Could Google Fiber Save Network Neutrality? 230
nmpost writes "Could Google Fiber, set to launch next week, be the savior of network neutrality? Some speculate that the program is Google's answer to attacks on network neutrality by the big internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. These companies complain about the price of upgrading and maintaining their network, and want to charge websites like Google extra money to allow customers fast access to its sites. This practice would violate the long held spirit of the internet, where all data traffic is treated equally. Google may be out to prove that fast networks can be built and maintained at reasonable prices."
Dibs (Score:4, Funny)
Dibs on first run to my house!
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Hmmm,
Modded as funny, but I might consider moving to Kansas City based on this.
ISPs have become oligopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
At the beginning of the "Information Superhighway" - at least that was what they called "Internet" back then - there were a lot of people pulling cables and starting local ISPs
At that time, competition was fierce, and everyone tried to one-up each others, on price, on service, on usage, et cetera, to attract new customers
While the competition was fierce, there was a feeling of comradery and responsibility amongst the ISPs, and they did respect the "Freedom & Equality" spirit of the Net
But that golden era was not to last, for big and established players from the telephone and cable industries (AT&T / Comcast), with deep pockets, out-maneuvered the smaller players - and that's what we have today, an oligopolistic structure of the ISPs
As oligarchs go, the big players got so much power that they get to do almost everything they want to do - and as we have all witnessed - not even the government has power to reign them in
Re:ISPs have become oligopolies (Score:5, Interesting)
this is all about monopolies and their control over competition
long ago there was the pots and because the government had helped develop it, the local operators had to provide access to their competitors, this lead to the proliferation of DSL carriers and competition was introduced into a stagnant market where only isdn was offered
the incumbent local operators worked to destroy the competitive DSL carriers and rolled out their own offerings, which resulted in relatively high speed access to millions of customers. Cable providers rolled out their own services and for a while we saw speeds climbing and easier deliveries of services
the FCC made allowance to the carriers installing new networks to support these services that they would not have to provide equal access to other carriers if there was any segment of fiber on the new network, effectively locking out new competition. This has resulted in slow growth in data speed offerings and attempts to Monetize their assets by jacking up fees and charges on people using large amounts of data
The only thing that will re-introduce competition and the resulting increase in service levels and lower of costs will be a challenger that is willing to bear the cost to build out their own fiber to the curb network. Fortunately Google has that type of money to invest and relationships with the big data carriers to support this buildout
all hail the new king, but be wary of their monopoly should it come
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Re:ISPs have become oligopolies (Score:5, Funny)
Think positively. At least the GP didn't say "rain them in". When it comes to online forum grammar, I'd call that a small victory.
Re:Reign (Score:2)
Let's bring the Weather Girls into this. They wanted to talk about the Reigning Men.
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It's unlikely the phrasing used was unintentionally the same as the colloquial term "rein them in," so unless it was an exceptional coincidence the criticism is correct. While there is potential overlap between the uses of both terms, they share vastly different roots.
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I do know the existence of both words
For some reasons - perhaps subconsciously - my fingers typed out "reign" - and as GP has stated, the subject was "Government" and the word "reign" in a way was still kosher, so I decided not to change anything
Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the best efforts tend to become commercialized. Look at Google Shopping's new upcoming direction.
What is to stop them 3 years later from creating a paid class system? And who would be able to honestly blame them? After all, it would be THEIR network.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah this supposes that everyone in the world puts money above all other values. In reality, that only describes a subset of humanity. If it described everyone then every opportunity to commit a financially advantageous criminal act would be taken by everyone every chance they got.
The reason civilization holds together isn't because we pass laws and intimidate people into obeying them. The reason civilization holds together is because most people want to live within the boundaries society sets. In fact, the generalized will of the people is where those boundaries came from in the first place. Even draconic enforcement just couldn't coerce a population into overcoming impulses that assail them every hour of every day.
