Google Fiber Expands To Olathe, Kansas 120
skade88 writes "If you are one of the lucky 125,000 people who live in Olathe, Kansas, the rest of us congratulate you on your new amazing $70.00/month, 1 GB Google fiber service. Google also announced they will be letting us know about further cities that will be wired up with Google Fiber service soon. This shows that Google Fiber is not just a sandbox they are going to keep in Kansas City, Google Fiber is a real business they will keep expanding. In other exciting news, the FCC wants to see at least one community in each state with 1 Gigabit home service by 2015."
1 GB Google fiber service (Score:5, Funny)
So 1 GB? Thats only 8 seconds at 1 Gb/s. Now thats a low data cap, or a bad summery.
How do they make profit ? (Score:4, Funny)
1GB/s line, only 70 bucks / month
How do they make any profit ??
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In sweden i pay $9 for 100/100mbit fiber, so i'm pretty sure google is raking in a profit for $70 a month even if its for 1gbit/s.
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My guess is that the base cost is in your rent or something, normal prices seem to be 250-400 SEK = $40-60/month. Or as wikipedia would say, [[citation needed]]
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Because upstream traffic doesn't actually cost all that much. Google doesn't have competitive reasons to make their service inferior. That is to say Google is more likely to enter into peering and co-location agreements with companies that cable may avoid (Netflix, various Video CDNs like Limelight). Netflix for instance is going to be a superior experience on Google because Google is willing to directly interconnect.
In the grand scheme of things last mile infrastructure is where the majority of the cost
Re: How do they make profit ? (Score:2)
I'm sure you're right, but I think it's worth noting that this probably isn't much more expensive to deliver than FiOS or something. At a certain point the speed doesn't matter. It's the same thing they did with Gmail when that was first released.
First of all, when it's such a limited rollout, you can massively oversubscribe. I have FiOS with a 50mb package and I can barely saturate THAT, at 0.5% of these speeds. No web servers can deliver at that speed -- not even the major streaming sites like Netflix or
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And that is sort of ok. You should always assume that your ISP can and will listen in on the traffic, and take measures to make sure this is not a problem. If not your ISP directly, someone can easily make them or on of their employees do it.
Browse on sites with HTTPS, make sure your other protocols are using SSL or some other published, open and scrutinized encryption. If you really need to hide your destination, use Tor.
I don't think Google is any worse than the other ISPs in this respect, and I think G
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I bet she also thinks that the highway speed limit is 100 miles when she drives in Canada.
Not only that, but she can drive it in less than 12 parsecs.
Re:1 GB Google fiber service (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, there really is some ignorance towards basic computing terms out there.
If the service was 1 GB/s, then that'd be 8 Gb/s. Let alone that the fine summary says "1 GB Google fiber service", so is wrong twice over by using B and no '/s' or 'ps'.
All laughing aside, data transfer speed is rated in bits per second (bps or b/s), while data storage capacity is rated in Bytes (B), with a capitalised prefix T/era, G/iga, M/ega. There's a huge difference between B/b, and even major stores which sell lots of computer equipment get them mixed up. I'm sure I don't need to preach to the converted, as they say, but I've started so I'll finish..
I'm often annoyed by things like "portable 500 Gb drive" which if such an ad was correct should only have 62.5 GB of space. The same the other way around where Internet (capital I) service providers sometimes use B when advertising speeds. It doesn't help when the idiots who should know what they're on about say the wrong things for such simple matters.
Maybe it should've said "125 MB/s Google fiber service" (which I know is the wrong way to report data speed, unless you're trying to simplify how fast you can pillage the Internet with your download speed in an easy-to think of way), but then that would confuse the poor common IT-illiterate users into thinking that it was wasn't "big" and "fast".
Likewise, but on a tangent, years ago the memory in a computer wasn't a large selling factor, but now laptops are advertised with the memory size before the drive space. This can only help to confuse users when they see "Intel Pentium Dual Core 4GB 500GB 14" HD LED..." for sale. Previously the standard used to be drive space before memory size, and sometimes is still done that way today. No fixed standard. Does it have a 4 GB drive with 500 GB memory?! Of course not, but I'm sure some might still ask the question in bewilderment.
For the record, I've only got 30 Mb/s service here in the UK from Virgin.
so is the FCC going to pay my bill? (Score:2)
then I'll order it now, during the lunch break.
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Wait, who are we trolling for today?
Is this the Facebook Burson Marsteller team, the Microsoft Scroogled group or the Apple Waggener Edstrom rapid response crew?
I can't even tell who's paying for this FUD any more.
Wow, amazing (Score:5, Funny)
This is incredible.
Korea and Japan must be looking on in envy. Why, by the year 17000, over 50% of US homes will have a fast internet connection! Won't that be something!
Re:Wow, amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the providers in South Korea and Japan have figured out that they have a market for the out of date networking equipment they are replacing.
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"Korea and Japan must be looking on in envy. "
Nobody looks on Kansas in envy, nobody.
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What about North Dakota?
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If anyone lived in North Dakota, they probably would.
