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.
Pittsburgh Tuxes (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The east half of Seattle (Redmond and neighboring) can get Verizon FiOS, but over here in Ballard and other parts on the West side there's nothing faster than Comcast. *Someone* building out infrastructure would be nice.
Re:Pittsburgh Tuxes (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you mean the east side and north end of Puget Sound but yeah. Last I heard, Qwest refused to do a fiber rollout and threatened lawsuits if the city did their own. When they finally started offering faster tiers they called it "fiber-like" speeds. Now, in a higher-end neighborhood in Seattle, the fastest DSL available is 1.5M/768k and even then it's rarely that fast.
Qwest upper management is a bunch of asshats that cares only about milking every last dollar they can out of their infrastructure.
Re:Pittsburgh Tuxes (Score:5, Informative)
Now, in a higher-end neighborhood in Seattle, the fastest DSL available is 1.5M/768k and even then it's rarely that fast.
For someone claiming to not be a third world country, you do wonderful impressions. Here in Norway about 10% of the households have fiber now and it's growing rapidly, I think the most optimistic claim I saw was 35% by 2015. About 80% have broadband, with an average download speed of 5.7 Mbit/s and a median speed of 3.4 Mbit/s. That's in a country that is more sparesly populated than the US and where Seattle is bigger than our biggest city.
Re: (Score:2)
And, this kind of thing makes me want to cry. The "greatest nation on earth" has come to mean "the easiest place in the world to build a monopoly with which to rape the consumer".
You would think that since Al Gore invented the interwebz, he would have more interest in seeing it properly developed in his home country. But, no, he's off diddling the world with his global warming nonsense instead.
Does anyone stop to think that if the government required the telcos to build that last mile to every home in Ame
Re: (Score:2)
For someone claiming to not be a third world country, you do wonderful impressions. Here in Norway
Hmm:
U.S.:
crappy broadband
Norway:
Pickled Herring
You keep your third world comments to yourself, 'kay? :)
Re: (Score:2)
U.S.:
crappy broadband
Norway:
Pickled Herring
Contrary to popular belief, it is a dish not a torture method. I know it's hard to believe but people volunteer to eat it, so the simple solution is to not eat it. There's no quite so easy solution for lack of proper broadband.
Re: (Score:2)
> Norway:
> Pickled Herring
Contrary to popular belief, it is a dish not a torture method.
Propaganda! :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What are they rolling out in Norway? Is it some form of xPON or are they using switched ethernet (like I expect Google will be doing)?
Since I don't have fiber myself, I "only" have a 25/2.5 Mbit cable line I don't know. I do know they lay fiber to inside the house where a converter box makes it into TV, internet and phone signals so it's a full end-to-end fiber network. The biggest provider (80%) is a franchise company so the terms differ slightly but 10/10 Mbit or 15/15 Mbit is their lowest offering. The family package normally has a 30/30 Mbit line but you can get up to 100 Mbit/s if you really want to pay. I think there are trials runn
Re: (Score:1)
Jesus. The average speed in the Bangkok suburbs is now up to 1.5Mb [youtube.com] (Your page won't show this unless you're in my area), and I've got 12Mb to my condo. I can't believe that Seatlle, being IT business-centered and all, can't do better than what you've described.
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: (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:Pittsburgh Tuxes (Score:5, Informative)
The Seattle Metro Area is well covered by Clearwire 4G WiMax. It will beat the pants off of anything DSL does. And for you, it's buying local (Kirkland) and helping to keep local geeks like me employed. And the back bone of the system; I can't say much but (NDA) but trust me, FAT PIPE.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah Clearwire. I love Clearwire. I especially love the 250ms pings. Inconsistent bandwidth and largely unreliable uptime which seems to cut out every time a plane flies over--which in seattle means just about every plane landing at SeaTac it seams.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you talking 3G or WiMax? WiMax RTT is rather spiffy.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you actually tried Clearwire? I haven't tried them in the last year or so but every single person I know that's tried Clearwire (about 4 or 5) quit. It's better than 3G where it's available but it's not better than DSL.
Re: (Score:2)
I leave Monday to St. Louis to commission the Clear WiMax data center there. The Clear system is being built out at a fantastic rate. Don't confuse the 3G with the 4G WiMax. Unthrottled the WiMax USB dongle will pull 14Mb/s down, and that in a car doing 60MPH. And to stay with the subject line, Pittsburgh should be up sometime this summer. I understand that there are some 21,000 radio sites to turn-up this year. It will keep me very busy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Again though. Have you ever actually tried USING the service? With 10 users in a prime location it probably works great. My second hand experience with Wimax is that it's better than 3G but significantly worse than crappy DSL.
