Google Fiber

[Brent]

I think Google has many different "goals" with this project. Some of those goals include learning how to run something similar to a cableco of the future, others include hedging against the loss of net neutrality, others could include testing the latest and greatest stuff on their own fiber network. Probably many others as well.

[pjpjpjpj]

Look at it this way: years ago, someone ran coaxial cable to the majority of homes in the USA (and other countries, presumably). Now whoever's cable/internet service you buy, that company has to pay a small fee to the owner of that physical cable. Just like when you get your utilities (i.e., electric) from someone other than your local utility company; those other companies all "rent" space on the grid from the owning company.

Every fiber optic cable that Google runs anywhere will be theirs. If the internet and streaming and bandwidth demand keeps growing the way we think it will, people will eventually need to switch to a fiber service. More fiber optic providers will pop up. And those companies will be paying monthly fees to Google to "borrow" their fiber lines, even if the end users aren't using Google's service.

So while Google obviously wants to provide a service (Google Fiber) as part of its business plan, I'm sure they'd also be happy if they could sit back and just rake in "landlord" fees for owning the physical cabling that other companies will have to rent.

Just as with cable boxes, DVRs, and cellphones, it's not about the upfront hardware, it's about the monthly rental fees.

[jbrandon]

Fuzzy, if I could get decent service for $45 per month I would be the first in line. I move in here three years ago and my cable (TW) bill was $96 for mid tier Internet and extended basic cable. No premium channels or other add ons. We do not have any boxes as they are huge and downright ugly sitting on the fireplace mantel so we only get 10-13 HD (OTA) channels. the rest are SD.

This same configuration now cost $149 and the mid tier Internet is heading towards unusable in the evening hours, I guess due to saturation of the bandwidth in our community. TW claims they are upgrading to fiber trunk into our community but I sure have not seen any work or improvement. After many, many complaints they did upgrade our Internet service to the next tier at no charge, 20mbs claimed download speeds and it does help when trying to stream content. I have never been able to measure the 20mbs, the best I have ever seen was 17mbs (at 3 in the morning) and many times in the evening it will drop to single digits. We actually watched a whole movie (Netflix) without any buffering last night.

So the $120 for GF (plus $15 for three extra boxes) is still a good deal for us. The set top boxes are very small and very nice looking, I think they will actually disappear with the decorating that we have on the mantels for the seasons.

We do have AT&T available but its cost is over $150 for the same setup and again the boxes are really ugly. Friends who have Uverse have said they do not like it all that much but it is better than TW.

I am afraid you may be a little disappointed in the SageTV side of GF, the interface looks nothing like SageTV. I did not get to really poke around in the configuration but on the face it is very nice and clean. From what I was told there is not much you can add to the interface in the way we currently do with plug-ins etc.

I understand what you are saying but living where you do you have many choices, we have had only TW until the middle of last year. So it was TW or dial up - which would you choose? TW has offered nothing new in years other than boxed based DVR and a few sports channels and it is about time some competition comes in and cleans their plough!!

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It's only a bargain if you will use more than the $45/month 30Mbps cable service. $110 is a huge jump up in price for a service most users simply don't need. It doesn't take much (hardware wise) for CableCo's to up their DOCSIS 3 systems up to 120Mbps, which is well more than 99% of the customer base needs for their usage. This is what is going to make it hard for Google to spread into already well served areas. I'm not sure how well served KC, Provo, and Austin are, but I'm guessing if they are getting high conversion rates, it is because the current offerings are very limited - or just plain horrible. I know here in Riverside, GF would have a very hard time pulling customers from the much cheaper, and already established, options (FiOS, UVerse, Charter).

Honestly, if it WAS available, the only reason I'd pay the price for google fiber, is for the SageTV side of it.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by jbrandon

Fuzzy, if I could get decent service for $45 per month I would be the first in line. I move in here three years ago and my cable (TW) bill was $96 for mid tier Internet and extended basic cable. No premium channels or other add ons. We do not have any boxes as they are huge and downright ugly sitting on the fireplace mantel so we only get 10-13 HD (OTA) channels. the rest are SD.

This same configuration now cost $149 and the mid tier Internet is heading towards unusable in the evening hours, I guess due to saturation of the bandwidth in our community. TW claims they are upgrading to fiber trunk into our community but I sure have not seen any work or improvement. After many, many complaints they did upgrade our Internet service to the next tier at no charge, 20mbs claimed download speeds and it does help when trying to stream content. I have never been able to measure the 20mbs, the best I have ever seen was 17mbs (at 3 in the morning) and many times in the evening it will drop to single digits. We actually watched a whole movie (Netflix) without any buffering last night.

