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New Google Fiber Cities Announced
New submitter plate_o_shrimp sends word that Google has announced the next group of cities set to receive gigabit fiber infrastructure. They're concentrating on cities around four metro areas: Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham. "We’ve been working closely with city leaders over the past year on a joint planning process to get their communities ready for Google Fiber—and now the really hard work begins. Our next step is to work with cities to create a detailed map of where we can put our thousands of miles of fiber, using existing infrastructure such as utility poles and underground conduit, and making sure to avoid things like gas and water lines. Then a team of surveyors and engineers will hit the streets to fill in missing details. Once we’re done designing the network (which we expect to wrap up in a few months), we’ll start construction." Google also said they're currently looking into Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and San Jose.
The US armed services has military bases in just about every state, and its major contractors are similarly spread out all over the country. Of course there are practical reasons, but also it never hurts to make sure that Congressmen and Senators have some skin in the game when in comes time to discuss the defense budget.
...guess I'll still have to keep service with those COX for awhile longer...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The Portland Metro officials have been saying that they have been bending over backwards (and maybe forwards too) to get Google to start building, but they aren't really getting any traction. I'm wondering if Google did a build out in a few initial cities to prove that they are serious, but now they are just threatening to go into other cities to force the telecoms hand to do their work for them.
Seriously, Modesto could use both a bart station AND fiber.
Might be bearable at that point.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Atlanta: that mix tape no one wants at the park can now be uploaded faster than ever to soundcloud, where people will now have the ability to tell everyone else they dont want it.
Charlotte: You'll enjoy vastly improved connectivity when alerting the public of the news that Obama is a kenyan muslim socialist dictator funding fema camp anchor baby death squads in mexico to gay marry your medicare
Nashville: those 32,768 church videos you swore the holy ghost compelled you to upload to YouTube are now ready to go. Dont forget to include footage of the local abortion clinic, and a rambling "vlog" about incandescent lightbulbs, gay marriage, and the conspiracy of the one world government installing video cameras in the walmart.
Raleigh-Durham: Internet at home will now be like internet at work...so...one less reason to ever leave the city to experience smoked pork products, country music, and whatever the hell a boiled peanut is.
Los Angeles: As for us, back to the shootings, lootings, homeless, traffic, pollution and OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE GIVE US FIBER GOOGLE
Good people go to bed earlier.
They are way away from reaching me but the more cities they get into, the more competition the provide against the other companies. I can only hope this helps me eventually.
Great: Gb internet. Not so great: provided by Google, who now have even more access to your internet activity. My ISP may be a stodgy old fart incumbent telecoms company, but at least it's not got an advertising agency as its main profit center.
Toronto/GTA? Canadians could use good Internet access too!
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
Congratulations to all the upper-class and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Note from the pedantic world: there is no city of "Raleigh-Durham". Raleigh and Durham are two very distinct, moderately large cities separated by over 25 miles and a lot of culture differences. It is like saying "the city of Baltimore-DC" and is annoying to all of us in the area. The Raleigh core alone has a population of about 430,000 (less than Boston but considerably bigger than Pittsburg or Cleveland) while Durham is about 245,000.
That being said, hooray for our area! Love the fiber!
I feel like Google's tended to pick places that tend to be underserved in terms of technology and education. The southeast is definitely a good place to start...
President can use public transportation the risks are to high in less you want the public transportation to have strip searches
Wahhh! Evil google fiber is providing gigabit FTTH internet to markets we chose to only provide high speed 18/2 cable internet, 3/1 DSL or our affordable wireline replacement LTE service at 25 dollars per gigabyte. That's unfair competition! If we choose to cover them with spotty, expensive, slow internet, or no internet at all, then that's our god given right. Google has no right to encroach on our right to a captive audience with no real choices, or competitors. Our customers are our property, our non customers are our property, and customers we have no intention at all of ever serving in the future are still our property. We paid off your politicians and signed exclusive franchise agreements to prevent this from happening. Google is violating our property rights! In the name of all that is free in America *plays star spangled banner* we should sue the cities and deny all usage of the right of ways to prevent this travesty of American justice from happening!
I have copper.net dial-up, and I don't know anyone with faster than ISDN access. This city is a below the third-world when it comes to Internet access. We have a lot of people that can afford faster access and need it for a tech-related jobs. How can Google ignore that? We have money and are dying for faster access.
