Kansas City Was First To Embrace Google Fiber, Now Its Broadband Future Is 'TBD' (vice.com) 178
Five years after the opportunity arose in 2011 for Kansas City to become the first community to pilot Google Fiber, expansion of the gigabit per second service has come to a screeching halt. Kaleigh Rogers from Motherboard writes about how Kansas City's broadband future is "to be determined." From the report: Thousands of customers in KC who had pre-registered for guaranteed service when Fiber made it to their neighborhood were given their money back earlier this year, and told they may never get hooked up. Fiber cycled through two CEOs in the last 10 months, lost multiple executives, and has started laying off employees. Plans to expand Fiber to eight other American cities halted late last year, leaving the fate of the project up in the air. I recently asked Rachel Hack Merlo, the Community Manager for Google Fiber in Kansas City, about the future of the expanding the project service there, and she told me it was "TBD." Kansas City expected to become Google's glittering example of a futuristic gig-city: Half a decade later, there are examples of how Fiber benefitted KC, and stories about how it fell short. Thousands of customers will likely never get the chance to access the infrastructure they rallied behind, and many communities are still without any broadband access at all. Many are now left wondering: is that it?
This is due to gummint involvement (Score:2)
I learned that Google Fiber was simply taking advantage of existing huge federal government fiber optic infrastructure in KC and other cities where they offered it. Since there was already a substantial fiber optic hub serving that city, the Google Fiber addition would not impose a significant bandwidth burden to it. (I just made up that last part, but the government facility stuff appears to be true.)
Perhaps recent changes in the Commander in Chief have resulted in changes to how these fiber optic assets a
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Well, yeah - I thought it was pretty well known that all Google was doing was lighting up dark fiber which was already in place.
Have they actually rolled out new fiber anywhere?
Re:This is due to gummint involvement (Score:5, Insightful)
Have they actually rolled out new fiber anywhere?
Who knows. They don't share any plans or thinking. They're as tight lipped as every other telecom.
I recall getting shouted down because I said Google wasn't any better than the incumbents and that they'd cherry-pick the better neighborhoods and leave the rest in the dark. Some Google fanboi insisted they'd wire the ghettos and show everyone how it's done.
The truth is that Google's incentives are as fouled up as the traditional providers. They all want the easy-to-reach customers that have lots of disposable income. Comcast et al. want to sell expensive bundles to a captive audience and Google wants lucrative data about people with money. None of these parties have any incentive to stretch their systems beyond dense, high income urban areas.
Small, independent operators motivated to light as many properties as possible as cheaply as possible could solve this problem, but they have no hope getting through the regulatory mine field and the incumbent obstacles. So here we sit in our balkanized country with mountains of rules and regulations, fat government blessed monopolies and costly, limited pathetic Internet service, getting scrutinized with a digital microscope because we have only a handful monster operators, vertically integrated from your POP all they way up to the NSA and everything in between, to choose from.
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why did you post this as AC good sir? it's intelligent and cogent, and precisely correct.
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You seem to have forgotten what the C in AC stands for. Not to pick on the person but most certainly their are crap corporations out there like Google who will absolutely fire you for expressing an opinion their corporate marketing team do not approve of ie https://theintercept.com/2017/... [theintercept.com] and http://www.smh.com.au/technolo... [smh.com.au] and https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] and https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] and, well, enough is enough. Whilst I can write ESAD Google and the big shit at Alphabet, no it is not a j
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Google's incentives are as fouled up
I don't know that I'd call it fouled up. Google's incentives are pretty clear: Create the most profit possible. They're a company after all and that's kind of a company's whole gig.
That's why leaving essential services to unregulated industries is a bad idea: Even when the companies are acting in good faith, their incentives are not aligned with the incentives of the populace. And now that broadband is close to being labeled and essential service (I believe it even already has that label in some jurisd
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The companies keep taking the handouts, doing a fraction of what they claimed they were going to do with the money and pocketing the rest, and then turn around with their hands out again the next time the citizens complain about lack of connectivity in remote areas.
Huh. Funny. Here in the US, we have a similar history. [irregulators.org] Companies were given billions to expand fiber optic connections, but there was no political will to enforce the agreements. AT&T deployed UVerse over old copper cables and said that as long as there was a "fiber node" without 1/2 mile of the location, that location was "fiber connected." Other companies sunk the money into cellular networks and said that cell phone services count as home broadband.
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I don't know anybody who has dark fiber running to their house. Who would run fiber to a home and not light it up?
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Running all new wiring to every home, in every neighborhood, in every city, is a boondoggle of epic proportions. It's an enormous expense that no private business can justify.
