90 Percent of Eligible Kansas City Neighborhoods Sign Up For Google Fiber 241
puddingebola writes in with a story about how popular Google Fiber is in Kansas City. "The company wrote in a blog post yesterday that at least 180 out of 202 'fiberhoods' have already qualified for the super-high-speed Internet service. Google says that it's still processing verification requests, and should be able to hand over the final list later this week. Since bringing fiber to homes can be expensive, Google is charging each home that hopes to hook up to the service a one-time $300 construction fee."
I don't get fiber (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Because 640kb of ram ought to be enough for anybody right?
Re:I don't get fiber (Score:5, Informative)
ohh wow.
I live in an area that gets fios, 150mbit down/ 65 up.
Sure torrents are faster. Usenet is even faster, but everything is just so much quicker. Those downloads you wait 2 minutes for? Try like 5 seconds on my end. There's really no wait time for things. I have a openvpn set up between my home and a remote location and copying things to my backup site is much quicker and faster. I can even open videos on the other site and watch them real time without having to download them. I don't really get the concept of "ohh this is enough, i don't need any more". There's always a use for more bandwidth and speed. Plus it drives the prices down due to competition. Maybe the fastest speed isn't worth the price, but you'd better bet the competition will take note and offer better deals.
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It's all a matter of perspective. Being used to slooow speeds makes people not need more. It's simple habit. On the other hand, I pay the equivalent of 10 dollars a month for 100 mbit/s optical fiber transfer speed, at least metropolitan. Of course, downloading from external sources slows the transfer down to cca 20 mbit/s but I admit I mostly use metropolitan for heavy transfers. I sometimes transfer gigabytes of data (mostly pictures) to friends or family within the metropolitan network and it's blazing f
Re:I don't get fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
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Geeks don't actually need valid economical reasons for any of this. Turn in your geek card already..
Re:I don't get fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of a family connection. Four people watching different programs at the same time. Now how many people make or receive phone calls whilst watching a video program. Now add in downloading other software whilst watching a program, just for example legally bought steam games. Now ramp up that phone call to a video call and add in email or something you will see more often now that fibre has become available vid-mail.
Now I wont bother totalling that all up because of course that steam game wants it to be downloaded as fast as possible same with the vid-mail. Of course people will be passing a lot more video around the internet especially with phones becoming much more capable at producing it. Even without wanting maximum download speed for the items mentioned a digital family could readily suck 25 MB download and you can see how burst into 100 MB is desirable when people are waiting for the game they have just bought.
Then of course there are things like scenery channel for people without a view but who have a 90inch LED LCD screen, I have a view and believe me they are well worth it. With falling prices in video displays having a live scenery feed, whilst watching a program are feasible. Just as previewing multiple video streams simultaneously is desirable when possible.
Now add in modern age things like live health monitoring when people are suffering an illness so they can be at home rather than in a hospital or for the elderly. Face it you are the cave man, squatting in a cave not knowing or understanding why people would want to live in a timber framed house, what could they possible need or want that is not provided by a cave.
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but you will never need better then 640 (x480) image resolution... ;)
i for one welcome our 4k tv overlords
Re:I don't get fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
For that reason alone, this is cause to celebrate - you can guarantee that every additional major city that gets Google Fiber will have a real price war on high speed internet access. Kansas City has no such price war, at least so far, because Time Warner has been caught with their pants down. But they won't fold without a fight - maybe the next city to be offered Google Fiber will have Time Warner offers of 10 down/1 up for $20 per month, or $15. That's something to celebrate. And of course many of these providers have monthly transfer caps, and Google Fiber does not.
But separately, the DVR service for Google Fiber television service ($120 per month instead of $70, but no $300 setup fee) carries a DVR that records 500 hours of HD video and can record 8 shows at once, and your television remove for it is a Google 7 inch tablet. I don't know of any other service that gives you both that much storage and also 8 show simultaneous recording and lets use use a tablet as your primary television remote. Here again, it's a shot across the bow aimed at the other television companies, showing consumers what we could be getting but are not because they other companies would rather have higher profits than focus on better features for their customers.