I don't need to give Google anymore access to my data thanks. Whoever dreamed up this scheme at Google must've earned a bonus or two. "Hey guys, it won't matter which OS or web mail service or social network users use if *we* own the ISPs!"
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
dang nabbit they need to go international with this project. I got a nice gateway city only 30 minutes north of the us border. would love to take my 100 meg to the next level.
Atlanta already has 100+ fiber rings covering the city, yet Comcast and AT&T are forcing people into their service at new construction stage for buildings and subdivisions. Is Google planning to but the fiber vendors, call it Google Fiber, and force HOAs to use their service? That would be a lose-lose..
We're dying here! I'm tired of paying per minute charges for ISDN! Between the expensive line, taxes, per minute charges, and my ISP, I usually pay over $130 per month for 64 kbps. I know people that would pay over a hundred dollars per month to get at least 1 Mbps. I know because I got over forty of my neighbors to commit to $2,500 installation fee plus $125/month for Verizon FiOS in late 2009. Also, I got our HOA to commit over $75,000 worth of right of ways to give to Verizon in exchange for wiring every house. I spent four months of my life working on this while I was unemployed because I thought having Internet access would help the value of my property enough to justify my time. Verizon sold-out to Frontier which stopped all expansion so we're still stuck with POTS or ISDN lines here. Google, that is a lifetime value (to use the math we used when I worked for Charter, 40 houses * ($125 * 12 months per year * 10 years + 2,500 installation)) of over $700,000 for just one neighborhood! You should be listening.
I'd get the hell out of Seattle to move to a place with acceptible Internet access, but I owe about $125k more than my house is worth. I want to move back to near Charlotte, NC where I had 16 Mbps from Charter. That connection was 250 times faster than the fastest connection I can get where I live in Seattle.
Please add Melbourne/Australia to the list... with the current goverment's NBN plan of just buying up pre-existing infrastructure to re-brand as NBN, there is now a market for real infrastructure.... At least you can sign me up!
if anyone treated you the way you seem to feel you can treat the president.
Can you imagine the red tape trying to do this in NY or Chicago?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Not so, which neighborhoods is chosen according to which are willing to pay for the service.
(That is, if the neighborhood has a sufficient initial take rate.)
Any neighborhood with a high cable usage rate has the funds to switch to this service if they just get their act together.
If you can get your act together and work together and take advantage of an opportunity is not about how much money you have.
Seattle was a candidate to be the first city to get Google fiber. The culture of bureaucracy there made it unattractive for Google. For example, in Seattle, and nowhere else in the country, they have to get permission from every homeowner within a certain distance before they can install a fiber cabinet. Just contacting every homeowner and getting them to fill out the form to "yes" or "no" would be a giant pain in the ass that slows things down.
http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04...
I'm disappointed that Portland did not make the cut this time. But I don't expect to directly benefit from Google's fiber anyway. I'm on a fixed income and the last I looked, Google would be more than I could afford.
That said, I expect that when Google does come to Portland that will force its competitors to sweeten their offerings. But maybe that will happen soon anyway, in an economic equivalent of 'spooky action at a distance.' If Google succeeds big time in these other cities, the providers already in the Portland market might realize that it would be advantageous to drop their rates and offer better packages now, and thus make Portland look like a less inviting market to Google.
Well, a couple of providers would also have to improve their customer and technical support (here's looking at you Comcast). But I'm sure they would sacrifice some of their excess profit margin if they felt the Google dragon breathing fire on their butts.
So I for one welcome our new google overlord. Even if he never comes completes the courtship ritual, he might put the fear of loss of market share in the boardrooms where it will do the most good.
Will
Come on google! Scare em good, start the NYC and LA rollouts.
> "yes" or "no"
And someone that doesn't vote or an empty residence both count as a no! It's nearly impossible for Comcast, the local cable monopoly where I live in Seattle, to offer service or even make repairs. I’m the current head of the HOA in the neighborhood where I live, and we’re near the end of a fifteen year contract with Comcast. Every house in the neighborhood committed to buying at least basic cable TV in late 2000. The problem is that as equipment has quit or needs to be replaced to add an amp that supports upstream communication, the HOA has to fight to get the required 60% yes vote for the repair/upgrade, or Comcast is not allowed by the city of Seattle to do the upgrade/repair. About 1/3 of the houses are under foreclosure and another 1/3 are currently rentals so immediately off of the bat we’re 26% over Seattle’s required maximum of votes that aren't yes even if every single resident votes an affirmative yes. Currently, less than 20% of the neighborhood has cable, but every house has to pay for it. Also, the cable into the neighborhood doesn’t support the upstream bandwidth needed for Internet access, so we do not have cable Internet available. To make that even more of a problem, CenturyLink has a universal SLIC to the neighborhood so they can’t support ISDN or DSL to the neighborhood.