So the $120 for GF (plus $15 for three extra boxes) is still a good deal for us. The set top boxes are very small and very nice looking, I think they will actually disappear with the decorating that we have on the mantels for the seasons.

We do have AT&T available but its cost is over $150 for the same setup and again the boxes are really ugly. Friends who have Uverse have said they do not like it all that much but it is better than TW.

I am afraid you may be a little disappointed in the SageTV side of GF, the interface looks nothing like SageTV. I did not get to really poke around in the configuration but on the face it is very nice and clean. From what I was told there is not much you can add to the interface in the way we currently do with plug-ins etc.

I understand what you are saying but living where you do you have many choices, we have had only TW until the middle of last year. So it was TW or dial up - which would you choose? TW has offered nothing new in years other than boxed based DVR and a few sports channels and it is about time some competition comes in and cleans their plough!!

I'm not arguing with any of those things. As said, I DO have a lot of options here, which is why GF would never dream of trying to install here.

As for the limited SageTV thing, yes, I know it is limited, but it is still SageTV, and I'm sure in the back end, it is still modifiable - it's just that no-one who is in any way familiar with modifying sage is able to get at it, since they don't live in the exact center of the country.

My real point of my comment was to bring up, again, that it's SageTV 8 that is appealing here, and not the 1Gbps internet. It was asked about getting decent upload speeds, but honestly, MOST people have non need for that. As long as it is fast enough for things like skype/hangout, it's going to suffice for 99.9% of customers. The very limited audience here might be interested in streaming their recorded content at extremely high quality to other devices, but that is not as hard as you might be thinking. that 1Gbps upload speed is all well and good, but if your mobile device is still maxing out at an inconsistent 10Mbps, what does 1Gbps upload get you? As broadcast, Dish Network's HD channels are only 5Mbps from the satellite...

My charter internet, which is the minimum they offer, is 30/4 (and tests consistently right at those caps). That's for $40/month (plus taxes and fees it brings it up to $54 i think). Last I checked, Charter's faster option, he 100/5 service, was like $35 more a month. I trialed it for a while, and the only time my usage peaked over about 40/2 levels were when doing illegal things anyway - so I just don't see the need for it.

[Brent]

On the premium internet of TWC I get anywhere from 8 Mbps to 16 Mbps down, .4 to 1.1 Mbps up and a ping of 35 - 60 ms. That isn't "real" premium in my eyes. One of the problems for me is the lack of consistency. I can start a netflix movie streaming and it sometimes starts okay, but quickly hits a "bump" and pauses, then downgrades the quality and even then sometimes has issues through the stream. YouTube and others are similar. The free version of Google Fiber (must still pay one-time install cost) gets you consistently (so far at least) about 5 Mbps down and .98 Mbps up with 2ms ping. That's pretty darn good for no monthly cost! Matter of fact the free version is surely sufficient for most folks.

The issue is that if you want the TV services, you must get the gigabit service bundled with it since the TV runs over the gigabit. I use quite a bit of bandwidth at times due to working from home some, and there are times I will enjoy the extra speed. What I'm really looking forward to is a consistently faster speed (up & down) without the drop-offs. I'm also very interested in playing around with the Sage stuff of course.

[wayner]

I think people are underestimating the change that can be brought about by seriously fast, uncapped internet. Cloud backups now make a lot of sense as you can send terabytes of data in not too much time. Why not keep up high def cameras steaming pictures from your home permanently? RDP/VNC apps are now very responsive and not much different remotely compared to being on your LAN, etc. and there will be tons of other stuff that we haven't thought of yet, particularly on areas like gaming.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

I think people are underestimating the change that can be brought about by seriously fast, uncapped internet. Cloud backups now make a lot of sense as you can send terabytes of data in not too much time. Why not keep up high def cameras steaming pictures from your home permanently? RDP/VNC apps are now very responsive and not much different remotely compared to being on your LAN, etc. and there will be tons of other stuff that we haven't thought of yet, particularly on areas like gaming.

Absolutely! I use video calling where it helps as well as some data transfers between home and work where it comes in handy as well. There will be more uses as time goes on. It is true though that there are few places on the internet where the entire download speed you can get on your Google Fiber is completely utilized - for now at least.

[wayner]

I have had internet >100Mbps for a couple of years now. It is true that you can rarely use the full capacity, especially when you are connecting to more distant sites, but the backbone keeps getting faster and you know that your last mile is certainly not the bottleneck. So you can "waste" bandwidth on other stuff. But it is nice to get some downloads very fast - I can get about 10MBps with multi-segment FTPs to my VPS in the Netherlands so that speeds up the download of files.