Re: (Score:2)
What I've heard about WiMax from several (former) subscribers in my city wasn't good, either. Unreliable, low bandwidth even when connectivity was there, and so on.
Between ADSL2+, cable, and now the local utility rolling out 100Mb/s (with their 50Mb/s plan being cheaper than WiMax), I don't understand how they even managed to stay in business until now. Also, local HSDPA is faster.
Re: (Score:2)
The Seattle Metro Area is well covered by Clearwire 4G WiMax. It will beat the pants off of anything DSL does.
ClearWire. Jesus Christ.
Okay, you go out and get some specs on bandwidth and pingtime on WiMax, then you come back here and apologize for being an idiot, okay? We're talking about fiber connections, not wireless, which is in a completely different league.
Re: (Score:2)
And not just any Kirkland, Carillon Point.
Re: (Score:2)
His parking spot is behind a secure and covered gate. I don't know about a think tank but you could wikipedia "Cascade Investments, LLC" and find what he does there.
Re: (Score:2)
The east half of Seattle (Redmond and neighboring) can get Verizon FiOS
Uh, a small portion of the east side can get FiOS. I'm in downtown Bellevue, and I can't get it. You have to go up to frickin' Bothell (boonies) to get it. Really useful deployment. :(
They w (Score:5, Informative)
Troy in upstate NY announced the same on Thursday. http://troyrecord.com/articles/2010/02/12/news/doc4b74e2cd9e36e314599627.txt
I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.
tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet they'll receive tens of thousands of applications in the coming weeks.
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?
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Vote Quimby!
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:4, Interesting)
Not particularly freaked no.. they haven't been evil thus far. Belief in online privacy is naive and I trust Google far more than I do Verizon, Comcast, etc etc.
Re:tax dollars for corporate capital expenditures (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, come on. It's not like Google has anything close to a monopoly on any of those services. I understand people (rightly!) getting upset over privacy issues with using Google services but acting like Google is taking over the internet is just silly. They don't own the backbones and they don't even create much content. They mostly stick with ways to find and view content and they are not even close to being the only way to find or view that content online (excluding maybe Google Books).
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. With that said what's the problem with Google testing the waters to see if they could potentially become a competitor without getting bulldozed from incumbents? Do you really think anytime in the near future Google is going to be able to drive out multiple entrenched companies that are, lets face it, much larger monetarily?
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:4, Interesting)
"They don't own the backbones"
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Predicting that they might get into the backbone business is not the same as it being real. And so what if Google bought dark fiber to power their own intranet between data centers to save money in the long term? Maybe they're using some of that fiber for this foray into the last mile business. Does it really matter? It's not like they're trying to purchase Level3 or Akamai et al.
They'd need trillions of dollars and the support of multiple government regulation systems to globally usurp the internet. It's n
Re: (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
Re: (Score:1)
If by "man in the middle," you mean "common carrier, then yeah, that's what they're doing. They're going to provide access to this fiber to competitors in order to increase competition.
Google's long-term goal is to make high-speed Internet access ubiquitous so that Google can make more money on ads. As far as I can tell, Google doesn't want to own any market except Internet advertising.
Re: (Score:1)
We will just continue to call it Google, like we do now... The internet you speak of hasn't existed for a while now.
But seriously, City taxes on profits and capital equipment? Those would have to exist before they could be written off. And how exactly is Google's offering to put in gigabit fiber to the home using your tax dollars to fund capital expenditures for corporations?
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.
on top of a building, bitching it's not a 'scraper (Score:2)
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.
Complaining that the free market has "failed repeatedly for decades" is like standing on an office building and bitching it's not a skyscraper.
Looked around recently? The internet is doing pretty well.
Re: (Score:2)
It makes a little more sense when you consider that the owners of the not-so-tall office buildings have been marketing it as if they were the tallest buildings in the world.
Re: (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 interes
Re: (Score:2)
It's more vertical integration than diversification.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (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
Re: (Score:2)
The US as a whole; when it comes to internet access, is a 2nd or even 3rd world country. The stranglehold of AT&T and the like, has stunted the infrastructure development, both for tethered Internet access, as well as for mobile telecommunications (there are a lot of things broken in the US mobile phone policies and networks). For once, you have the opportunity to leapfrog over your Internet dark ages - I say don't waste it.