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North Dakota is booming. People are moving there in droves.
And it has some of the lowest unemployment on earth. 1-2%
2 years (Score:3)
That's a real lofty goal.
And how much will this cost taxpayers in the for of subsidies for the large telecoms?
Re:2 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people think all taxes are bad. In this case I would say that if Google is the only company working to provide 1Gig service, then any tax money going to Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, CenturyLink and so on needs to be pulled back and redistributed to those companies that are actually providing 1Gig service as part of their funds for continuing to build out the service. If one or more of the large telecoms wants in on the funds, they can demonstrate that they are actually rolling out relevant improvements.
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Well also don't forget we have already paid for this service via taxes to these companies for decades, since the early Clinton years.
All those little fees got paid to the service providers to keep the network updated, in the end though they just pocketed the money.
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Which is why the money should go to the company the does the work first. Make the company take a loan to do the project and when it's complete, pay it off for them. If they don't complete the project, make them keep paying off the loan.
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Or just make it a utility since the tax payers are already paying for it.
Here in Texas we got one company that manages the actual power lines then resellers that sell directly to the consumer and have to compete with each other.
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I'm perfectly fine with that. I'd even argue to have the local village/municipal put fiber/power/water/sewer to every home and have a central patching building for the service provider to connect to. Part of every bill would then go to the city for further upkeep. This way you don't have to worry about companies having right of way to bury lines and monopoly situations.
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Hey, don't knock it. At that rate, I should be getting Google Fiber sometime around 2042.
You could get faster (Score:2)
All it takes is $$, or $$$, or $$$$, or maybe even $$$$$ or $$$$$$. With enough money you can run your own fiber.
Re:One community in each state (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only are they talking one community per state, they are counting each suburb as a different community, so it seems to me they are saying it will be years before it moves beyond the suburbs of capital cities. Which is a real shame because obviously this is a great ISP. Almost makes me wish I lived in Kansas City but... nah.
In 2002 they had residential 100mbit symmetrical connections for ~$50/month in Sweden. Still cant get anything near that in most of the US. But it's good to see google doing something about it, just a little frustrating that it's obviously going to be so long before this sort of thing is available where I live.
Can we share? (Score:1)
I'll take 100Mbit for $7
Olathe (Score:5, Informative)
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The terms for the first roll out is publicly available. There is no such clause fortunately (or unfortunately if are not a fan of google)
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Not really seeing the point (Score:1, Redundant)
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"What can you do with 1 Gigabit Google Fibre that you can't do with 20Mbps DSL or 50Mbps Cable internet? "
Do you know how big these HD Porn Siterips are?
Brazzers is 443.08 GB, it would be ages before you can jack off with 20MB/s.
Yes, because obviously you can only masturbate when you have a 100% complete copy of every piece of porn ever made.
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Fiber is being rolled out in Denmark too, mostly in the country-side because the old electric utilities (owned by the residents) decided to have a go at it. So I too have been wondering about this. But if you have 3 TV sets/house streaming on demand in a good quality, you're going to need more than 20 Mbit/s. And with most of the ADSL solutions, it's a hit or miss whether they can actually deliver up to what they promise.
I have a friend who moved to the middle of a 300k residents city and his 20 Mbit ADSL c
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multi user virtual reality?
Stream every single tv on the world at once?
Get new downloads even faster?
You know what guy, stick with your 56k modem.
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What can you do on an ethernet connection that you can't do on a serial connection?
What can you do on a 128k DSL connection that you can't do on a 56k dial-up connection?
What can you do on a DVD that you can't do on a CD?
I can keep going, but I'm sure you get the point. It's not about what you can do _right now_, but about what you can do tomorrow. And in the meantime, you can do the same things can do today much faster.
Gotta look to the future, not muck about in the present.
I find it interesting .... (Score:5, Interesting)
From Kansas City,
1500 miles to Google (Pacific ocean)
1000 miles to Atlantic ocean
660 miles to Canada
660 miles to Gulf of Mexico
And is uniquely situated, split between Kansas and Missouri.
Really does make for a great statement to grow the broadband infrastructure from the center out.
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Geographically it may be close to the center, but I suggest that an alternative metric be used to compute the centroid, one that accounts for population density and per-capita network traffic volume. Even so, such a centroid may not be a particularly good candidate for a starting point, in as much as it makes little sense to claim that a good estimate for the roll of a fair six-sided die is 3.5 because that is the expected value of the outcome.
Cost aside, it would make more sense to build such a network in
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Kansas City is actually close to the mean center of the U.S. population [wikipedia.org], which is near Springfield, MO.
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1GB Internet AND legal weed!
If you're lucky, the download will complete before you forget why you started it.
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yes, you are a moron. Wiki Sweden vs USA and realize Sweden is 21 times smaller then the US by landmass.
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Sweden is slightly larger than California.
6.13% to be exact.
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High speed internet? You're right. We wont ever get that. By the time we all have 1Gb/s service, the rest of the world will be cruising 100 Gb/s.