And maybe if you had 1Gbps home download and upload bandwidth, hosting your own website would be something 'normal' people do for fun. Few non-geeks do it today because of the cost and complexity. Free software for building your own website is getting better and easier to use every day, and if 1 Gbps upload speeds with zero bandwidth restrictions are part of your default home internet connection package, then the cost for hosting your own site drops dramatically.
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"Total geek" my ass. Nobody uses a "10x1" notation.
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I have 25/25 and am considering going faster.
10x1mb seems slow, why would you not want to go faster?
Do you never access data from your home computers while somewhere else?
Here is what drives it:
Skype and other HD video chat, Steam and Desura and the like, Hosting your own data by yourself, legal p2p, illegal p2p, and the whole host of things that will be created to take advantage of it.
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Tears fiber apart?
I can get 150/150 on FIOS if I want to pay for it. That kills cable.
You sound like you are getting old, being a manager and all, you don't use as much data as younger folks like myself. I bet far more than 1% uses more data than you. Why sync a thumb drive when I can pull the data right off one of the machines at my house? With 25Mb up and 4G all around town, that is nice and fast.
I do run one computer 24x7 it is hidden away and no one can see or hear it. The $5 a month in electricity is w
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My old smartphone would do a fine job at that, if it had enough storage.
Right now I am just using an old Core 2 Quad. Sure more electric cost than the D1, but not really noticeable on the bill. I use it as my HTPC as well, so it would be in use a lot anyway.
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Live content requires more bandwidth, the Olympics coverage from NBC was running about 7Mbps and it was barely adequate, double the bandwidth likely would have resulted in a significantly better picture. Add to that the fact that an average household can have 4 streams going and you could easily get to 60Mbps of just video streams, and that's for today's technology. Google is mostly looking at what next generation uses may spring up when bandwidth becomes ubiquitous, think of it as a private version of Inte
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I wish I had it, 'cause I get it. I'm on 4M/768k DSL service - it's the fastest I can get without getting worked over by (historically unreliable, but faster) Comcast cable - those are my only two terrestrial options. I'm effectively locked out of all of the cloud services because my upstream is so slow. Even with 1Mb, your upstream makes it difficult to backup to a cloud service. I have ~250GB-300GB of data, closer to 450GB of data if you include audio, but that's months of upload time. I've done it on
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The question isn't whether what you have now is enough to do what you're already doing. Obviously, it's sufficient even if it could be better. The question is, what aren't you doing that you would be doing if you had a 50x50 connection? What aren't you doing that you would be doing if everyone had a 50x50 connection?
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I've just moved house in London, and the new place can't get cable broadband, only ADSL. We've gone from 60Mbit/s down, 3Mbit/s up, to 13Mbit/s down, something (1?) up. (There was an option of 100 down, 5 up at the old place, but it was twice the price, so we didn't bother with it.)
It's not the end of the world, and the other things about the new place (location, cost etc) make up for it. But it's going to be more annoying -- I'm going to have to go back to checking if my flatmate is gaming before starti
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Consider, streaming down 2 live HDTV mpeg streams. You're already past your max down. Now, try to have a video conference connection (even just between 2 parties) now your over your upstream capability as well.
Meanwhile, there's a lot of potential uses that never see the light of day because they're obviously impractical while people are limited to 10x1 Mbps.
For example, might it be nice if you could VPN in to work and mount the corporate fileserver directly onto your PC? That's not going to be a lot of fun
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Now you will say, "nobody wants to do that." Ok, but why? Th
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As a point of reference, I've hosted my own ssh/website/email on my Comcast account for over 10 years without any trouble. And since they have a bandwidth cap, I figure that should settle the issue... so long as I'm within the limit why would they complain?
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Most websites are essentially the same as they were in the 90s; just a bunch of text and a few images. I don't know what "Next generation services" are you referring to, but I'm pretty sure that current service models will be around for a long time.
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Try backing up your 3TB HDD over a 1Mbit/s upload link, it will take you a year, at 1Gbit/s you might be able to do it overnight if you drive is fast enough. The point with super fast Internet isn't that you can now watch Youtube a little better, but that it will allow applications that would have been impossible before. And yes, that of course includes things such as P2P, as with 1Gbit/s up and downstream, a content addressable anonymous network such as Freenet could get really interesting and provide some
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Now I get a 10x1Mb connection . . . and even I think going any faster would be pointless.
