Slashdot Mirror
Google Fiber To Launch In Austin, Texas In December
retroworks writes WSJ blog reports on Austin, the third city to get fiber-optic high speed internet networks laid down by Google (Kansas City and Provo, UT were the first and second). The service averages 1 gigabit per second, about 100X the average US household speed, and costs $70-120 per month (depending on television). Google promotes the roll-outs by holding "rallies" in small neighborhoods. The sign-up process starts in December, focusing on south and southeastern parts of Austin, a Google spokeswoman said Wednesday. It was announced that fiber was coming to Austin back in April.
...and I'm never getting fiber internet. Certain parts of the city are completely ignored for infrastructure upgrades. We just spent $10 million putting bicycle repair kits and air pumps in the richer parts of town, while delaying the sewer installation in my part of town (we were annexed by the city in 2007 and were supposed to have sewers hooked up in 2012...it's 2014 and now they're saying they "hope" it'll get done by 2015). We spent another $1-2 million on "sharrows", which are little arrows that go in the roads to show that we should share those lanes with bikes. We also just spent something like $30 million finishing a bicycling bridge over Town Lake.
In other words, rich people in the south and southwestern parts of town get whatever they want on the taxpayer dime while people in the north and east have to put up with roads without sidewalks, failing sewer systems, and lackluster police protection. Yay.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Austin may be the third city to get Google Fiber, but that doesn't mean Kansas City is all up and running. I live in Kansas City and I'm still waiting for my Google Fiber connection to be hooked up. The fiber is now on the utility pole behind my house, but they haven't run the fiber to my house yet. A recent email from Google stated that it might be as late as spring 2015 before my neighborhood is hooked up.
In the mean time, I plan to improve my latency by hiring Lorenzo Cain to run my external HDs to/from whom ever I'm trading files with.
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
... Canada!
I'm not a hipster and I'd be rejoicing if it came to my city. Gigabit for the cost of my current crappy broadband cable, or FREE (sans installation cost) for the same speed as what I get from my crappy broadband cable now?
Hell, I've been planning on cabling my home, this would be the sort of thing to make me implement those plans even with the construction that I'd need to do for pathways and an MDF...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Blame the combination of Telstra (who don't particularly like the idea of a network it has no control over and earns no money from as would have been the case for a FTTP NBN), Foxtel (who see a high speed network killing off their overpriced crappy pay TV offering) and the big movie/TV companies (who see a high speed network as leading to increased levels of piracy)
The year they finally get around to having 10% of the country wired for fiber.
If you're in the part of northeast Austin where the tech companies are, I'd think Google would want to get those areas done fairly early. Technology professionals will use fast internet and spend money online. The city government may not give a shit, but I'd expect Google to start with the densest concentrations of good customers.
About two hours from Austin is College Station, where the cable company has long been providing about 10mbps for $70 or so. They just announced this will be the first place their speed will go to 100Mbps for no extra charge, and gigabit will be available for a little more. I'm thinking they noticed Google fiber down the road and figured they better get their act together.
There hasn't been much real competition until Google fiber - just DSL, at the same slow speed and the same price, but several weeks to get set-up.
This is nice if you happen to live in Austin, but I guarantee it won't go much farther. Maybe a couple more cities and then it will be abandoned, just like Verizon did.
While I generally agree with you I have to admit that I live in North Pflugerville (between Austin and Round Rock) about 2 miles from Dell in a new neiborhood. I have had Fiber to my house since I moved in 7 years ago. While there is no telling when if ever Google will come to my area as soon as they anounced they were coming to Austin AT&T finally got off there butt and turned on all the fiber they already had installed all over the area. True if you are in an older neiborhood it will be awhile before you get fiber but if you happen to live in a newer neiborhood (less than 7-8 years old) there is a good chance you already have fiber to the home and that means 1Gig from AT&T. So far the service has been fantastic! Yea it's AT&T and I would prefer Google but hey they are matching Googles price and speed so no complaints at this point.
I want 10mbs for around $10. Basically I don't need that much for work during the day and Netflix at night. I don't even need that great a ping time.
Keep in mind that those are the needs of someone who develops software that is heavily network centred. Once in a blue moon when I really need a full iso of a linux distro I might grumble that faster would be better but I am not sure that I would notice the difference 99.9% of the time.
As written, this headline says that Google fiber is going to launch in Austin, and that Texas is going to launch in December.
Put the comma after "Texas" too, and you'll have something that's correct.
Why would anyone want this from Google? Seriously! They will datamine every single unencrypted bit that you send and receive, for life, and sell it to the highest backdoor bidder, including the government, the credit bureaus, and walmart.
Bet you $100 they require your real name, email address, telephone number, date of birth, and social security number to sign up too.
Screw that.
So which connector do I need to flush to get Google fiber?
Structured Highspeed Internet Technology, Mate.
Are they simultaneously expanding elsewhere?
Are they being blocked by cable companies who know they will lose to any competition?
They are also deploying weather balloons in extremely poor countries to get people anywhere on the internet.
At this rate those people will have better internet than most US citizens, and for free.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Would you believe when I moved to that area, there were cattle grazing at the intersection of 183 & 620, which was a stop sign as I recall. :)
Maybe the ACs point was hidden behind the three repeats of obviously mistaken "100 Gbps" speeds. I'm pretty sure nobody out there is getting "100 Gbps" internet. Now if it was 100 mbps, he'd probably have been fine :D
I get so frustrated reading these kind of articles. We get 3mb for $70/month. That's 3mb with horrible latency and dropped packets. That's 3mb that frequently requires pages to be reloaded in order to complete properly.
Of course 3mb is a lot better than my first connection which was, and I kid you not, 110kb via an acoustic coupler on a good old fashion TTY. So I guess that makes my complaint a first world problem.
Oh well, never mind. Century Link just carry on with your fine upstanding service.
There's quite a few complexes near where I live that have Google Fiber. It's proudly advertised on various complex's banners.
They were just acting on orders from their corporate masters...