Explain to me how its ok that we have the slowest, least advanced, internet industry in the entire western world, AND WE INVENTED THE DAMN THING?!
Small towns of 10k people in Finalnd get 200 Mb/s hookups at 40$ month. For 40$/mo in the Us, you can get, maybe, 20 Mb/s. If you live in a big city, its easier, but thats only about 37% of our population. For the rest, t
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But I'm just shooting from the hip. I don't have any facts or figures beyond that people in socialist countries claim to be so much better off than everyone else while they devour their seed corn and still manage to have a lower standard of living than less socialist and even outright FAS
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so. much. wrong. with. moronic. post.
you are an idiot. no really.
a class AAA, absolutely clueless, completely uninformed moron, who has exposed his own ignorance about his own nation, about infrastructure, and about the most basic of facts of foreign nations.
the US is the king of subsidies. subsidies to companies that repackage and resell us access to the very resources they theoretically merely hold in trust for us. how nice of you to ignore that.
Lower standard of living? Maybe if you cherry pick the poore
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In all fairness, that is only one of the factors. Another pretty big one is likely the artificially high prices on anything that has that "enterprise" prefix on a product description, or anything that could be used by some pesky upstart.
It could also be the plethora of red tape and lawsuits that seem to be our thing here in the US.
Honestly, I'd put the landmass at a distant 3rd, at best.
This probably explains.... (Score:3)
... why Cox is buying up all the small CATV systems in Kansas that it can.
Re:Oh really? (Score:2)
whoa...
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"I forbid thee," said the dictator. (Score:1)
> the FCC wants to see at least one community in each state with 1 Gigabit home service by 2015.
Aren't these the same helpers who spent a decade forbidding fiber to the house "to help us"?
This is perfectly doable (Score:2)
What's the catch? (Score:1)
Admittedly as someone who has not really followed the google fiber thing, what is the catch? Does google get to monitor all of your traffic and pop up ads on your PC or sell that information to advertisers? Do you have to accept their CA so they can also monitor all of your SSL traffic? Do they port-block, or block VPN?
Enough about bandwidth, what about latency? (Score:2)
Low hanging fruit. (Score:3)
"If you are one of the lucky 125,000 people who live in Olathe, Kansas, the rest of us congratulate you on your new amazing $70.00/month, 1 GB Google fiber service.
They can afford it.
The median income for a household was $61,111, and the median income for a family was $68,498 (these figures had risen to $72,634 and $82,747 respectively as of a 2007 estimate. Males had a median income of $45,699 versus $30,217 for females. The per capita income for the city was $24,498. About 2.4% of families and 4.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.1% of those under age 18 and 4.1% of those age 65 or over.
The median age in the city was 32.9 years. 30% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 32.1% were from 25 to 44; 23.1% were from 45 to 64; and 7.2% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.5% male and 50.5% female.[2010 Census Data]
Olathe, Kansas [wikipedia.org]
The 2012 Median Income of US households was $45,018 per annum.
Household income in the United States [wikipedia.org]
Olathe is 20 miles southwest of Kansas City.
In Kansas City, Google offers three tiers of service. The baseline fiber installation fee is $300, or $25 per month for 12 months. After paying that amount, Kansas City residents are guaranteed seven years of free broadband Internet service at current national âoeaverageâ speeds. The second tier costs $70 per month for the super-fast Internet service, and the top tier, which includes Google's TV service, costs $120 per month. The $300 installation fee is waived for the top two tiers.
Google Fiber Expanding Superfast Internet Service to Olathe, Kansas [time.com]
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Oh, the humanity! (Score:1)
1 GB = 1 Gigabyte, a measure of data
1 Gb/s = 1 Gigabit per second, a measure of data rate
1 MB = 1 Megabyte, a measure of data
1 mB = 1 millibyte, a measure of data that doesn't exist
This isn't grammar, it actually changes the meaning of your useless, ranting post. Get it right!
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I live in Olathe (Score:1)
I live in Olathe and we have had fiber to the curb for a few years. I had 25 up/down for a while and downgraded it to 10/10 to save cost. I didn't notice a huge difference other than large files. Of course the difference between 25 and 10 is pretty small maybe with gb I would find new ways to use the internet that I had not considered before.
1 gigabit great, $70 per month, not great (Score:2)
Isn't the high cost the reason so many people hate Comcast, Time Warner, etc? $70 is a lot for Internet, for a business it would be fine but for home use that's way expensive.
Dollars spent for the first bit are the best spent (Score:2)
I literally have fiber in my back yard. Thank you SureWest.
Can choose Comcast. Piss on you Comcast.
ATT uverse or DSL. Thank you for the good $/bit ratio.
GOOG fiber is coming soon. Hype and price, no thanks. Though the 300 dollar for 5mb/s service offer is tempting.
You are parched, how
Can't wait! (Score:2)
I live in Olathe - Don't get too excited (Score:1)
There is not yet one inch of Google fiber actually run here in Olathe. I figure minimum 6 months before they start laying it, and several years before it is available to more than a few.
In that time much can change.