What we have in America and elsewhere is a economic system which fails to punish sociopathy early on. In fact, it does just the opposite, it rewards it differentially with career advancement. The people at the top ARE different- they're worse, much worse, than the average person.
I heard some woman talking on BBC a couple nights ago about how the CEOs involed in the LIBOR scandal are really no better or worse than you or I, they just have bigger opportunities. That is exactly wrong. The bigger the potential to wreak damage on larger numbers of people,. the MORE earnest and conscientious the average person becomes with dispatching his or her duties. That's called "having a conscience"
Of course from a sociobiological point of view, we can forgive her for talking this way. Having been selected as a commentator on the behaviour of the executives of banks means she has had and likely continues to have some opportunities for socializing with them. So of course she's going to use this interview as an opportunity to signal her willingness and availability for copulation with the powerful males in her tribe. Still, if anything other than her limbic system had had control of her mouth and behaviour, any of the above facts might have popped into her head and resulted in a smarter and more insightful interview.
Not everyone is a sociopath and consequently not everyone prioritizes the accumulation of personal wealth above all other values. I count the execs at Google amongst the more morally normal people in business.
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Yeah this supposes that everyone in the world puts money above all other values. In reality, that only describes a subset of humanity. If it described everyone then every opportunity to commit a financially advantageous criminal act would be taken by everyone every chance they got.
But it describes pretty much 100% of all for-profit companies, they're not a person and they don't as such have a conscience. Whatever things they claim to do for charity and the environment and whatnot is usually a PR exercise that's ultimately designed to bring them even more money. No matter what those executives want they have shareholders who want profit. They have employees that want to make profits to get their bonuses. Any corporation rewards those that make money for it, it's the essence of capital
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Any corporation rewards those that make money for it, it's the essence of capitalism which means that's what you get from top to bottom and the sociopaths that care about nothing else floats to the top. It might not be how people act, but it's how corporations act and Google definitively is one of them. Don't expect those executives to keep it from turning into just like every other big company.
In the case of Google, though, the top executives are also the largest shareholders and have so much money that financial rewards are effectively meaningless to them. Of course, many CEO types still keep trying to increase their net worth even after they've got more money than they could possibly ever spend, because it becomes the way to keep score, and they're all about winning. But Larry Page isn't a typical CEO type, his degrees are in computer engineering and computer science, and you just have to lis
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It's true that corporations are inherently sociopathic (and now in control of our elections thanks to SCOTUS) but don't think in Manichean terms, the world or something in it as purely good or evil,. because it's beneath you; you're smarter than that.
Not every corporation is compelled to interpret "maximizing shareholder value" in the crassest, most short sighted way and many don't. Google can easily make the case that net neutrality is in the long term best interests of the company. In fact, doing th
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You do know that if you do not participate in G+ they can not collect more info and you can remove any profile info you put in. Don't think of it as a G+ account, for you it's just a GMail account. It's the same one you happily used to log in and manage search history, analytics, Picasa in its time, Google API keys, Google Play, etc. Same as it was.
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Google (whom I do not work for) does seem to me to be a company apart.
You really need to open your eyes and stop buying into propaganda. I agree to a certain extent that Google puts some effort into behaving, but at the end of the day they are a for-profit company bent on creating a digital empire.
Google have pretty much lived up to the "don't be evil" slogan, a bout of WIFI panty-sniffing excepted .
Google now has a long history of disregarding privacy, and the WiFi sniffing is just one example. Other examples are not deleting email when requested by the user, the Buzz privacy fiasco, pervasive tracking (including forcing cookies on Safari via a loophole), and keeping data around for too long. Most of these problems have been addressed after public outcry, though the pervasive tracking is still there.
Comcast and Verizon and ATT are purely evil in that they want only money and the larger society can go fuck itself. They have no sense of civic duty nor do they care about the fate of this nation or its peoples , except as a PR move.
So is that why Google dodges taxes [bloomberg.com] using tax havens?
"Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
Google's income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the "Double Irish" and the "Dutch Sandwich" -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. "
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Bitch all you want about government, but they do provide essential services that everybody benefits from. If you don't think that's the case, try moving to a country without a functioning government like Somalia. When the rich dodge their taxes, it's just more burden that has to be taken up by everybody else.
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The reason civilization holds together isn't because we pass laws and intimidate people into obeying them. The reason civilization holds together is because most people want to live within the boundaries society sets.
This is exactly true, more people need to realize that. It is true in business, too. If you have to settle every detail in a contract, then it can really slow things down. If business partners can trust each other, then it makes things go faster. There's a book about that too [amazon.com].
Re:Not likely (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a significant difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. That said, it is quite true that the business environment rewards sociopaths inordinately over non-sociopaths. The actual proportion is nearly impossible to know, however, as sociopaths who succeed in business are those who have exceptional adeptness at manipulation and the spinning of fabulously intricate and entirely plausible webs of utter bullshit (while only rarely being caught doing it).
The error is in believing the current system is the cause of this, rather than coming to the true conclusion that sociopaths have an inherent advantage when it comes to concentrating power through manipulation. They are almost purpose-built (the ones who don't spend their time abducting and killing, anyway) to excel in games of social engineering, which is the basis of both business and politics.
The other error is in equating the successful businessperson with the rich in general. While the former generally belongs to the latter group, the latter group as composed of many who are not the former. The bulk of the world's concentrated wealth is more likely to be held as an accident of birth than as a result of being a highly successful sociopath, and in that they are much more likely to be average than clinically insane.
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I come to that conclusion because 1) I am in that environment and I can see the system working to reward sociopaths and 2) beyond my personal experience, I have the shared experience of friends and 3rd parties accounts. It's really not a piece of introspection, but thanks for the hate.
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Why would we want to prevent that?
Seriously... as long as there is no discrimination based on source (i.e., everyone gets the same pricing), what is the problem with tiered services?
To me, that's the crux of net neutrality, to have it similar to common-carrier status. Anyone can pay for different service levels, and the volume discount is formulaic, not negotiated.
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Look at Google Shopping's new upcoming direction.
In all fairness, can it possibly be worse than the current Google Shopping?
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It actually has helped I think.
Almost every Google ad I see is unobtrusive, Many are somewhat relevant, once in a great while clicking on the ad takes me to what I was looking for.
And Google gives me a detailed list of my history with them and allows me to remove the stuff I do not want saved. (Umm...Assuming I would ever do anything that I would want removed. Which so far has ummm never happened.)
Google, So far, has been the best massive, money making corporation I have ever come in contact with.
I am begin
Fast Networks (Score:2)
CAN be built fairly inexpensively but it has to be done with a purpose.
I've long proposed that Municipalities build their own networks, and then lease the management and fiberplant with specific parameters about things that are important to them. THEN that would provide the impedus for competition.
They could do FIBER, CABLE and Copper in one bundled set and pull it to each home. Competition from the start.
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Or better yet: The state could run 100-fiber bundles under all the state-owned roads, and let the customer decide. If you want Comcast connect to the Comcast fiber #1. If you want Verizon choose fiber #2. If you want AppleTV or MSN or Time-warner connect to fiber 3 or 4 or 5. Et cetera.
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Exactly, but why do that at the house, why not run ONE cable set to the house and everything else goes back to a CO somewhere, where it is a simple cross connect by a skilled technician.
Re:Fast Networks (Score:5, Insightful)
Or better yet: The state
And with those words, you would drive half the people of this country into hysterics. We can't even agree to a public option...I doubt highly that enough of us would agree to fund something like that no matter how beneficial we all know it would be. Look at what they're doing to NPR... [wikipedia.org]
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Sure you could. All you have to do is use precisely loaded words in carefully constructed sentences. And lie. A lot. People will buy it. People will buy anything if you lie to them long enough.
Lying works. Lying is a growth industry. Lying is the most successful sales technique the world has ever seen. It began with organized religion thousands of years ago and ended with Fox News (which is nearly indistinguishable from organized religion).