No one will ever need more than 640K.
If you build it, they will come.
Look, you may not need 100 or 1000 Mbps now. But what about when you want to stream 3D content? Or what if we start streaming lossless J2K videos, instead of the super compressed HD video you get now? The point of the Google "experiment" is to see what is possible when this type of bandwidth is available. They are trying to bypass the chicken/egg problem. On the other hand, it's not likely that such a small scale deployment will spur
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Re:I don't get fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the bandwidth of the fiber is shared among all the people at your node. If everyone simultaneously cranked up iTunes or BitTorrent and started downloading movies at the same time, I doubt you would maintain that 20+ Mbps service speed.
Also because your speeds and cost are so atypical that it isn't even funny. Most Internet service in rural areas seems to average about $50 a month and provides less bandwidth.
Finally, because we're rapidly approaching the point where Internet bandwidth is hopelessly insufficient to meet users' needs. With users wanting to watch downloaded or streaming movies, perform network-based backups, use virtual computers (e.g. using VLC) that are maintained and backed up by someone else, etc., the performance and throughput of the outgoing pipe is getting more and more critical for a good user experience, and it just hasn't kept up with internal infrastructure speeds.
It's hard to even find a switch these days that isn't gigabit, yet as soon as you leave the premises, you're at a clunky single-to-low-double-digit megabit speed—about two orders of magnitude slower. That's just not acceptable. We're at the point where there's little reason to further upgrade the speeds of internal networks, mainly because of the lack of performance upstream. That's really rather bad news for all the industries that depend on the sale of upgraded equipment, and it potentially holds back lots of useful innovations—concepts that we haven't even dared to dream about because they are so completely infeasible over double-digit megabit networks.... Distributed social networking. Mass-market acceptance of video-and-voice-over-IP. True virtual/cloud computing (doing video editing using a hard drive in another state, for example). And so on.
Gigabit (uplink and downlink) to the premises would solve SO many problems.
Google Fiber makes your Internet much more Regular (Score:5, Funny)
Nuff said.... You don't want the real graphic details do you?
EVIL: No Server Hosting Allowed (Score:5, Interesting)
(my support email to google fiber-)
Hello,
I've recently filed an FCC form 2000F complaint regarding how your
current terms of service for google fiber prohibit hosting any server of
any kind. I feel this is in violation of paragraph 13 of FCC-10-201
which I believe cements my right as an end-user to provide novel
services to the internet at large via a server hosted at my residence
connected to my fixed broadband internet service. While I have
communicated secondhand with Milo Medin about this, perhaps this is a
more official channel. Please tell me if I've misunderstood the concept
of "Net Neutrality" or your Terms of Service. All I want is to host a
linux lamp server. I.e. web pages and files served with apache via IPv6
to other IPv6 clients on the internet. And probably I'd want to host a
quake3 server as well as other entrepreneurial servers I conceive of and
deploy due to the abundance of helpful free and open source server
software available to me.
A length debate on the subject (57 posts, 15 authors) was recently held
on the discussion forum for the Kansas Unix and Linux User's Association
(ironicly hosted on google groups rather than someone's server at home
running linux+mailman). I encourage an official response clarifying the
situation from Google.
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/kulua-l/LxsOtdglNM0 [google.com]
Thanks for any feedback, Regards,
-dmc
Douglas McClendon
da...@cloudsession.com
(note, this online/form tract was reached after selecting that the
target of the complaint was a fixed broadband internet service provider,
believed to be in violation of the 2nd(blocking) of the 3 primary open
internet rules layed out in the FCC's 10-201 report and order preserving
the free and open internet.
--- REF# 12-C00422224 ---
Google's current Terms Of Service[1] for their fixed broadband internet
service being deployed initially here in Kansas City, Kansas, contain
this text-
"You agree not to misuse the Services. This includes but is not limited
to using the Services for purposes that are illegal, are improper,
infringe the rights of others, or adversely impact others enjoyment of
the Services. A list of examples of prohibited activities appears here. "
where 'here' is a hyperlink[2] to a page including this text-
"Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do
so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber
connection"
In my professional opinion as a graduate in Computer Engineering from
the University of Kansas (and incidentally brother of a google VP) I
believe these terms of service are in violation of FCC-10-201.
