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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.
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.
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.
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.
'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
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.
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.
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?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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).