You've never left your own city, have you?
every homeowner and getting them to fill out the form to "yes" or "no"
And that’s a bigger problem than you realize! Seattle requires 60% of the property owners within a certain distance to vote yes. A property owner that doesn’t vote counts as a vote against. That means that, for example, in my condo building we can never get a vote yes because about 45% of the units are usually under foreclosure or empty. Also, if the area has rental units then you have to track down the owner to get their written permission, which is hard to do. We no longer have cable TV because Comcast can’t install a pedestal with the upstream amplifier that’s required after they switched from unecrypted QAM. We’ve never had cable Internet available.
Then don't. "Waaahh, I don't like any of the choices I have!" is a lot better than "Waaahhh, I don't have a choice!"
"Google Fiber will also come to nine metropolitan-Atlanta area cities: Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs, and Smyrna."
These are all overwhelmingly minority cities. Sandy Springs MIGHT still have a majority white population, that is if they are still not counting illegal immigrants.
Bring it somewhere useful like Southern California.
The last Republican mayor of Seattle was in 1968. The City Council is nine people, of which zero are republicans. There are eight Democrats and one Socialist. Whatever you get from your city hall, that's what Democrats do for/to you.
true story bro
I'm not sure if you're trolling, or just really confused. That big government is textbook democrat. Republicans are all about the free market. Time Warner and Cablevision are heavily invested in trying to get Hillary Clinton elected:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pol...
Republicans pro free market? Heh, only in theory. In practice that party is pro big business interests, not pro free market. Just ask Tesla
The hidden benefit is the increased competition. I live in Austin. Before Google made their intentions clear that they were moving in, the fastest Internet access I could get was 50 Mbps. Now both AT&T and TW are offering 300 Mbps connections at really affordable rates. Personally, 300 Mbps is fast enough for me and I don't intend to make the switch to Fiber, but without their market presence we'd still be stuck in the dark ages here.
We are Google. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
Can you name any of these alleged "business-friendly" policies that blue states lack and that might have actually been relevant to Google's decision? How about the NYC- or Chicago-specific "red tape" that would have impacted them?
Totally dude i bet they would have to get permits and stuff. I mean come on. Probably have to call digger's hotline too i bet. Who are these largest cities in the country to do business unfriendly things like require review & approval for infrastructure projects?
The franchise laws which bug auto manufacturers including Tesla and GM were passed to limit the power of GM and Ford, mostly in the 1930s and the 1950s. It's weird that you think prohibiting General Motors from engaging selling the cars the way they used to is "pro big business". The purpose was to protect small family businesses from those big bad corporations.
Section 2 of this paper has a good summary of how those come about:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
I agree with you completely. However, the article does not refer to Raleigh-Durham as a city, but as a metro area:
18 cities across four new metro areas: Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Nobody's forcing Comcast to encrypt QAM, you know. That's just Comcast deciding to fuck you over because it can.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And HRC is the most DINO of all of the DINOs. She is a conservative Republican, at best. Everything she does, she does at the direction of the Republicans. That is why she is so hateful and uncaring. She is one of those Republicans.
For the love of god, please just give us a half-way decent internet connection. Please?
Hell offer it to Glendale or some other "city" in Los Angeles. I'll bet they'll find a way...
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Nobody's forcing Comcast to encrypt QAM, you know. That's just Comcast deciding to fuck you over because it can.
The Republicans that rule Faux forced them to do it. Faux wants Comcast to pay them for the service that Comcast provides. Comcast brings Faux's ads to many more viewers then their crappy OTA would, and Faux should pay Comcast a lot of money for that, but Faux is dishonest so they hold Comcast ransom. If Comcast continued to do standard QAM, then they would be helping Faux at their own cost. Faux would be stealing from them. Instead, they did the right thing and started encrypting Faux to limit the distribution of Faux, which is the only moral thing to do. Comcast is doing a public service by limiting access to Faux.