Pittsburgh, Seattle Announce Interest In Google's Fiber Trial 144
An anonymous reader contributes a link to a press release from the mayor of Pittsburgh that says the city has announced, along with Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the University of Pittsburgh, that it intends to respond to Google's 1Gbps FTTH (Fiber to the Home) request for information. Seattle's mayor, too, wants in on the action, and more cities will surely pile on.
Madison jumped on too (Score:2, Insightful)
Madison, WI also announced a few days ago that they wanted to jump onto a trial as well. Given the density, the tech love around the area, and the fact that there is already a small Google office in town, I think there's a decent chance.
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt_and_politics/city_hall/article_05071f04-1819-11df-bbef-001cc4c002e0.html
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:5, Insightful)
ISPs/telecoms in the high-speed internet business, for the most part, have regional monopoly or duopolies in the US. I also believe a lot of their intrastructure was promoted in some way by government tax benefits or funding.
A lot of businesses won't build [infrastructure] unless they get some government tax benefits or funding.
Example: I don't recall the last time I heard about a stadium or convention center getting built without [city] putting up taxpayer dollars or passing a law to give them a tax break.
I only use those two because they're the easiest for most people to google since the process usually receives endless local news coverage. Factories are also waaaay up on the tax break & subsidy food chain.
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:5, Insightful)
When "free market" (not that it's actually free... but hey, at least there's "competition") has failed repeatedly for decades, a competent monopoly with a proven track record is more than welcome.
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:3, Insightful)
And guess what comes next? A reverse-competitive bidding process, whereby various cities write off their taxes on both the profits and the capital equipment, waive requirements like community access programs, and more- just to get google to give them fiber-to-the-home, something that has no proven public benefit. Which is idiotic- I don't want my tax dollars used to fund capital expenditures for corporations!
Anyone else a little more than slightly freaked out by this move? Google now encompasses search, email, instant messaging, calendaring, social networking, blogging (both content production and reading), cellular and telephone services, online payment, and now actual last-mile services? What's left?
Why does it feel like in 10 years we'll be calling it The Gnet, not the Internet?
*hands a tinfoil hat to SuperBanana*
That's called diversification and is a sound business strategy. I think Google's just doing good business by having a finger in lots of pies.
As an IT consultant for many small businesses in Seattle, I can say a service like this is sorely needed. There is simply too little choice at far too high a price right now. This is the third pipe we've needed for quite some time in order to break the back of the current broadband oligarchy. This is clearly in the public interest.
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as "Gnet" is concerned Google has the position now to make people switch and no one wants to be left out (ISP's or consumers) of Google's search. Wires can be bought, sold, dug up, and laid down the only thing that will change that is our opinion
Re:Pittsburgh Tuxes (Score:2, Insightful)
Please do not refer to Redmond as the east half of Seattle. They are Redmond. We are Seattle. Redmond sucks. Seattle doesn't. and so on..
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell are you talking about?
FTTH has an immense public benefit. With competitive fiber infrastructure, you don't need to rip up the streets for a hundred years, and anything anybody wants to provide over it, they can. Compared to the closed-off coax, and slightly less closed-off copper telephone wire, this is an immense improvement. Or do you not see the benefit in crazy fast, reasonably priced data? Half of what people do in their homes is data, from internet to phone to TV. It's all the same stuff, and if you can deal with vast quantities of it...
This alone justifies all sorts of tax credits. But then think of business! Pittsburgh is already highly-connected, but gigabit connections are datacenter-grade stuff. Basically nobody has it. What kinds of businesses could benefit from affordable, crazy-fast internet? If I wanted to open a small architectural firm that needed to transfer gigabytes of files, I'd be doing it in one of these cities.
Yes, the privacy considerations are significant. I won't argue that, though I don't think snooping on this is Google's intent. I think they figure the more people can access their new and novel services, the better - and the best way to do that is to make FTTH happen themselves. IOW, the goal is not to scan the traffic. Their best bet would be to spin off this FTTH stuff as a separate company.
Look. Us geeks need to be the ones calling out Google on privacy stuff, mostly because nobody else seems interested and we can't let the world forget. But I simply can't see how this can be anything but highly beneficial for any city Google touches.
Re:Pittsburgh Tuxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Washington is a weird state. They recognized the value of fiber infrastrucure early because they had DOE projects (notably Hanford) that were well served by operators who were confident the nuclear fuel wouldn't kill them. That meant high bandwidth low latency connections to different points.
And then there's I-5. Washington has this international path that threads from California to Canada. I was there when they buried the fiber optic cables under I5 - they're bundles as thick as your leg. Seattle does not lack bandwidth - and they have their own peering point.
They're not even new to this - Grays Harbor county on the coast and Grant county in the center had programs that resulted in 100-1000gbps service (for many years now!) to the customers before Comcast and AT&T shut down expansion of the projects. They have the bandwidth, but they can't afford the lawyers. It's sick when that prevents progress. Maybe Google can help us here.
We had a law to allow Public Utility Districts to resell bandwidth to ISPs and build out fiber networks from the proceeds, but Comcast and QWest killed it.
Bring on the Google! I'm sure they know how to do this in a way that does not prevent progres!
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you been paying attention to how much dark fiber Google owns? They're probably BUILDING THEIR OWN BACKBONES. I most certainly would if I bought up that vast amount of unlit fiber.
Good. I hope Google gets moving on this, as phone and cable companies have been overcharging and underserving us for decades. I would much rather have a GoogleNet than the current Verizon/AT&TNet. If Google outcompetes the Telecoms, that's great. I hope they bury AT&T and Verizon, the greedy pieces of shit. I hope my state promises Google a zero-percent tax liability for ten years in exchange for an early place on Google's high speed Internet backbone. Google certainly can't be any worse than what we have now.