It could be done. Not ethically, perhaps, but it could be d
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Let me guess, you're into Porn and Hookers and drugs? No, those things don't lie to you at all ... NOOOOO.
I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls.
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Yes, because broadband internet in places where companies don't want to provide it, why, that's exactly as complicated as healthcare!
Sarcasm aside, it actually does seem to be that way. There are even people on here who don't think municipalities should be able to create their own networks. They feel it should be private all the way, even in the face of evidence that the private providers don't want to do it.
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Here's the difference between Municipal run Media/Internet and my solution which is FREE ENTERPRISE. IF your municipal "Cable" sucked, who could you turn to? Nobody. IF the Comcast/Time-Warner/Roadrunner/Verizon/ATT who got the 5 year lease on the plant sucked, you could fire them and replace them with someone else.
Competition is good.
The problem with Liberals AND Conservatives alike, they don't know where the boundries ought to be. The Plant to the house (last mile) is just like the Road in front of my hou
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Here's the difference between Municipal run Media/Internet and my solution which is FREE ENTERPRISE. IF your municipal "Cable" sucked, who could you turn to?
My municipality's elected representatives.
If my "free" enterprise cable internet sucked, who could I turn to? Nobody because the local cable is a private monopoly, which is the opposite of "free".
That road of which you speak, the one that is available for anyone to use, was built by the government.
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Monticello tried it already and they got their asses sued off.
By the time they won the incumbent telecom had already built their own network right out from under them.
By no means am I against municipal internet btw, I cite this as an example of just how greedy an incumbent monopoly can get.
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You answer the question and then immediately state why the answer either a) isn't workable or b) is the result of your own (or general populace) inaction.
In both cases, the reason for the problem is your municipal government. In the first case, it should be obvious because the system in its entirety is run by the municipality. In the second, you even state the reason explicitly: the "free enterprise" solution isn't really free enterprise, because your municipality's elected representatives voted to give the
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A good analogy for what they are doing is if the phone companies started charging more for dial up connections to known ISPs, or blocked them altogether back in the day.
we tend to work OK with the majority of roads being public, I think we could do OK with public infastructure for electricity, gas, water, and now internet. Not to say that the.
As for so c
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Its not feasable for more than one company to run more lines
That doesn't prevent them from doing it on occasion. Amusingly, my house has cable TV drops from both providers here. They were both installed before I moved in, so I could not give you specifics as to why they are installed, but there you have it. When I chose one provider, the guy who came out to activate the lines informed me that neither carrier would run to the other's lines, so only half my cable drops could be activated.
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I've worked in a number of CATV clusterfucks, but never seen one of those before. The fix is about 10 minutes time, and it doesn't require either company's consent.
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The solution is simple, the city owns the last mile infrastructure (preferably fiber). The ISP compete on providing service over this infrastructure. The ISPs also pay a monthly fee to the city to use their fiber.
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Yup, they screwed the pooch there.
Contrast that with a system that works: http://www.chelanpud.org/fiber-optics.html [chelanpud.org]
The system has been built-out using local bonds, and is now being restructured so that it and future improvements are self-sustaining financially. $45/mo for 50Mbps symmetrical isn't bad for a rural area, and you have a choice of private service providers; the network is provider-agnostic.
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The excuses against it are precisely the same as the excuses that would be trotted out against this, and you know it: "Why should I have to pay for it? Government only gets in the way! If the free market won't do it, that probably means that it's gonna cost too much anyway!! It's regulations, regulations are why those people can't get internet! ARGHGHGHG!!!! BARGGHGGHGHLLE!!!!!"
If you've missed the selfish, asinine streak in people these days when it comes to anything involving government doing any fu
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I think the comment was the result of conflating of the original context in which "state" was used and the idea of the Federal government as "the state."