[1] http://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html [google.com]
[2]
http://support.google.com/fiber/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2659981&topic=2440874&ctx=topic [google.com]
--- (end of form 2000F complaint text)
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I understand the whole 'business class' thing. I'm trying however to make a legal point that the last sentence of paragraph 13 of FCC-10-201(aka net neutrality), can logicly be seen as criminilizing such differentiation of service through network level (or I would argue, evil-tos level) blocking. The whole 'neutral' aspect of 'network neutrality'.
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Oh, I'm sure they'll offer a "business class" of service for those needing to work from home. You'll pay a lot more, but at least you will have unrestricted (as long as it's legal. No hacking allowed, etc.) access and bandwidth to use. Generally that's the case with all business class offerings.
What if your job is pen testing will they ban you for hacking/cracking then?
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"What if your job is pen testing will they ban you for hacking/cracking then?"
If you hack/crack any system you don't have permission to, I'd presume yes, else I'd presume no. I think when you hack a shell to a server you own, there is no substantive difference as far as being banned from a network than if you had logged in with ssh normally. Of course, if your method results in some side-effect traffic going to any system other than one you own or have rights to 'crack', then yeah, I hope you get banned f
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FCC-10-201, paragraph 13, last sentence. It sure sounds to me as though _all end users_ are allowed to create content, applications, services, and devices with their 'neutral' fixed broadband internet service links.
"Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users
and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to
create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it
maximizes commercial and
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I think the idea of preventing "services" is laughable. There are too many remote access "services" and the like that they really can't stamp down on lest they start a shit storm.
I mean, is Teamviewer a "service"? Is LogMeIn a "service"? SSH... maybe. HTTP definitely, but even a personal web service is iffy.
I don't see them invoking this unless you're running something that brings down the whole area of town.
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"I don't see them invoking this unless you're running something that brings down the whole area of town."
I'd like to believe that basic automatic network management features of the relevant hardware, or at worst, more intelligent custom software written by google, can trivially enforce sharing of network resources in an application and service agnostic way. The only way you should be able to bring down any segment of the network would be through some serious blatantly criminal level hacking. Or accidental
Re:EVIL: No Server Hosting Allowed (Score:5, Interesting)
Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious.
Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to see great garage startups being enabled by cheap access to truly high-speed Internet. Pichette defended it saying they had no intention of trying to enforce it in general, but that it had to be there in case of serious abuse, like someone setting up a large-scale data center.
I don't think anyone really has to worry about running servers on their residential Google Fiber, as long as they're not doing anything crazy. Then again it's always possible that Page will change his mind or that the lawyers will take over the company, and the ToS is what it is. If I had Google Fiber I'd run my home server just as I do on my Comcast connection, but I'd also be prepared to look for other options if my provider complained.
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MOD PARENT UP (until determined to be a made-up story instead of factually accurate)
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What does "crazy" mean? Anything that gets on the radar as potentially commercially competing with any existing or future commercial google endeavor or aspiration?
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Want to run Apache? It's merely a client for the I/O services a browser offers, etc.
Client/server is an artificial, and arbitrary, distinction - ignore it.
Larry Page Agrees (partly) with me? (Score:3, Informative)
This was posted by an Anonymous Coward. Sounds plausible enough that I'll post it again to help its visibility-
Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious.
Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to s
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The world would be a slightly better place if people could run a proper PUBLIC server off of a home connection. The two primary reasons to restrict servers is that the bandwidth is vastly oversold and they're trying to cripple your ability to actually use the upstream or because a service provider would rather bill you $1000/month for a T.
I'm not sure why Google is doing it unless they are mostly deploying the fiber to balance their outbound traffic.
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You honestly sound like you were thinking "or I'll have my big brother beat you up" at the end of that. REALLY!
You go ahead and get the server in a datacenter. Some people might actually have a legitimate reason to want a server at home (for example. I don't think I can get a USB cable long enough to reach the nearest colo provider). Not everyone thinks their server needs 523 gadzillion 9's uptime. They're fine with a server up most of the time, probably fairly low traffic. It's not like I'm suggesting runn
One cool thing (Score:4, Interesting)
If the residents pay the $300 install fee they get 10Mbps speed for 10 years without paying any further fee. For many of the poorer neighborhoods this was the only way to get enough households to participate to justify the buildout.