They could justify it, if they could use it to provide a competitive advantage to other LOB, or at least rent it on their own terms to other providers like Netflix. But that would be beyond evil - even worse than not having a diversity hiring program - so instead we're all enjoying the excellent services provided by existing ISP and their crumbling networks.
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As such, especially given how many of our tax dollars were sunk into building it,
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Furthermore, we could recognize that the function of the Internet is now much closer to city sewage
I don't think this is true. There are many different use cases for internet and I don't see why they should be treated the same. For instance, at work we essentially flood an internet link with data that we send to The Clouds (we use more than one cloud because it's easier than making a decision). For maybe $500/month the company could get dedicated links (such as DirectConnect) but since we can get by with the regular internet access at a flat rate, the bandwidth is maxed out 24x7, and fuck the idiots who
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You seem to be confused about the relevance of anti-net-neutrality arguments to conversations about public infrastructure is strange. You're also using a tired and fallacious argument for doing so; NN isn't "all bytes are equal," it's "don't prioritize based on endpoint". Now perhaps we can return to discussing putting pipes in the ground without your dragging in the topic of what to do with them afterwards.
wat (Score:2)
You seem to be confused about the relevance of anti-net-neutrality arguments to conversations about public infrastructure is strange.
protip: don't accuse people of being confused if you can't manage to write a proper sentence
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Yep, writing a sentence from both ends is a pretty bad move. So you could pick "You seem to be confused about the relevance of anti-net-neutrality arguments to conversations about public infrastructure." or "the relevance of anti-net-neutrality arguments to conversations about public infrastructure is strange."
And then you can fuck off because you're only trolling here anyway.
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And then you can fuck off because you're only trolling here anyway.
I'm defending a point of view that is not shared by a majority of users. This is not the same as trolling, and if one day you grow a pair and dare raise actual points instead of re-vomiting what others have said countless times before, you'll understand.
Re: This is due to gummint involvement (Score:2)
In Kansas City Google only ran fiber to the home of people that signed up for their service. And only in 'fiberhoods' where enough people signed up for their service to make it worth the expense of installing the infrastructure in that area.
Wow, imagine if legacy ISPs were allowed to do that... only run cable to houses/neighborhoods where it was to the company's advantage!
Re: This is due to gummint involvement (Score:4, Insightful)
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No. It was due to crony cable companies whining how unfair it is to have to compete with low prices and great service.
Not because of socialism, but rather the lack of it where companies run how regulation works and weaker republican friendly goverments who want to the their best effort to make sure this does not change as that would be evil communism.
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Perhaps recent changes in the Commander in Chief have resulted in changes to how these fiber optic assets are being used and accounted for?
Or perhaps Google has no way to make money on this since citizens demand net neutrality as well as high speed and zero downtime, but instead of considering that you fall back on your default narrative, which is to blame Trump?
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.. seriously?
- High speed: You think that providing high speed is an unreasonable demand of a business whose sole purpose is providing high speed? I'm sure McDonald's could be more profitable too if you buy a Happy Meal and they only give you the drink.
- Zero downtime: Not quite as dumb as the previous, but its still pretty expected that any major service provider has minimal downtime, especially if they're providing to commercial customers.
- Net neutrality: Well this is your only suggestion that isn't
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Dude, don't tell people to think before they post, especially if you're going to miss their point entirely.
As it happens, the point here is that we're going to be stuck with terrible internet connections at vastly slower speed than they could because the companies that could make things better (like Google) are shackled by regulations that make the ISP business not enticing.
Unless we open the door to having two speeds for data delivery over internet, we're stuck with the slow one.
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If you look at countries which have adopted true net neutrality, where national infrastructure is lawfully available to anyone wishing to use it, you will find better speeds and lower prices than the US. That seems to indicate your entire argument is not only wrong, but at odds with what you actually want out of this. Which is weird. I wonder what happened to you to make you support something by your own admission is against your interests? Ignorance is a tempting answer, but it can't be the only factor
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The fact that there's better speeds and lower price can be explained by other considerations, such as having a much smaller area to cover and/or a higher population density. For instance, Texas alone is roughly twice the size of Japan but has 1/6 of its population. Montana is the same size as Germany, but its population is 80x smaller.
Unless you have data about the speed and price of internet before and after net neutrality was implemented in those countries that you do not name, it's probably best to dial
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As it happens, the point here is that we're going to be stuck with terrible internet connections at vastly slower speed than they could because the companies that could make things better (like Google) are shackled by regulations that make the ISP business not enticing.
