I know it would be painful, and the local politics certifiably insane, but if Google wanted draw attention to the dysfunctional monopoly of the cable industry, there would be no better place to wire than Philly. Take the competition right into Comcast's back yard. Start with a rollout of the Philly 'burbs where the Comcast execs live and work inward toward the city from there.
Full list of cities, from the FAQ:
Arizona - Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe California - San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto Georgia - Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs, Smyrna North Carolina - Charlotte, Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Morrisville, Raleigh Oregon - Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard Tennessee - Nashville-Davidson Texas - San Antonio Utah - Salt Lake City
There is such a high demand for this product because it fulfills a great need and requirement to be competitive, but we are being held back by our providers. Our progress, held back due to lack of innovation. Google Fiber will rule the US as soon as it can get rolled out. Cable companies better be really nice and start being competitive. Please bring it to Chandler, AZ.
This article comes to mind, I recently, through normal work, started hitting Cox's 250GB max, I work on games and can easily send 4-8GB per day in assets/code to remote repos. Cringley from 2011...
http://www.cringely.com/2011/07/28/bandwidth-caps-are-rate-h...
This isn’t about capping ISP losses, but are about increasing ISP profits. The caps are a built-in revenue bump that will kick-in 2-3 years from now, circumventing any existing regulatory structure for setting rates. The regulators just haven’t realized it yet. By the time they do it may be too late.
Most U. S. broadband customers don’t get anywhere near that 250 gigabyte cap. The few who do hit those limits are big gamers or file downloaders for the most part. Maybe they do take unfair advantage of the system, but the question is whether this is the proper way to control their consumption? I don’t think it is.
In time we will all bump into these caps and our Internet bills will suddenly double as a result, circumventing competition and ending a 15 year downward broadband price trend.
ISPs win, we lose.
Unless there is competition. Bandwidth is as needed as roads, shipping, airplanes, etc to business and economies. This is an anti-competitive hostage situation we are in in the US. This is also anti-small business as many are run from home offices and co-location etc.
Google Fiber will pass <~0.5% of total U.S. homes[0], even after they build out Austin and take over Provo. They have to start doing things much faster if they will make a dent this decade. Google is selectively building out 'fiber hoods' - neighborhoods that bend over backwards to get the service, pre commit and make construction super easy - not full cities, by any means.
Google Fiber was announced almost four years ago and has only a few tens of thousands of subscribers. While it's fun to get excited about what Google Fiber could be, it will be years before any material percentage of the country has the opportunity to use Google Fiber.
Google is still building out small neighborhoods in Kansas City [1]
[0]https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Q-sGUEiuT9VN__VPsFeo... [1]https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/#zone=Kansas+City...
It always surprises me how excited people get about Google Fiber, yet how up-in-arms they get about GMail, Google+ and other Google services which tend to invade and/or expose your privacy. Do you really think that using a advertising company's fiber as your gateway to the internet is going to offer a private experience? Don't you see how much easier it will make it for them to gather your personal details and habits? Do you really think Google won't use your data to their advantage?
I guess I fundamentally do not understand what makes a city a good or bad candidate for this kind of service. Why is SF or NY not an obvious candidate? Density means that there are lots of customers for a given physical length of infrastructure rollout, they're both wealthy cities with a large proportion of techies who could use faster internet...
I'm sure they're both nightmares to deal with permitting processes for. Is that it? Or is there something else that makes mid-tier, more spread-out cities more attractive?
Woo! Moving to Mountain View in June, so I'm excited to see this.
On another note, I wonder if this will have any impact on the Comcast/Time Warner merger. Comcast has specifically called out Google Fiber as a source of legitimate competition in defending the merger[1]. With the announcement that Google could increase the number of Fiber cities 10-fold, that claim might have a little more weight.
1. http://gigaom.com/2014/02/13/comcast-cites-competition-from-...
Why is there not a single city in the northeast or the Rust Belt?
Chicago, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh are all major cities that are at least "on the map" as far as tech is concerned. I know for a fact that the local authorities in Detroit, Cincinnati and Cleveland would bend over backwards for any project that has even the slightest whiff of economic development.