Re: (Score:2)
I certainly wouldn't want to pay any money at all to turn my city into the Florence of the digital renaissance. Keep those Da Vinci and Michelangelo types out of my community! I don't want any new tech startups coming to my city either because they can get crazy fast internet access for way cheap.
I don't want rich people moving to my town just for the internet access. Tell those folks to spend their money somewhere else.
I don't want the current industry base to stay here, so don't bring the Giganet here
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on, what's the worst that could happen? You act like the corporations are going to take the governmen
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, who wouldn't want Google to roll out fiber in their city? Even if they already have Verizon FIOS, why wouldn't you want competition?
I'm in NYC and can't get decent Internet to save my life. There don't seem to be many places in the country where the Internet doesn't stink, and Google's talking about 1Gbps? Of course they're going to get a lot of applications.
After Comcast, (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait for Comcast to sue Google just as they sued the cities, just because they intended to build their own net. (For what? Deprivation from their monopoly? I don’t know.)
They will sue Google at least long enough, to stall things, until they got something ready and bribed their way into the city taking their offer instead.
Man, I hope I’m wrong. It hurts my heart to see a fellow geek without at least 10 Mb/s downstream. :/
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Wait for Comcast to sue Google"
Ha! Hahahahahahaha!
Google would bury Comcast with their entire team of Ph.D lawyers, whereas Comcast's vast majority barely have their Master's.
Thanks for the laugh!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You did not get it. It’s not about burying etc. It’s about it taking time. It does not matter if Google would win the lawsuit in the end. Because by then the whole deal would already be closed.
Re: (Score:2)
Comcast: "You can't roll out fiber in our market. we'll sue you"
Google: "That's an awfully nice page rank you have there on search terms like broadband. Be a shame if something were to happen to it. A real shame. Do we understand each other? Great. Big Pauley will be around later with some paperwork for youse to sign. Have a nice day."
*raises hand* (Score:5, Funny)
Google, I too am interested in your fiber trial. Please consider my house in Wisconsin for fiber service.
Love,
Andy.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
*waves antennae* Me too in my Ant Farm!
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
No offense-- really (Score:2)
but WTF for?
why is there an office there? is it for-- i dunno, to be closer to the source on cheese futures?
Re: (Score:2)
No they change according to the language the author is writing in, in this case given the location American English would be a good assumption.
Or in the language of the publication the writing is placed in, in this case slashdot which is American and hence American English is correct again.
Re: (Score:2)
That's your assumption.
My assumption would be that anyone who reads that particular crappy web site is from that town.
Burlington, Vermont (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Burlington, Vermont (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Duluth, MN - Technology with a happy face! (Score:1)
Baltimore, MD (Score:1)
1) Diverse community
2) Major bio-tech center
and most important:
3) Make D.C. jealous
Would you move to the winning city? (Score:2)
If Seattle or Baltimore wins, I'd think about it. Seems like whoever wins will get a giant influx of nerds.
Re:Would you move to the winning city? (Score:4, Funny)
What, not Pittsburgh?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Seattle already has 400 optic fibers between every municipal court, police station, sub station, jail and holding area. It's a pretty substantial network, and all the leg work has already been done to get it across I-5 (that's the major hurdle). Go google "Jerry Hedstrom" in the mid 1990s Network World archives. Seattle probably has more dark fiber strung across (under) highways than any other city in the nation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The floating bridges have a bunch running thru them connecting Seattle and the Eastside. I pulled it thru the westbound I-90 floater myself back in the early 90s when I was contracting for GTE. The bridge infrastructure had multiple 4" conduits built in.
Re: (Score:2)
We're still using that stretch of mule tape to this day at the house :)
Fiber to the HOME trial (Score:3, Interesting)
Key word there is HOME, not business, not municipality. I also offer to be a trial at my home. FreeNet would just scream.
Municipal fiber? (Score:1, Interesting)
Does this count as municipal fiber, the kind that ISPs love to filibuster with absurd lawsuits?
Re: (Score:2)
Efforts like that could spread to other tech minded cash strapped US communities.
Google peers with the big corps and is NSA backed, so saying no to google is harder.
Would Google be a brand on the bill using local backhaul?
Or factory fresh optical door to door roll out that cuts out the local cash stream.