Another cool thing (Score:2)
Google gets a comprehensive record of online activity for thousands of individuals living in Kansas City. There's got to be a big benefit in that.
To Google, anyway.
Google Fiber will certainly be useful for people - and if it were available to me, I'd most likely sign up - but let's not ignore the fact there is a tangible benefit to Google as well.
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That's fine, though I would posit that every ISP has access to the same information, and with the advent of switched digital video the cable companies have that and detailed access to what television stations people are watching (why are we relying on a handful of Nielson households for viewership data?)
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Less than 15% of households receive OTA TV and of those less than 4% are due to not having a pay tv option, the rest are just cheap. Most advertisers don't care that much about that demographic so they should be using superior metrics for the audience they DO care about.
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I'm OK with that. Expecting such things to be done altruistically is cute, but not realistic.
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Do they have to pay that all at once?
Seems like google could have made a little extra scratch by letting them pay it off monthly for $40 for a year and probably gotten more folks singing up. $300 is a large chunk of change for some folks.
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If the residents pay the $300 install fee they get 10Mbps speed for 10 years without paying any further fee. For many of the poorer neighborhoods this was the only way to get enough households to participate to justify the buildout.
That seems avg on speed right now (or below) but what will 10Mbps look like in 10 years? Pitifully slow. I'd think with Google Fiber the speed would be around 10x that.
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Perhaps Google will revisit what they deliver for free in the future, as it stands these residents are getting $30-50/month worth of service for free so it's pretty hard to complain.
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Fiber in Québec city (Score:2)
I live in Québec city and we're the lucky ones: Bell Canada decided to start their Fiber to the home program (Bell Fibe) in our town!
I paid 50$ for the install, the tech spend 4 hours installing the fiber in my apartment and told me that it once took him 8 hours to do the install in an old house.
Now I have 50/50 Internet (50 Mbps downlink, 50 Mbps uplink with a 250 GB/month cap) for 63$ per month and I'm really enjoying it!
Granted, it's part of a bitter turf war with the cable provider (Videotron) but
Resident of KC here (Score:2)
But seriously, it's actually relieving to see so many people, even those in the "bad" neighborhoods in KC, actually going out of their way to preregister. It gives me new hope that people might actually be capable of some foresight every now and then.
Of course, then there's that annoying nameless voice on the radio here singing the praises of Google Fiber and urgi
What a difference a few days makes (Score:5, Informative)
I just read this Wired article a few days ago:
Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City's Digital Divide
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/09/google-fiber-digital-divide/ [wired.com]
Basically, the signup for Google Fiber was split along the line dividing historically white and black neighborhoods.
But Liimatta [who runs a Kansas City nonprofit that works to bring broadband access to low-income residents] says the pre-registration process itself set a high bar for those already on the wrong side of the digital divide. To pre-register, residents needed to be willing to pony up $10. They also needed a credit or debit card, a Google Wallet account, and a Gmail account, which are harder to come by if you never had internet access in the first place. "Many don't even have bank accounts," Liimatta says. "That's why there are so many check-cashing places out there."
The fact that they managed to get these neighborhoods qualified in 3 days says a lot about the lengths Google went to.
The Wired article talks about Google sending out teams to knock on doors and expedite signups for families that don't have internet already.
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I believe a lot of that was the result of educating residents on what this whole thing means. I've had to explain exactly what some of the advantages were myself to a half dozen people or so I thought would have picked up on it themselves.
That, and the primary means for signing up was via the web, and I believe that for a lot of these households, fiber is going to be their first broadband connection to the Internet. I think there was a phone number you could use as well, but it wasn't very well publishe
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I live in a 'not so ritzy' area of Kansas City KS. and I can agree with that as stated.
The more affluent areas were up and registered within a few days, the poorer areas took significantly longer. One evening, people were canvassing the neighborhood to make sure residents were aware and had signed up . I signed up the first day that I could.
Same here, except I'm in KCMO. My area was fairly slow in signing up, but one thing that helped was that some of the neighborhood organizers were pushing for it.
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
Digging is ok in most parts of the country. But lets pick a 'big city' New York. Do you have any idea how much infrastructure is under those roads already? Oh which is used and which isnt? Not so simple a task anymore is it?
