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Google Fiber Reminds People It's a 'Real Business' (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader writes: While Google Fiber gets a massive amount of media hype (justly based on its disruptive speed and price point), the reality is that despite numerous city "launches" -- not that many people can actually get the service. But while many ISPs and analysts have dismissed Google Fiber as an adorable experiment that will never impact them, many of these folks have been forced to changing their tune as Google Fiber's list of planned launch cities grows larger. In a profile piece over at USAToday, the company once again notes that while Google Fiber may have begun as a PR exercise, it's now dead serious about being a large, nationwide disruptive kick in the ass for incumbent broadband providers. "It is indeed a real business, and it's serving to increase competition as well, and that's something that we don't mind," Google Fiber boss and former Qualcomm exec Dennis Kish tells the paper. "We think it's healthy for the market and for consumers."
It's a subsidiary of a real business, a business with billions of dollars in liquid capital that is currently sitting around doing nothing. They're only going slow because it's a strategy intended to force municipalities to carve out subsidies and dig the trenches for them.
One of my small clients was able to get Small Business Google Fiber installed this last year. After the struggles of getting the physical installation going, things have been very nice. They like it very much, the way they expected it. However...
Recently Google has contacted us to say our "introductory rates" will be ending the middle of 2017. They're moving to a 3-tier model for their fiber speeds. For $250 you can keep your 1 gigabit speed, for $150 (I think), you an go down to 250 megabits, and for $75 (or $100 maybe), you can go down to 100 megabits. If we don't update our choice by the end of July, 2017, they'll kick us down to 250 Mbps automatically.
So, with the price change, that means we'll have to pay, basically, double to maintain our 1 Gbps, otherwise we lose 75% of our speed to pay the same price.
Welcome to the "business."
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Given how massively subsidized rural areas are already (and how overrepresented heavily rural small states are at the Federal level), it's pretty gutsy of you to demand even more. Once you start paying for my urban parking, I'll consider helping to fund your broadband.
As a techie who actually has Google Fiber, it's been amazing. The first couple weeks were really rocky--random internet outages which were unexplainable.
They sent a tech out, who'd never seen anything like it, and he's like "well, I guess I'll replace the network box, because I have no idea what it is." Worked great ever since.
The only major disadvantage is they don't want you running your own router, and have actually hassled me for doing so. They offer just a fiber jack to businesses, but don't offer it for residential customers. Residential customers HAVE to use their "network box" (router). There are actually howtos on the internet of plugging into the fiber jack, if you have a managed switch and set the VLAN tags right.
My speeds:
I get 400 Mbit up/down over wireless (my own router)
I get 900 Mbit up/down wired
Speeds are constant, regardless of time of day, and no weird latency issues at all. I get a reliable 1ms ping to a friend who also has Google Fiber 15mi away, and I get very low pings to the rest of the world. It's hands down the best internet I've ever had. Customer service is friendly, too.
-=Lothsahn=-
All of the Alphabet child companies have to be self supporting. I don't recall if the deadline has past yet or not. Which is why - if you've been paying attention - some things have already been divested, such as Boston Dynamics robotics.
> Other thoughts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Your Internet traffic _regularly_ flows through equipment owned and operated by companies that are orders of magnitude less scrupulous than Google. If your traffic _ever_ flows overseas (even for a single hop), it's a certainty that it's captured and analysed by the NSA. It's likely that Russia and other such big players do the same for traffic flowing within the US.
It's trendy to have a hate-on for Google. What the loudest folks seem to forget is that the telcos (who own the hardware though which almost all of your Internet traffic flows) are _absolutely_ the scum of the earth. I would pay _extra_ to have my traffic never touch a telco-operated or controlled network. Google is (currently) at the top of my list of big Internet companies that _deeply_ care about user privacy and safeguarding user information.
Without meaning to piss on your point too much:
Texas = 695,662 km^2
EU = 4.325 million km^2 (Both from Google)
Or, the same size as 16% of the EU.
Or, just under twice the size as Sweden with nearly four times the population density of Sweden.