Then the ISP can get out of the last mile line business. As long as they own the pipes to the houses, they have a legal means of cutting off any sort of competition so they can put up with all sorts of "stifling" regulations.
Or, if we're going to grant a defacto monopoly/duopoly, then that monopoly/duopoly should not be able to stick it to consumers because consumers have no choice.
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If you have been paying attention - Google is a private company on paper - but actually has a mission statement written by a three letter agency. It has always been evil. Most slogans are the opposite ...
Underestimation (Score:2)
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It's funny because in San Antonio, Google is sending free shirts to advertise the incoming google ISP. Of course, it says the t-shirts are coming in 2-4 months and no eta on when the actual ISP is coming.
Infrastructure costs money (Score:2)
Infrastructure costs money. That's how politicians get greased, streets get paved and licensed monopolies come into being. Public good, improving service have nothing to do with that so they're all secondary to how much can they charge for it.
Obviously, costs exceeded expected revenue in this case.
KC Resident here (Score:5, Interesting)
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Comcast and others have been bribing public officials to make sure repairs do not get completed or put up additional red tape so delays are inherent. I do not think Google was strong enough to stand up to these guys as yes repairing a crushed conduit does require a permit and who else happens to be in the same pipes under your sidewalk? You guessed it COMCAST and AT&T. You bet they can just say no to the city claiming they do not approve yada yada for many years and Google would need to hire some lawyer
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Google could literally buy all of these incumbents with its spare change. Stop being a partisan fuck Google fanboy.
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Yeah, it was pretty painful waiting for Fiber. The deadline kept getting pushed. Eventually they did it and its awesome. I just wish all of KC could get it.
Here's the thing that baffles me though. WHY DO THEY KEEP ADVERTISING IT!? Seriously. I see ads on facebook and on billboards begging for people to sign up for Google Fiber when they can't.
Help me out here... (Score:2)
Is the business model just not there? FTTP services are shuttering a lot these days...what's the issue?
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And this is why the last mile infrastructure should be a public utility. The PUD, or similar local authority, owns, installs, and maintains the last mile infrastructure. The residents then have the choice of picking any number of ISPs, Television providers, and phone providers that then run over that infrastructure.
I've done a fair bit of work in both Douglas and Chelan counties. In both counties, their PUD provides FTTP to virtually every residential and business address in the county. The residents then h
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As long as you're paying $50/mo to a private company to relay that $10/mo to the government to maintain the service, I think it's okay with conservatives.
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The issue is: why provide better service for less money when you can just squeeze the customers out of more money with the same infrastructure because of your lovely cable monopoly? It's the same rut which caused the electric power companies in the US in the first half of the XXth century to have pitifully crap service until the US Government got tired of the situation and started the TVA and their ilk.
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Google has never been about maintaining existing customers. Its always been about getting new customers. In a rapidly expanding market its "good business" to do things this way. You can't run an ISP this
Success (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is Google Fiber specifically or from another company, the project was a total succeeds. In my neighborhood, access speeds went from being around 20-30mbps on the top end to Gigabit through CenturyLink. Countless other ISPs have all started offering gigabit class service due to the pressure that Google Fiber caused. Google brought competition, and the market was forced to react. (almost) everyone wins! Except those smucks still stuck in areas that have government restrictions on what can/cant be made available in their areas.
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No, it wasn't (Score:2)
If it is Google Fiber specifically or from another company, the project was a total succeeds. In my neighborhood, access speeds went from being around 20-30mbps on the top end to Gigabit through CenturyLink. Countless other ISPs have all started offering gigabit class service due to the pressure that Google Fiber caused. Google brought competition, and the market was forced to react. (almost) everyone wins! Except those smucks still stuck in areas that have government restrictions on what can/cant be made available in their areas.
Uh, no dude. It wasn't.
A small section of the country wins, and every other community in the nation loses, because the incumbents were able to push Google out of the market.
It only goes to show that the carriers could give us all broadband, and would even probably make money from doing that.
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The other communities lose doubly so, because with gigabit speeds becoming 'the norm' in some places, websites and downloads and streams will become increasingly difficult to use on slower speeds.
Squirrel! (Score:4, Interesting)
Google time and again hops into area with grand fanfare, claiming it will revolutionize an industry. The pattern however is that within a year or few when the fanfare dies down they lose interest and chase the next shiny object. Even if they come out with a new service I lust for, I would just be cynical and skeptical due to a long history of failing to follow through.
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Google time and again hops into area with grand fanfare, claiming it will revolutionize an industry.