How about Texas. Nice open wide spaces. Did you know there are many areas where digging involves explosives? Dig down 1-2 (sometimes more shallow) ft and you are in bedrock.
Ok lets pick the one Google picked. Kansas city. They probably can dig. So long as they do not mind the occasional boulder. The soil is fairly soft (being so close to a major river). So they probably will dig.
Or we can make wild sweeping statements like 'always in backwards America'. Those guys putting in those wires sure are stupid aren't they? Putting in wire needs to be tailored for each region. The Americas has a wildly diverse soil, rock, hilly areas. That is putting aside any sort of 'traditional way it is done in the area' and laws.
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
Digging is ok in most parts of the country. But lets pick a 'big city' New York. Do you have any idea how much infrastructure is under those roads already? Oh which is used and which isnt? Not so simple a task anymore is it?
This is much less of a problem then most people realize. My north-Dallas suburb has all underground utilities (including electricity) running under the sidewalks (due to legacy layout there is no right-of-way zone) and Verizon managed to run fiber with zero issues and without digging up the sidewalks. Unfortunately Dallas proper is ATT so no fiber for those inside the city limits, which is funny because the much higher density would make it a better payoff. NYC is more complicated but ultimately it can (and is) being done.
The utilities tend to be segmented vertically, with more sensitive ones buried deeper, then with same-class services being spread out horizontally. The fiber was run by using machines that navigate conduit through the ground without actually digging the entire length up. This also allows you to run new conduit under existing services without disturbing them. I'm not sure how much sensing those machines have but it would be fairly easy to have metal-sensors, radar, ultrasound, etc in the dig head, along with actuation to allow you to steer it. This would let you avoid almost any issues by sensing when you are near a gas line or legacy copper and steering the cutting head around it (the conduit itself is flexible plastic). Funny enough, the densest downtown cores all have underground utility tunnels and the like which makes running lines there even easier.
What we do know is that Verizon was able to reduce their capex spend on legacy copper infrastructure in FIOS areas and that the actual rollout was less expensive and faster than anticipated. It will certainly pay for itself in less than 20 years. They also claim to have spent 20 billion on it, but when you look at their capex budgets over the past few years you can see that a lot of that is offset by less spending on the copper plant.
Think about that for a minute... For maybe 100 billion (less than 1/5 of the defense budget) we could roll out gigabit fiber to 90% of all homes and businesses in the United States. There is a ton of dark fiber criss-crossing the country for backbone purposes.
The problem isn't money and it isn't technical. The problem is that our institutions are dysfunctional (by design). Our Telco companies would rather pump the short-term stock price than invest in infrastructure - the new Verizon CEO killed future FIOS rollouts and did the handshake deal with cable to avoid competing with each other so they can focus on wireless revenue - a place where data caps and high prices ensure huge profits.
Our government has been hijacked by the "no new taxes ever" crowd, who deliberately cut taxes to introduce deficits, to justify cutting government services and reducing the pay/benefits (and thus quality) of government employees**. Then they point to the government they deliberately broke as justification for further cuts.
**Why is it that you only need to spend money to buy a good CEO? Why can't the government spend money to buy good civil servants? Or get more employees to reduce lines at places like the DMV or INS?
No new infrastructure has ever succeeded without massive government intervention. Part of that is you can only get financing when you can show a good chance of return on investment... but with new infrastructure you are stuck with the chicken and egg problem. Without the infrastructure there is no demand and without demand private enterprise won't build the infrastructure.
Government financed, cleared the way for, and rolled out the army to protect the trans-continental railroad. Without the largesse of the federal government the railroads would have only built the profitable lines to certain areas, on incompatible track gauges (check the history books). Without government-mandated air brakes and knuckle couplers we'd sti
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I don't care how it gets to me. I just wish they offered it NORTH OF THE RIVER! It doesn't make sense to not offer it north of the MO where there is a major tech company in the area who employs nerds who are all drooling over this.
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Parent and GP should report back here in sixth months with how much this has affected property values.
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Re:And... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care how it gets to me. I just wish they offered it NORTH OF THE RIVER! It doesn't make sense to not offer it north of the MO where there is a major tech company in the area who employs nerds who are all drooling over this.