I can understand NYC being a special case that they don't want to deal with, but there are plenty of other cities in the region.
The Denver-Boulder corridor is going to start losing it's place as one of the top tech startup areas in the country if it doesn't get itself on this list of potential fiber installs.
The Triangle region of NC would be a great place for Google to start with this.
Seriously, with all of the technology workers working in RTP, and all the university students in the area, as well as the emerging startup hub(s) in Durham and Raleigh, the area could really put Google Fiber to great use.
Cool to see they're expanding, but I'm disappointed to see that there's no love for the upper Midwest. Wouldn't expect it in Chicago but Milwaukee (where I am), Madison, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and possibly a few smaller cities would all seem like reasonable candidates (although I acknowledge there's issues with all of them).
Love to see challenges to the pathetic cable monopolies. I'd be willing to pay more than I am now if it meant sticking it to TimeWarner.
Why not San Francisco, Washington D.C., Boston and NYC?
San Francisco, NYC and Boston because they are big tech hubs where a lot of Googlers live and Washington D.C. because it is the seat of politics in this country and the best way to show what good can happen when we have broadband connectivity.
In fact, rolling out Google Fiber in the capital cities of each state makes the most sense in general. You lobby the political class by giving their home base (state capitals) excellent broadband.
At least for SLC there is already _Some_ fiber around the city: http://www.utopianet.org/
Much like Provo, I think google saw that utopia already had some infrastructure in place and wanted to swoop it up.
So while people are asking, why not this x,y,z city perhaps it's due to infrastructure not already being in place.
Atlanta! Looks like they're targeting the nicer suburbs too. My mom's going to get fiber before I am.
>We’re asking cities to ensure that we, and other providers, can access and lease existing infrastructure.
This is probably my favorite part. They're not just trying to get special privileges for themselves, they are trying to level the barriers to entry so that there is actual competition in this space.
Wish they had Google Fiber in Toronto :(
How is the residential Internet in the San Jose area cities listed? I'm in SF, and I can't believe how bad the Internet service is. It's worse and more expensive than what I had 4 years ago in my Midwest town of 100k people.
Got my hopes up there for a little bit... if only they came to Santa Barbara -- we have plenty of tech people here willing to pay for awesome internet! (and get away from Cox...)
I'll keep dreaming :)
It is hard to wait for signups to begin in Austin.
The FAQ does not mention details about bandwidth other than "Internet that’s up to 100 times faster than basic broadband", but Wikipedia says the free service is 5 Mbps down (1 Mbps up) and the pay service is 1 Gbps down and up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Technical_specifi...
Excited for Salt Lake City. We are growing our reddit office there a lot. It's a really exciting city to be in and this helps us a lot!
Very excited to see Portland,OR on the list! I'm tired of Comcast and the other options are quite lacking in one way or another.
So excited to to see Nashville on this list. Our technology scene has been thriving recently and this only adds fuel to the fire.
Seriously? No Seattle?
Would love to see Google, or anyone, come shake up the Australian market. We are still beholden to low bandwidth, almost non existent upload and data usage caps.
We also have a national broadband network that most people will never see due to the politics played by the current government.
Still no San Diego, but still happy to see this as the more Google Fiber expands within different regions the more the dinosaur ISPs in those regions will be forced to compete, hopefully rising boats even in areas not yet covered by Google Fiber.
Google needs to bring Google Fiber to Australia. The coalition have plans for a fiber/copper hybrid in which the fibre runs to a box and then you connect via outdated copper from the street to your house. It's like driving a sports car 90% of the way and a horse and cart the rest of the 10% — I think what Google are doing is great, they need to expand though. I know New Zealand could use something like Google Fiber as well.
It seems one of the biggest costs of fiber is installation; i.e. trenching. Why is it not hung from poles? It must be much cheaper and quicker, surely?
When I saw the headline, I cringed. At this point, whenever I see a Google article titled, "The future of [google product]," I assume it's an announcement that the product is being phased out. Needless to say, I'm glad that's not what's happening here, but I'm still not holding my breath that Google Fiber is going to take over the world.