As darkain said above [slashdot.org], Google did revolutionize this industry. Gigabit fiber to the home isn't ubiquitous by any means, but when Google Fiber kicked off it was nonexistent. Lots of areas in the country do now have access to it, and I don't think that would have happened without Google jumping in.
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False. Verizon FIOS was doing the same thing first and better and ultimately suffered the same fate in stalled rollout.
No, they weren't. FiOS was still installing BPONs, which weren't capable of gigabit download speeds, and couldn't get anywhere close to gigabit uploads. Does FiOS offer symmetric gigabit connections anywhere, even today? Not as far as I can tell.
BAD CEO at Google these days (Score:2)
Google is for all intents and purposes, dead and will go the same route as Yahoo.
What is needed now, is for a new site to come up with better tech in a different arena, and while they have a great name, drift into Google's space.
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Re: BAD CEO at Google these days (Score:2)
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Re: BAD CEO at Google these days (Score:2)
Why does Google suck at execution? (Score:2)
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Because everybody working there wants to be the person to come up with the next great idea. Nobody wants to spend time implementing somebody else's idea.
Tibbadoo! (Score:2)
In a world plagued with three letter acronyms, I suggest that the more common ones should be converted into full fledged words by means of stuffing them with vowels as required to make them easy to pronounce. Are ya with me?
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I do that all the time. Confuses the shit out of people. David who? It's DVD, you knobwad!
Google vs a toddler (Score:5, Funny)
What's the difference between Google and a toddler?
A toddler doesn't get bored with its toys so quickly.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even the mighty Donald Trump couldn't get a plan for genuinely high speed internet build in America, not as long as the lobbyists for Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and other dinosaur ISPs are so powerful.
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What makes you think it would be any better under government initiatives?
Everywhere I have been in the world, the road networks have been oversubscribed and under maintained - in the US you have bridges collapsing because of poor maintenance and standards. In most cities, rush hour means gridlock. Pot holes and third parties digging up roads left, right and centre is a common issue.
I don't see how putting the government in charge would really solve this.
The best idea is what New Zealand currently do - we
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Government does just fine for my water, sewer, electricity and gas.
None of that is Federal.
We are talking about a national fiber rollout here. Thats Federal. What does the Federal government do well? They are busy arguing over what your rights are while bombing the shit out of the middle east.
If the Federal government managed your drinking water then eventually things like the Flint catastrophe would happen on a national scale, ad even if you saw it coming you wouldnt have a voice. A Flint catastrophe is averted every year somewhere in the country because people have
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I don't think you really need a "national" fiber rollout. Most of the problems residential fiber is trying to solve are last mile and very local in scope. That's too many details for any kind of national rollout to manage without an overwhelming project management bureaucracy.
The best contribution would be a Federal law that defines a municipality's right to build local fiber networks to the home and the nature of the services they could provide. You'd eliminate some opposition by declaring that municipa
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They will also lobby the Federal government to put limits on the State governments. You can't win going down this road because this road is the wrong direction. Its backwards.
The Local governments should be putting limits on the State governments, which should be putting limits on the Federal government. Going about it backwards disenfranchises the People. There is only one Federal election. Your Federal voice i
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My line of thinking is that it's relatively easy to get a state law passed pre-empting municipalities from building a network infrastructure and this has been the tactic the cable companies have used.
However, if a national law was proposed *allowing* municipalities to build networks, it would override state level pre-emption laws and be much more visible and difficult for cable companies to block, especially if it contained built-in limitations on what those networks could do.
The cable companies' main objec
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Yup, Detroit seems to have done well with water...
And wasn't there a massive issue with brownouts in California a few years back?
And I hear you have ridiculous "ownership" laws in the US on water that has fallen from the sky in many locations, so you can't capture it for your own use?
Sounds like you are doing swell with your government stuff there...
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You can capture water for your own use in CA, but without a permit you can not build large artificial structures to hold it. And it has nothing to do with municipal water supply.
So yep, government is doing just fine.
Trump doesn't really care about infrastructure (Score:2)
What I'm saying is don't count on Trump & Co to accomplish anything in regards to infrastructure. You won't get government funded infrastructure from him, he's already said he won't do it.
The problem here is that broadband (Score:5, Insightful)
TL;DR: Municipal broadband for the win. Anyone who complains about socialism gets shouted down. Enough already. It's too valuable for it not to be a public utility. It's right up there with water and electricity.
Do some ballot measures... (Score:5, Interesting)
First pass a resolution to build out fibre in the rest of the city yourself with an appropriate bond measure.