Well, the solution is simple; You just need to park your van DOWN BY THE RIVER!
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No... The ISPs in KC are Time Warner and AT&T. I'm barely outside the "fiberhood", so perhaps the rest of the city is getting some awesome deals. Perhaps I should give AT&T a call and see what they can do for me to prevent me from going Google (despite the fact that I'm a few blocks away from the fiberhood).
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Re:$300 is a lot of money. (Score:5, Funny)
$300 for 10Mbps for 10 years is $2.5/mo. That's less than a penny a day.
250 cents / 31 days = less than a penny a day ...
another victim of the public education system.
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He should apply to Verizon [blogspot.com].
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In all seriousness, google is charging their "customer" $300 for this service for 10Yrs, and they are then charging their true customer for the ability to know all the online activity of the "customer." It is like Google is reading right from the cable companies play book.
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$2.50 == 250c
250 cents \ 31 days != $0.1
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gerrr slashdot killed my less than sign.
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$300 is a lot of money? Are you kidding me? Dude, I work a white collar job at like $65k/year. I have a mortgage to pay on an 1800sqft house. $300 isn't a lot of money. They get broadband for 10 years with no fee, that's like $2.50/mo
I spent $350 outright on my Galaxy Nexus so I didn't buy any $50 contract phone for 24 months with a +$20 bill ($480 + $50 = $530 for the phone, no I spent $350). I have a watch that costs more than my mortgage payment. I pay my mortgage and my car payment every month a
Re:$300 is a lot of money. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you make $65k/year, in some parts of the city, you'd probably be a one percenter. I know people who are on disability, I don't know what they "make", but it's not even remotely near 65K. I also know people with low end jobs that don't approach 65K. What seems reasonable, or even cheap to the average slashdotter, might be quite high for many people.
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Poor you with your white collar job and reasonable salary.
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Its great that you make $65k/yr. To you, who earns more per year than the median household income in the United States, I am sure that $300 is not a lot of money. The median household income is $51,914 [census.gov] and more than 50% of people in this country earn minimum wage. Since you are possibly ignorant of the fact, that is $7.25/hour. To a person earning minimum wage
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No, I don't consider $1300 to be a lot of money. I'm going to throw about that much to fix the roof and some brickwork. Also sump pump, going to buy TWO furnaces (a hydronic off the water heater and one sized for the house that's dedicated to heating the water heater as a back-up), and install a new 400L water heater (solar driven, so it'll provide solar heating and hot water free, plus I get 5 SREC worth about $200 on the market these days per year; if the tank goes cold, the gas furnace will kick on and
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$425 a month rent for 300sq/ft?! My mortgage is $454 (I pay an extra $40 on top directly toward the principle, so the total payment I make is $494 per month) for a 1080sq/ft house with roughly 1/3 acre of land... Plus, I wouldn't call 1800sq/ft an 'oversized superdwelling' considering the far larger homes available in my area (a town of 17.5k people), though I could see where adding 1500sq/ft to what you're living in now could make that seem absolutely huge... :)
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But its not that bad. Rather luxurious by my standards, actually. Before I got my current job and moved here, I was paying $325 a month for a room in a 4-roommate household with broken windows in all the common areas and barely functional heat, in a
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Not true. I rented for the longest time because owning would have been out of my reach. I had excellent credit, but the P&I on a house smaller than the one I have at 3% would have been $1200(!) and it was only 1.5 times the size of my $750/mo apartment. On top of that came PMI and property taxes, it would have been about $1500/mo, plus maintenance. Home owners insurance is about $400/year too but that's like $30/mo.
Buying is cheaper than renting NOW. It's a good time to buy.
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A 42 inch TV isn't huge. I personally have a 32 inch and, while I think it's massive, I recall projection TVs being popular in 2000 that were 6 feet wide. We're talking 6 feet of 3:4, so think 5/3 of 72 inch that being 120 inch diagonal. Now I mean I've seen the $30,000 plasma TVs that are that big, but this is a $3000-ish projection TV. That's gimongous.
I've routinely seen people on food stamps complaining about their $150 cable TV or satellite bills, although now satellite can be had for $20/mo unles
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If it succeeds in SF, you know it will work wherever there is an affluent and educated populace. If it succeeds in KC, you know it will work anywhere.
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