Google Fiber

Zloth

I smell a... wumpus!?
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Gigabit internet connections are finally starting to get going in the USA via Google's new ISP. The big question so far has been "yeah, but how much will it cost me?" Well, the (initial) pricing is out: https://fiber.google.com/plans/residential/

The TV version is going to kill cable, I think. It's still missing some channels (HBO and the local FOX channel stick out) but cable around here currently doesn't cover the local ABC channel, so Time Warner is going to have a hard time making a big deal out of that. The price per month is about the same as cable but they throw in 2TB of local storage, WiFi, and the remote is a friggin' Nexus 7! Plus, of course, you get the internet going at ludicrous speed.

If you just want to go plaid and find your own TV channels, it's $70/mo plus $300 installation.

The free option is interesting. Free means $300 (or $25/mo for one year) and you're capped at just 5Mb/s but then you don't have to pay ever again. Or so the theory goes. I wonder if it will stay that way for the long term. Will they increase the speed over time? Will they decide to end the 'free' option and start charging some day in the future? How often are they going to bombard you with advertisements to upgrade? Will hackers find some way to trick the box into giving a free customer super-speed? <shrug>

Oh, and STILL no hint as to what the ping times are going to be like on this system. That's going to be important for MMO players and extremely important to companies like OnLive.
 
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That sounds awesome. I don't care about ping times. Of course not available for me.
 
Optical cables are here in Germany for about 10 years now - it was once seen as THE big leap in connections/cables technology ... But no-one invested in it when they found out they could actually use DSL with older cables instead.

So, we have here lots of older glass fibre cables rotting" around in the underground here ... And still no-one invests into it, only (if ever) in town areas. Rural areas ("the provionce") are closed out, because comm companies don't see much (if any) revenue coming from there ... If there'll ever be 2 classes of "digital natives", then it'll be a) the townspeople (which are technologically advanced) and b) the rural people.
Like it has always been, by the way.
 
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Optical cables are here in Germany for about 10 years now - it was once seen as THE big leap in connections/cables technology … But no-one invested in it when they found out they could actually use DSL with older cables instead.
They started to dig down fiberoptic cables around here as well, just before the turn of the millennium. I guess the fact that the government helped pay for some of the expenses was one of the main reasons why Sweden quickly grew to be one of the leading countries, as far as connection speed goes.
 
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The US has one of the oldest copper wire networks in the world, so dsl is generally the "substandard" option here. Cable modems aren't bad but a lot of companies are notorious for only delivery a portion of the advertised bandwidth. The more alternatives we have the better off consumers will be.
 
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Agreed. I hate that the cable companies have monopolies, or close to it. I couldn't even get Verizon DSL anymore if I wanted it. I can't really complain about my internet speed with Optimum (Cablevision) even without the 'boost' feature, but it would be nice to have some options since they don't offer one of the channels I want.
 
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I have fiber in my neighborhood but the price is expensive unless you bundle it with cable and landline, neither of which I want so I make do with hotspotting my cellphone which works pretty well.
 
My phone company is the only way to get high speed Internet where I live in a semi-rural area and their service is very slow and very expensive. They will never run fiber because why should they have to? It reminds me of that skit from Saturday Night Live many years ago. "We're the Phone Company. We don't care, we don't have to!"
 
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That $300 plan (for 7 years) is pretty crazy good. Works out to about 625kb/s download speeds but that's plenty for most people. As was said, though, it's contingent upon decent latency/ping. I cna't imagine it being all that bad - it's not satellite-based afterall.
 
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Belgium had fibre running in most large cities in 2000 with 10Mb/s speeds for download. Speeds are up to 100 now I think, but the standard is 20 to 50. In the uk thy offer up to 100 in some places now as well but most places still run on copper and don't get much past 16Mb/s.
 
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Hmmm, I wonder how these speeds will affect forums? Videos in the signatures should be no problem at all. How about videos for the posts? No more of that tedious typing and BBCode, just hit a button, say what you want to say, and hit send. Mighty hard to edit later but a lot more interesting to watch than a wall of text.

Errr - you folks ARE dressed when you're posting, right? <ahem> Perhaps we should start with audio only… ;)

It reminds me of that skit from Saturday Night Live many years ago. "We're the Phone Company. We don't care, we don't have to!"
Yeah, once you get out into the boonies, the profit margin goes deep into the minus territory. You can even see it in how Google is setting this new thing up. The parts of the city that say they want it and are willing to toss over $10 to prove it will be getting the service first.
 
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