Slashdot Mirror
Google Fiber Drops Free Basic Service In Its Original City (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: When Google Fiber first rolled out in Kansas City, it offered a free 5Mbps service if you were willing to pay a construction fee. As of recent, Google has quietly dropped that free tier in its first Fiber area, and has replaced it with a 100Mbps option that costs $50 per month. Anyone using the free tier has until May 19th to say they want to keep it. Note: Google will still offer the free service in low-income areas. Google Fiber customers in Austin and Provo still have the choice of the free internet option; Atlanta never had it to start with. Recode suggests this may reflect a broader change in strategy: Google has fiercer competition from incumbent carriers, so it may have to offer a fast-but-affordable selection to get those customers for whom the gigabit option is either too costly or sheer overkill.
'...pray I don't alter it further.'
Google, I expected better of you!
(Not!)
As long as they give you a good service at a reasonable price, it's reasonable.
You had free, 70 dollar nirvana, and nothing in-between.
About time they start listening to people like me. I choose to use my FIOS 50/50 instead of 75 or 100 because I don't need it, and it costs $20 extra.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Yeah they really need to off better priced middle and lower packages. I don't need 100 mbit. 25-50 is more than enough.
Internet should be like 40$ a month for those speeds.
That's like saying "Thanks for this highway, I can really enjoy my moped now!"
Your own employees and the thousands of amazombies will pay the top rate for BW and it will cover us poor and disabled easily.
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
after launching 10Gbps dedicated fiber links in silicon 2 years ago they put a strong foot in the networking and internet services in the us and now they are running a 5Mbps for free and thats really amazing!! they dont stop just going up by the days and its clear that they will be soon having the potential for the networking service even bigger than at&t and T-mobile and even the quality of cox and quest. well done google!
http://seotik.net/blog
It's more akin to increasing the cost, say an expensive toll for the highway, and saying you have to pay more because they made it wider and removed the speed limit. Even though you were fine getting to your destination at 100 KM/H and your car only goes 130 KM/H, and they want you to pay the same price as the people who take their ferrari and go 300 KM/H on the highway.
Google will still offer the free service in low-income areas. That's a kiss-up statement by Google and nothing more.
What the hell is a low-income area? A zip code? A low-income apartment building with poor senior citizens? A house with a poor family?
There is a 15% share of poverty in extremely wealthy places like Greenwich, Connecticut. Will Google refuse to support those low-income people, encouraging them to move to poverty-stricken places like Bridgeport, Connecticut which has 70%+ poverty?
This is uncool. A normal supplier would offer tiers so that there would be a reasonable price point to keep as many customers happy as possible. A monopolistic supplier would remove low-end tiers and force users into higher tiers, as there is no competition to sell products at the lower price points.
Google Fiber offers free service to "affordable housing" developments, which is a government defined term, and "public housing", which means housing which subsidized by the taxpayers. Greenwich Connecticut has both.
I would pay the 300 to have a 1 mb drop at all times, and still pay for the GB speeds. The reason is that when we sell the house, we still have a live phone and most of all, a security system while we are not there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> What about single-family homes?
Both categories include single-family homes. "Affordable housing" more so than "public housing".
> My neighborhood has a significant number of old people with paid-off houses
Regarding the old people, Prodigy and AL don't offer similar free service, as far as I know. :)
They should simply split the speeds into tiers. They went from free 5Mbps to $50 for 100Mbps. The price increase is too high and they land in the same price range as the alternatives, although offering a much higher speed.
How about $10 per 20Mbps, $12.50 per 25Mbps or at the very least $25 per 50Mbps? That would give them multiple prices to accommodate people who can't afford more.
And how do they pay for the optical line they run to your front door? Just do it for charity?
There's a reason even Google charges $300 for the "free" line install: because people rarely keep the "cheap" service plans long enough for the company to break-even.
Let's try $40 for 50 Mbit, and you're getting warmer!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
How about the prices I mentioned but with a contract duration allowing Google to break-even on the installation cost with early termination fees that requires to pay whatever cost is left from that $300?
Let's try $40 for 50 Mbit, and you're getting warmer!
My cable company offers 30/5 for $25/month, much more reasonable IMHO (which is why I'm not doing 60/5 for $40/month).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yeah I've been waiting for gigaE installed by them over by ray town for just shy of a year. The only word I hear from them is on the last day of their "deadlines" I get an email saying "yeeaahh so about your gigabit connection...yeahhh that's um not gonna happen we need another 6 months kthx."
Hey you left out the biggest threat...Godzilla!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
That was the quoted price, but didn't they actually waive that fee, at least for a period of time?