Seattle's Mayor? (Score:2)
How does do you say "f*ck you Micro$oft" if you're Seattle's mayor?
"Google! Please help!"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be a "fuck you" if Microsoft was offering ISP services.
As it is, I'm sure that most Microsoft employees in Seattle area would actually be quite happy with an affordable 100Mbps fiber connection to their homes, Google or not. From company's perspective, too, that would mean improved ability for employees to work from home (which isn't a rare occasion).
Re: (Score:2)
How does do you say "f*ck you Micro$oft" if you're Seattle's mayor?
I think Mayor McGinn is fine with this only as long as Google doesn't try to dig any tunnels.
(Waiting for all the non-Seattleites to mod me to oblivion...)
Re: (Score:2)
Well if Microsoft is pissed then they should move back from "Nevada" where "They make and sell their software" and start paying taxes.
It's a common misconception that Microsoft is a Washington based company. I know all of the employees, offices and work being done in Seattle would seem to imply that they're based in Seattle but in reality they're a P.O. Box in Nevada.
Re: (Score:2)
fibre please (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
When we bought a cabin in the mountains of Telemark (in Norway) 4 years ago, the local (very small: total population is the community is just 2500) power company by default gave us fiber along with the electric power cable:
http://telefiber.no/ [telefiber.no]
3 years later I had two competitors both offering fiber to my home in Oslo, currently I'm paying about $80/month (strong NOK/weak dollar) for 30/30 Mbit at home:
http://www.vikenfiber.no/ [vikenfiber.no]
Over those 4 years we've had one network outage at the cabin, lasting a day or two,
kicking ISP's in the ass (Score:2)
Hopefully this will be similar to the wireless spectrum auction. It will just kick a few of the cheap and lazy isp's in to overdrive. Google spends a 100 million, and we get a billion worth of fiber out of fear that Google will beat them to the market. Hopefully.
Re: (Score:2)
billion worth of fiber out of fear that Google will beat them to the market
Yes but the problem is it will all be connected to the net via an old 486sx box running redhat 5 and ipchains unless google offers service in the area. Translation - 'speeds up to 1Gbps'. Translation of Translation - '1.5Mb/256Kb' 99.99999% of the time.
Re: (Score:2)
The reply I received (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why are you expressing interest to a state level representative about a city level thing? Or is said politician on a power trip?
Re: (Score:2)
You got a rely that wasn't a form letter? Wow! where the hell do you live?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Australia please - we will pay you Google (Score:2)
right now all that is happening is our luddite communications minister is handing out 500K a year non-tech jobs to his equally luddite mates.
Publicity Stunt (Score:1)
Re:Publicity Stunt (Score:4, Informative)
If they do a halfway decent job in one city it should scare the regional monopoly players enough that they start upgrading and lowering prices to try and keep Google off their turf.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Except that telcos routinely get money from municipalities for "modernization." The telcos then complain about increased costs while milking the customers for as much money as can be gotten away with.
Maybe Google is trying to "force the hand" of monopolies so that the customer doesn't have to suffer.
Too big? (Score:2)
Did the miss the section of the site that says Google is looking for communities between 50,000 and 500,000 people? I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh and Seattle might be a bit larger than that.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Pittsburgh's population is only around 300k. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh).
Re: (Score:2)
Seattle is about 600k. The greater Seattle area is a lot more but we're just talking about city residents.
Also the recently elected Seattle Mayor made a campaign promise of pushing for a municipal fiber network. So Seattle could offer to negotiate some sort of deal which shares the costs with Google if they expand their scope. If hypothetically everything went perfectly and Google hit its maximum goal exclusively inside of Seattle then the city could follow up and fill out the last 100k for much less.
R
Re: (Score:2)
City of Pittsburgh is around 300k people and falling, mostly because of urban sprawl and sububanization. There are over 2 million people in the greater Pittsburgh area.
How 'bout DC? (Score:2)
What about Washington DC?
We're a medium-sized city with a moderate residential population density, and have *no* good broadband options. Verizon doesn't plan to have FiOS working here until 2018 (seriously), and Comcast's service somehow manages to be a tiny bit worse than it is in the rest of the country. Thanks to our low-ish density, we also won't mind if you have to dig up the streets, especially since most of them need to be paved anyway. We've also got a very nice subway and rail network along whic
Re: (Score:2)
It would probably only take one to double your trollin AC...