That said, there are probably a lot of people who would disagree with a State doing that, but simply because they are trying to retain consistency with being anti-government rather than understanding the true, and different, roles which are appropriate to State governments and the national government. That is discounting, of course, those who actually have
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Oh, I've been hearing people bitch about the state (as in the state of Wisconsin) and screaming that their local municipalities should have the power and people in Madison and Milwaukee shouldn't be telling people in the small towns and villages throughout the state how to live. Perfect example, the Gogebic Taconite mining bill that was shot down in the state senate [madison.com].
The anti-government hysteria knows no bounds. I can only imagine how retarded it's going to get from here on out...
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Rephrasing is key: this is an application of States' Rights.
And I'm not a fan of socialism on the national level. It doesn't bother me on the State level, though, as that's where it belongs. It's a lot easier to hammer your State reps when they get out of line. National reps aren't accountable to voters because they believe they have a mandate up until the instant they lose their re-election bid. As such, they should have commensurately limited power over the day-to-day affairs of ordinary individuals.
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I've long proposed that Municipalities build their own networks, and then lease the management and fiberplant with specific parameters about things that are important to them
Like Utah's UTOPIA [utopianet.org]? It's on the Utah's republicans hit list, btw.
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Thats pretty awesome! One of the providers has a 100 mbps connection for $50. I get 12 mbps connection from comcast for the same rate.
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UTOPIA is great, if you can get it. The problem is that your city needs to sign on, and you and preferably several of your neighbors need to each agree to pay ~$30 a month to lease a fiber connection (or purchase the the right to use one indefinitely for ~$3000). Then you pay your ISP / IPTV / telco provider to deliver service to you over the shared Ethernet network. Build out has been relatively slow, in part because they originally projected that most customers would sign up for Internet, television, a
I want a pony (Score:5, Insightful)
I've long proposed that Municipalities build their own networks,
And the Big Operators have fought that. A few early adopters have slipped by them. Tacoma, WA built the Click Network [click-network.com] through their power PUD. But the commercial operators have put legislation in place in many jurisdictions to prevent the further spread of public networks. Where this hasn't been possible, they have recruited astroturfers to scream about the horrors of public infrastructure to frighten the public away from supporting such projects.
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Not to mention just flat out sue over it.
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I've long proposed that Municipalities build their own networks,
But the commercial operators have put legislation in place in many jurisdictions to prevent the further spread of public networks.
This isn't technically true. Democratically elected officials have been lobbied into passing legislation. If you didn't vote for incompetent crooks, this wouldn't happen.
Re:Fast Networks (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it really isn't that expensive. I put in my own fiber network for our farm, home and business. Small, but then we're smaller than Google (surprise!) and I had a very good reason. Fiber is immune to lightning strikes which are a huge problem up here on the mountain. Next I would like to lay fiber the mile and a half down to the phone company. It pushes the lightning strike problem that much further away from us.
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How expensive was it? For how much cabling?
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First, hit up people involved in the creation of a successful project: Click Network [click-network.com], Chelan Fiber, or [chelanpud.org] UTOPIA [utopianet.org].
Figure out the goals of the community leaders in the area in question. Gather the pros and cons, and write them up in a way that satisfies as many points of view as possible. Try to approach it in a manner which incorporates the typical talking points of local groups who might oppose it.
Lastly, get out and talk to people. Local politicians are usually very sensitive to pressure from within their ele
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Bah, I accidentally hit Submit instead of Edit...
That should be: Chelan Fiber [chelanpud.org]
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What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution to network neutrality is to buy up tons of dark fiber in the wake of a bubble and use it to build your own national network? Does anyone else see a problem with this?
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Yup, even if they mean right at first, their revenues will start to hiccup. Once fiber maintenance becomes a problem and the share price sours, the Page wing will make Google pull a Slashdot and want to use it to push their video (YouTube) and their "social" network (+) Mad-Crazy Fast(tm) at others' expense, while they generally continue to marketer-ize and RIAA-tize the services.
