and then do nothing, or as close to nothing as they can get away with.

Re:1 GB

[citizenr]

that is normal TV with a mix of SD and HD
one DVB-T mux can handle ~5 HD channels or up to 8-10 SD ones.

Re:at&t guy came by my house the other day

[bored]

And the 250GB month cap...

They have been coming to my house (in Austin) since the uverse upgrade a couple years ago. I asked them "can i have it without TV" and the answer was no. Now its possible, but TW is giving me 30/5 for less than their 20/1 service.

A rather cute little girl knocked on my door the other day, but as soon as I saw the AT&T shirt, I told her I wasn't interested, when she was persistent I basically told her where to put it and closed the door in her face.

Anyway, it took TW 5 years to roll out DOCIS 3 after everyone else did it, its still only a single channel upstream though. I suspect TW's plan in Austin is to ignore google until they actually start to see a significant impact in their business. Which may never happen if google just wires up a couple neighborhoods.

I think its TW's model, do the absolute minimum, charge the maximum and only upgrade/lower prices if another competitor has a better offering in the same area. Which is basically AT&T at the moment since its impossible to choose Grande if you have TW because of the monopoly rules in Austin.

Anyway, AT&T's model seems to be charge whatever they want for garbage service, advertise like the dickens, and pull in suckers.

OTOH, grande is suddenly advertising a 100/5 service in Austin (up from 15/1 or some crap) I can only assume to get some good will before google hits.

OT: My last long distance bill

[NotQuiteReal]

My land line (yes I still have one, for now) has long distance billed separately... but with cell phones I hardly use the land line.
My last bill had long distance calls: 2 minutes - charge $.08

What would you guess the total charge for 8 cents of services would be? $3.61

$3.53 for Federal Universal Service Fund, Fed Telecom Relay Service, Federal Regulatory Recovery, Property Tax Recovery, and Interstate Services Fee.

Makes no sense to me

[tsotha]

When most of the country doesn't have fiber, does it really make sense for providers to split a relatively small market like Austin? I mean, if I'm running AT&T and Google announces a rollout in Austin, I'll do my initial rollout in, I dunno, Dallas (assuming Dallas doesn't already have fiber). I don't see any reason to actually compete until all the higher density areas have at least one provider.

Re:Makes no sense to me

[AK Marc]

They connect up the more affluent areas (technically and fiscally) because those are easier sells with greater uptake. Dallas sucks because 60% of it is low income, and poor people with no computers don't buy FTTH.

Re:Makes no sense to me

[tsotha]

Okay, maybe not Dallas. But is Austin so singular that getting half of that market is worth more than the entire market somewhere else?

Re:Makes no sense to me

[AK Marc]

Not really, but it is big enough to not be laughed off as a small town, and small enough to get a 90%+ coverage and 60%+ penetration for a service, for bragging rights and helping push it in other areas.

Re:Fiber?! I'l say!

[AK Marc]

There will be two sites connected by a single fiber. It's "100% fiber". But that says nothing about the coverage, even if they are trying to imply it.

4th.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

It'll cost $500/month to use, to make it's other plans still seem like good deals.

Re:at&t guy came by my house the other day

[afidel]

Why does Austin have monopoly rules? I thought Texas was the land of the free market? My little piece of Democrat controlled Ohio has two cable companies, u-verse, multiple DSL providers (if you haven't gone u-verse yet), two fixed wireless providers, and Clear wireless as broadband options. Not many of those options are over 20Mbps, but honestly there's not a hell of a lot of content out there requiring that kind of bandwidth at this time.

So you read the contract?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it specify "Please do a crap job and redo it 2 weeks later"?

Or was in an incompetent commercial business' fault?

My 0.02

[DaMattster]

I'm a capitalist and all for competition. For too long the telecom industry has been an oligopoly. If Google wants to come into Austin and shake things up a litte, so be it! I welcome when they come to the Philadelphia area. Comcast and Verizon, the duopoly in my area, will be scrambling!

Standard Anti-Competitive Tactic by AT&T

[pupsocket]

The purpose is to destroy a new product roll-out by providing competition just where the new competitor is setting up. Competitor fails to displace customers, monopolist survives with inferior offer.

Re:at&t guy came by my house the other day

[ruiner5000]

I have Grande, ATT Uverse, Time Warner, and I had Clear. I'm from Austin. I'm not some transplant from Cali. So that is 4 right there. You were saying? Some areas also have Suddenlink.

Re:Grande had fiber to the home first in Austin

[ruiner5000]

They have enterprise class fiber which is to the premise. I had it in 2006. They don't have fiber to the home as a product, its coax the last mile, unless you are ponying up for the enterprise class which is too expensive. They have also not been able to cross 2222 to where I can get cable at my home even though my sister a 5 minute walk from me had had it available for about 8 years.

Re:1 GB

[scdeimos]

You're correct. Apparently the submitter doesn't understand the difference between GB and Gb.

AT&T to Deliver the First All Fiber 1 Gigabit Broadband Network to Austin
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=24841&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=37036&mapcode=consumer|financial

AT&T* (NYSE:T) announced today it has begun deployment of a 100 percent fiber Internet broadband network in Austin that will deliver speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second.