I wish Google would publish more technical information about their fiber project. I am quite interested in what equipment they have chosen, what types of cabling they are using, etc. (and why) Also, any other information that could be used by community internet providers looking to roll out fiber!
Always wondered why they didn't buy out Surewest or Consolidated Communications. Instant fiber subscriber base, right-of-ways, and complementary service areas. And the money found in Google's couch cushions would probably more than cover the costs. Easy way to add 100K subscribers...
Is mountain view count as San Jose?
Awesome. They added Leawood to the list of cities. Now they need to complete some of the neighboring areas they have already started on and make some progress. Although I wouldn't complain if they just abandoned those and started on Leawood.
Google should install their fiber in the cities of corporate headquarters for at&t, time warner, quest, verizon, and cox.
Should have an interesting effect on the top-down mentality of price setting.
FCC also needs to rule ISPs as common carriers.
"announce the next round of cities who’ll be getting Google Fiber by the end of 2014."
- announce which cities are chosen by the end of 2014? or those cities that will have fiber in them by the end of 2014?
If you want to save money with Fiber, it's okay. But please use VPN with encryption or other traffic-encryption methods to no let Big Brother intercept all of your your data.
I live in Scottsdale and this is excellent news! Cox is the longstanding primary internet/cable provider here and their speeds are good but service is atrocious.
I live near DC... shit! I wanted Google Fiber just for the awesome TV. DirecTV is incredibly awful. Hopefully they can expand to even more cities in the future.
I don't understand, obviously there is a demand for this, so why aren't more companies rolling this stuff out? Give the people what they want!
Does 'do no evil' include canonical net-neutrality, or will it end up like Animal Farm: but already it was impossible to say which was which.
how do people feel about mobile networks? In a lot of locations the speeds are getting as good as or better than broadband. They're cost ineffective right now for anything but short term tethering but that problem could be solved in 2 - 4 years. I just wonder if laying down fiber house to house is going to seem outdated in 5 years or so for anyone except the hard core work at home dev.
How is the free plan going to work? Are they going to monetize it somehow by collecting data or serving ads?
I have a question does the cities Google picks have anything to do with their CDN locations?
So I guess I have a 1 in 34 chance of getting Google Fiber. Better than nothing...
Pfft. I'm waiting on Google Drone/Blimp; it solves the last-mile problem.
anything to get away from Comcast or Time Warner helps the greater population!
Not a single city in the upper-Midwest, Great Lakes region... :(
Great. Google should just push for it everywhere gradually.
Why San Antonio over Dallas/Houston?
As an Englishman, I feel left out :(
I currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh. It seems pretty clear that tearing up New York City to lay fiber is a much more expensive and tedious process than it would be in Raleigh. The state and local governments also seem much more friendly to that kind of thing.
I for one don't trust google anymore. They are in bed with the feds.
Nice try Google, I was really happy about Atlanta until I saw the cities listed.
Most of the cities they listed are in very sketchy areas that probably dont even know the difference between their regular connection and a faster fiber connection.
Avondale Estates - not so nice Brookhaven - will probably benefit College Park - crime area, could care less about fiber Decatur - some areas will benefit East Point - crime area Hapeville - crime area Sandy Springs - will benefit, lots of Apartment Complexes Smyrna - will benefit in some areas
I'm really, really glad they chose Kansas City as the pilot city despite not living there. If they had just gone and chosen San Francisco, Chicago or New York, it would have been no more of an experiment than offering more cable channels to the big cities in the 1990s—It just is completely uninteresting.
On a side note, If you haven't been to KC's Startup Village, the climate is electric! It feels like something really real is going on there. It is just awesome to see someone with a coding question, you can walk literally a few doors down to a different house to ask one of the startups there. When you walk inside, you see rooms that should be living rooms with hackers on laptops and would-be dining rooms with iMacs setup on tables. Meanwhile a sleepy hacker is waking up and making breakfast in the kitchen. The climate is wonderful.