So no I don't think this will help netneut at all. Maybe it will help netneut die; it's easy to miss that last word, I guess.
Since when... (Score:2)
The real test (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real test (Score:5, Funny)
Bing will be replaced by Google and Microsoft websites will load half as quickly.
If you call and complain they'll disavow any knowledge of problems on the network and it must be Microsoft's fault.
Last mile (Score:2)
There is no dark fiber in front of my house. Google might be able to get within a mile or so, but AT&T/Comcast/Verizon aren't going to let them get any closer.
The amount that the last mile providers will charge is unrelated to their cost of providing service. If all Google had to do was to cross the street, their fees would be the same. In fact, the Google Fiber project stands to provide windfall profits to the last mile operators. It will relieve them of the need to maintain their backbone infrastruc
Re:Last mile (Score:5, Informative)
I gather you don't know anything about the Google Fiber project. They pulled last mile fiber. That was the whole point of the project: that the existing last mile was ancient, unupgraded, substandard crap, raped and abused and ignored by cable companies and telcos for the last half century, in the certain knowledge that when people decided it needed to be better, they could go crying to the government, get a HUGE handout, and pay every last dime of it out to shareholders as dividends, leaving their cable plant in exactly the same miserable state. Wash, rinse, repeat.
How do we know this? Because they've already done it [newnetworks.com] successfully.
So Google did get to the front doors of all the people in Kansas City, and Charter and AT&T couldn't stop them, because the city agreed to it. Charter and AT&T's wires are still there, but they're going to lose 90% of their customers in a day. And they deserve to. Read that link. It will make you truly angry.
Re:Last mile (Score:4, Interesting)
// So Google did get to the front doors of all the people in Kansas City, and Charter and AT&T couldn't stop them, because the city agreed to it. //
As a Kansas City-area resident, I'm afraid this is not the case. I don't know anyone that lives in Kansas City, KS that currently has access to Google Fiber services, or that has seen any trucks or workers in their neighborhood.
Google has been very short on public details with this entire project, and this launch that the article is referring to has to refer to a very limited and localized deployment.
Keep in mind that physical installation did not even begin until this past February: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytjn-5_li-I [youtube.com]
'A Google spokeswoman would not say whether the announcement actually means somebody in Kansas City will finally get a light-speed connection next week.
"We're excited to announce more information Google Fiber next week," said Jenna Wandres. "We haven't elaborated on what arriving means."'
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3711326/google-fiber-to-make-july-26-announcement.html#storylink=misearch [kansascity.com]
I'll be curious to eventually find out who has access to it, exactly, and how long it'll be before any significant portions of the city are lit up.
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Why is this informative post modded down? Oh no, reality intrudes!
Fiber? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Lightsaber or lightsabre?
Go!
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/sarcasm That's the nice thing about English -- you have options on how to spell !
Aluminium vs Aluminum
color vs colour
dialog vs dialogue
moustache vs mustache
And don't forgot the different pronunciations !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences [wikipedia.org]
--
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to pick from!" -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
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Get over it. It's the American spelling, and Google is an American company.
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I dunno, spelt is a modest source of fiber.
Reasonable price != market-building price (Score:4, Interesting)
We are still in a mode in many areas where ISPs are trying to build market share, especially with DSL. DSL took a big hit when the equal-access provisions were found to be unworkable - technology passed them by and nobody noticed - but you still see offers for $14.99 DSL service.
Look at "business rates" for DSL or cable and you will see what the real costs are. Nobody is interested in competing on price for business customers, so they do not. The result is the prices are 3-4 times the residential rates and in many areas they will not give you a "residential" (i.e., cheap) plan at a business address.
On the residential front, most of the ISPs are trying to compete on price because the service is pretty well known. What is the difference with business service? Certainly nothing that changes the real cost structure, in fact things are added which cost more for the ISP.
