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.

Comments

Portland

[irrational_design]

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.

Re:Portland

[Anonymous Coward]

'State and city officials in Oregon have said they are concerned a quirky Oregon tax law could be deterring Google. The provision in the law, known as "central assessment," levies property tax on communications companies based in part on the value of their corporate brands.'

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2015/01/google_fiber_selects_four_citi.html

Re:Portland

[linuxguy]

Seconded. I am anxiously awaiting Google Fiber arrival in Portland, OR. Once the service is available to me, I will switch in a heartbeat.

Re:Portland

[weiserfireman]

I found another tidbit. The data center industry in Oregon is well aware of this law. They lobbied for a 2 year exemption, and received it.

Google Fiber in Portland would not be covered by the exemption.

What this means for the targeted cities

[nimbius]

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

Do you trust them?

[hackertourist]

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.

Re:Do you trust them?

[Bengie]

Kind of like saying North Korean may be a bad place to live, but at least it's not driven by money, like the USA.

Re:Do you trust them?

[Solandri]

If you're that worried, you can always route your traffic through a VPS for about $5/mo extra. Google peeking in on your data packets is so easily circumvented it's barely worth mentioning.

OTOH, with Verizon announcing it's ending FiOS rollouts, they need a good swift competitive kick in the rear to get them to provide what the market wants, rather than milking their existing infrastructure for as much money as they can. The only reason they're able to do things like stop fiber rollout is because they have a government-granted monopoly in the areas they serve. A competitor - be it Google or anyone else - is exactly what's needed to break up that monopoly and give the people what the want.

Re:Do you trust them?

[Kjella]

Do you trust them?

...less than any other ISP? No. Just like Google funded Mozilla this is more of a long term effort to push more people and more services online, where Google can get a piece of it. The "old media" advertising budgets are still pretty huge and people willingly sign up to Google's services so there's no need to get shady. In fact their roll-out is extremely slow if they were seriously intending to become a major ISP, they're really just trying to shame the rest of the country into demanding they get the same kind of service from their incumbents. Who needs cable TV when you got gigabit service and can watch any show, any time over streaming without hitting any caps? That's what Google is selling, of course it's out of self-interest but for tech geeks I think they're on our side in this case.

Re:Do you trust them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust them? That's that's a loaded bullshit question from someone with an agenda. Just put "Fuck Google" in your title and be done with it.

You want to get on the internet. Trusting someone is implicit since it's a network of interconnected machines, most of which you don't own.

Do you trust your telco? Your cable company? The back end carriers? The international carriers? Do you have a choice?

Given what I know about the current state of communications infrastructure I trust Google more than I'd trust most other parties.

For no other reason that Google just cares about generating Ad revenue. They don't have a competing TV network to sell you. They don't care about what you torrent. They don't care if you're looking at porno. They don't care if you believe things that are silly. They make money off of you being on the internet, so they're helping you be on the internet.

Thats why they developed android. So you can get on the internet on your phone, and google can make money off of you being on the internet. The other carriers have shit to sell you and would rather you buy their shit than getting other shit on the internet. The other carriers will literally make your internet worse so they can force you to buy things. This is bad for google.

This is why Google is your ally in internet access. They want you to be on the internet. You want to be on the internet.

Re:Do you trust them?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason they're able to do things like stop fiber rollout is because they have a government-granted monopoly in the areas they serve.

God, how long do we have to listen to uneducated Libertarians parrot this? Verizon's FiOS does not require exclusive franchise. In fact, where I live the franchisee is Time-Warner cable and guess what Internet service I have? FiOS, thank you very much.

What we're seeing is what we'd see a lot less of if ISPs were regulated like telecom companies. It used to be that many communities couldn't get telephone service because the telecoms didn't think the potential profit was worth the expense. The only reason almost every home and business in the United States ended up with telephone service was because they were FORCED to do it through regulation.

So quit with this regulation utopia shit-spewing. What we see today is the direct result of ISPs having almost no regulation whatsoever. Regulate those motherfuckers.

Re:Politics reminds of the Pentagon

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why we need to make sure every Congressional Representative and Senator (not to mention the President, the Judges and other officers) has eat off SNAP, has to get their medical care from Medicaid providers or the VA, has to live in public housing, has to ride public transportation, and to send their own children to public schools. Apply to this to state officials as necessary.

Hello?

[johnnys]

Toronto/GTA? Canadians could use good Internet access too!

Re:Go Google

[JackieBrown]

I'm excited. Where I live (San Antonio) there is a choice between Grande Cable and Time Warner. Grande is incredible but only is located in a few places.

I was really sad when I moved to a home where only Time Warner was available. I'm paying a lot more for less speed and I would actually get the speed Grande offered.
http://mygrande.com/internet
http://www.timewarnercable.com...

Lowest hanging fruit.

[blueshift_1]

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...

Re:Crontratulations to some of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Being from the Kansas City Metro your post holds no water. The inner city got high speed internet first. Than your lower middle class neighborhoods. It is just now starting to roll out to the suburbs.

Re:Nitpick - Raleigh-Durham is not a city

[ArcadeMan]

Next thing you know you'll say that there's no such thing as San Angeles.

Re: President can use public transportation

[ganjadude]

or we stop treating our president as a king, and start treating him the way he treats us

Democrats have held Seattle since 1969

[raymorris]

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.

Re:Politics reminds of the Pentagon

[cusco]

Publicly run stuff doesn't have to be 'shitty', and in fact there are many of us old enough to remember when the city/county power company and other utilities were far and away better and cheaper than the for-profit utilities. The problem is that in order to make people think that government doesn't work and justify privatizing all the public infrastructure the conservatives (mostly Republicans but some Democrats) have spent the last three decades breaking as much of the government as they have been able to.

In three decades of watching privatization efforts all over the world I have yet to see a single one that ended up with better service at a lower price than the previous public system. None. Anywhere. Ever. Can you point at an example of a successful privatization project?

Re:Politics reminds of the Pentagon

[Cyberax]

So they become even shittier _and_ more expensive? Seriously, I can't remember a single case where privatization of a shitty service caused it to become better (at least without prices going up 10x).

Right.

[Locando]

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?