Where most of the "network neutrality" flap has come from is the ISPs are offering below-cost service to residential customers in an effort to still build market share. Of course, any residential user that is doing more than web surfing and reading email is costing them more in peering than they are getting from the customer on an Internet-only plan. Should be obvious why they want you on a bundled plan with cable TV and phone service. The business customer is in a market-building mode so they are charged full cost plus.
So why are the ISPs screaming? Because they boxed themselves in with below-cost pricing for residential customers. The same residential customers that are doing much more than just web surfing and reading email. They can't raise prices to their customers - they are building market share. So where are they going to recoup their real costs? You guessed it - the other end of the connection, the one with no options and the one with the deep pockets.
Could Google come in an offer service to residential customers? Maybe, but they are far more likely to offer service on their own terms to ISPs - perhaps with no peering charges at all. Google is paying nothing or almost nothing for the existing fiber - they bought it already. So their costs are already sunk into it. Would an ISP sign on with Google? If the other option is to continue to pay someone else for traffic to Google... maybe it makes sense.
Could Google compete on a residential service level? Sure, I suppose. But they would have the same costs as the ISP does for customer service (script readers in India) and physical plant maintenance (outsourced to independent contractors) and they would have to make a huge investment into local terminations - nodes where the connections to homes would be. It makes much more sense for them to offer independent Google connections bypassing the current peering arrangements to save the ISPs rather than paying the ISPs for the privilege of having eyeballs.
The advantage for Google is with a completely independent pipe to each and every ISP they can do a much better job of geographic data mining. And traffic analysis so they know the Detroit suburbs aren't going to Amazon as much as the folks in Scottsdale. There are probably hundreds of other things they can collect this way with a tap into every ISP. Probably with a router running custom Google code to facilitate this tap. It makes paying for the fiber a rounding error on the balance sheet compared with the value of the information they can collect.
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The bigger problem with DSL is that many ISPs either limit the speed so much that its useless or they have given up altogether and ceded the market to the cable companies.
If ISPs who offered ADSL actually offered the latest technology (ADSL2+) and at "maximum speed" (i.e. the best speed you can get based on how far from the ADSL kit you are) AND had DSL in more phone exchanges, it might be a better option.
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Could Google come in an offer service to residential customers? Maybe, but they are far more likely to offer service on their own terms to ISPs
The Google Fiber under discussion is residential service, launching next week in Kansas City. It's supposed to ultra high-speed connections to residential consumers at an affordable price.
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You forgot the most important aspect - no port blocking. On a business line you can run your own mail server, DNS, web server, VPNs, etc. I don't think there's a consumer connection left in this country that allows outgoing port 25 connections by default. Most block 80, 443, 21, 22, etc too. On a business connection, you are expected to be running a business, with all the various services that entails.
On a few types of business connections (T-1 and some fiber, for example) you can negotiate a service leve
Did they say Gigabit speeds? (Score:5, Funny)
Some packets are more equal than others (Score:3, Insightful)
May I point out that all packets are NOT treated alike, and haven't been for over a decade. Controlling priority and limiting heavy services are common procedures in all major networks, and users should be darned thankful for it.
The original argument that started all this nonsense was complaints that TWC and Comcast were ratcheting down services like eMule and Torrent. Then somebody speculated that they may start doing it to people like google (followed about a month later by Comcast and Verizon floating just such a plan ... probably suggested to them by somebody reading the original discussion here on /. BTW) and the /.ers went crazy and started demanding that somebody in government regulate those evil ISPs.
My advice now is the same as then: let the market work. If you drag the pols into this, you will get results that you REALLY don't want because they will do what their donors (who are NOT you) want them to do. Unintended consequences will surely follow.
Google buying dark fiber to take TWC, AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon on head-to-head is what my suggestion looks like. If they are successful, other investors will smell the blood in the water and we may find ourselves sitting in 1999-type network growth again (only this time, nobody will be dumb enough to say that profit doesn't matter).
Regulation will be the death of the break-neck innovation that has gotten us where we are. Is it fast enough yet? Of course not, but it isn't going to get faster if every decision has to go through some bureaucrats in DC.
Re:Some packets are more equal than others (Score:5, Insightful)
let the market work
That's only a viable option whenin markets with meaningful competition. Which in most jurisdictions, is just not there in the isp market.
Without competition, the only remaining control options are regulation or crossing your fingers for corporate benevolence (pretty likely, right?)... Or well, just giving up your net+phone+tv... And if you're willing to do that then power to you, but there's not enough people willing/able to make that sacrifice for the isps to care.
Government definitely fishes things up a lot.. but I'd rather a well-meaning half measure than an intentional fuckover..
What would you do for a Google Connection? (Score:2)
John Scalzi had a pretty interesting concept in "Old Man's War" and the "The Ghost Brigades" with the "Brain Pal" implant. In the second book special forces clones were literally born (adult sized) and able to talk within minutes with the implant and the net connection handling the heavy lifting, feeding information and concepts to the brain until it could do i
It's about time (Score:2)
Just like to point out that.... (Score:2)
checkmate dear summary writer?
I guess somebody read my comment (Score:2)
I wonder if this story was born out of this comment [slashdot.org] I left here on the "Google Compute Engine [slashdot.org]" story. However my point was that network neutrality becomes a non-issue with companies laying their own network infrastructure on one hand, and on the other, passing laws like Network Neutrality would HURT those companies that lay their own infrastructure, because it would force them to create uneven pricing between internal and external content from point of view of what it costs the company to move data interna
We need more Google Fibre (Score:2)
Because Internet regulations are currently full of shit.
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Yay! Let's hope they can put those whining, money grubbing telecom companies out of business.
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Actually, tax payers usually don't own the rights of way. Rather the rights of way is over land owned by private people and leased or taken by easement either voluntarily or involuntarily by government for utilities. Tax payers have little to do with it.
I know a little bit (re-read "lot") about this as I own a a fair bit of land with rights of way for the utilities over it. The joke is, for much of it, most of it, I'm the only one it serves since I'm the last mile and a half.
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So who are these people who own property and aren't taxpayers?
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Even they cannot typically hide from property taxes.
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This has nothing to do with the dark fiber they bought. They bought dark fiber in order to become a national backbone provider so they qualified for free peering agreements with all of the existing providers. Otherwise paying for transit for Youtube would have bankrupted them.
This is about brand new fiber they've installed in Kansas City, fiber to the premises. Yes the whiny telcos have sued to prevent some municipalities from pulling fiber. They failed to prevent Kansas City from allowing Google to pul
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"Thanks, but I'd take Google any day, over that shit."
WTF -- I've been ranked a lowly Troll for speaking my mind against Google You do know they want to know what's in your fridge, they wat to know what's in your closet and they want to know what you read and what you do.
And if you can sit there and tell me that's preferable -- THEN FUCK YOU.
Frankly -- maybe we need a civil war, where we can discuss this shit OFFLINE.
To me Freedom from unlawful searches and freedom to seek my own knowledge and conduct my bu
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And I'm not saying Comcast or AT&T is any better.
But it least they don't publicly productize it.
To them, the beholder is the Gov't, who are nasty enough.
Google has no Masters and the Gov't protecting them as a Private Citizen.
So they have no one to answer to as an authority to mortally fear.
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Wasn't me that moderated you, so I dunno what you're yelling at me for. I replied, so I can't moderate (even though I currently have mod points).
Answer me this. Do you have a cell phone? 'cause I don't. Do you have a television? 'cause I don't. Do you read a newspaper? 'cause I don't. Do you listen to the radio? 'cause I don't. Do you have credit card debt? 'cause I don't. Do you have student loans? 'cause I don't. Do you have a car loan? 'cause I don't.
I have very very few corporate masters,
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And what is clear exactly? And who owns it?
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Um, if you think that isn't happening now you are completely out of touch with reality.
The biggest problem with conspiracy theorists is the misguided assumption that they think their lives are worth monitoring.