Create a special utility to manage it. During build out it will be it's own independent company and contractor but will later be turned into a public utility. It will have the power of the city to tear out streets in the middle of the night and to work 24 hours a day in certain circumstances. Use many subcontractors and don't require unions. Use your union guys to inspect the work and maybe work in difficult areas. Build it out one small section at a time per contractor. Let the contractors compete and use the appropriate contractor for each section.
Last invite providers to install trunks into your faciliy at their cost and under your rules. Customers are required to buy their own city approved optical interface equipment per house and to pay a one time $500 hook up fee to have the equipment installed.
The whole thing will be paid off in ten to fifteen years and the city can either keep the money coming in or reduce everyone's bill.
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Fuck yeah!! ^ This guy civics.
Basically, all we need from the feds is to get out of the way, or use them as muscle if corrupt state government keeps cities from being able to legally do this. (And really, before we do that, we should just start voting in our state elections so that they don't have to be as corrupt anymore.)
So, like every other google service (Score:2)
Oh, look, Google got bored of something again and dumped it. /something grumble google reader
Fast Internet (Score:3)
I find it interesting that many people here are complaining that Google and other telecoms are only focusing on high income "cherry picked" areas to provide Internet. It costs a ton of money to run fiber, what do they expect? If you want it run to everyone it really should be municipal...
However, either way..
Speaking from personal experience, even if you offer broadband internet access for a regular price of $19.95 to poorer apartment complexes you will only get a few subscribers. It is very counter-intuitive, since you would expect to get a large number of subscribers.
I was involved in a local ISP that was doing exactly this over a long period of time marketed to a large number of different apartment complexes with residents across the economic spectrum. At first it was heavily marketed to lower income areas since the initial thought was that they were being ignored by the bigger companies. However, after an extremely low response, the only ones we got more than a few subscribers from were the ones with middle class or higher residents on average (and we got many, many subscribers from those higher income complexes.)
After further research, many of hose poorer households either only had internet through their phones (I'm assuming for cost reasons) or, would just pay a much higher price to the cable company for internet access since they already had cable television. As a side note, many of the poorer households that had internet through the cable company were paying hundreds of dollars for their TV service, but, were struggling in other areas.
Based on my experience, if google or anyone tried to roll out fiber to the home to everyone and focused on poorer neighborhoods they would fail before they started.
Need for Gbps fiber (Score:2)
The Akamai State of the Internet Report 1Q2017 says that the US average Internet connection speed is 18.7 Mbps (hurrah, the US is now in the top 10 countries in the world, pushing out The Netherlands!). Speeds are up 22% year-on-year.
What is the normal person going to do with Gbps to the home? No one has a TV they can actually see 4K resolution with, and 3-4 Mbps does a superb job of HD video. So the average American can have 4 great HD streams running at the same time into their home. The average Ameri
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I watch 4K shows via Amazon streaming and the difference between the 1080i of cable and the 4k movie is spectacular!
Of course, interlaced is horrible!
I was speaking of the difference between 1080p and 2160p, and of course at typical living room TV viewing distances of 10 feet.
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I'm routinely reminded of the fact that the only reason Google hasn't ascended to Umbrella Corp-level mass evil manipulation of the world is that it is, in many cases, completely incompetent. Great engineers inventing great algorithms, but its successes are in spite of its own internal dysfunction.
If it ever figures out how to operate intelligently, though... Look out. We'll all be doomed.
Re:Google is not the saviour of mankind (Score:4, Interesting)
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I had Google Fiber at my previous house. I thought it was very good. My current house didn't have it, so I switched to Time-Warner. The internet was slower than Goog, but not bad. TV seemed as good. Their DVR reminded me of Windows. Crap compared to either Google's or the Tivo, but GoodEnough (tm). My only real problem with Spectrum-Warner is the obscene price.
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It seems like every great corporation starts with great engineers. ... and then slows down when it's filled with other people.
Look at Wikipedia. The majority of their payroll doesn't even go to servers or engineers. It goes to administration and "community outreach." They don't even make content--their users do.
Look at YouTube. They were a great startup and then... in the last 5 years, you can count the number of actual, useful , innovative features on one hand. Everything else has been incremental, or a co
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Re:Google is not the saviour of mankind (Score:4, Informative)
That will be why the US ISP's do so well without any taxpayer money at all.
Oh, wait, they don't. [techdirt.com]
Or here's a more recent [techdirt.com]story about the sort of crony capitalism you have to live with in the US.
Gosh but socialism is so awful.
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I own an ISP and net neutrality is a *good* thing - for us and for our customers. Net neutrality has *always been* part of the internet's DNA. If you believe otherwise then you've been swallowed the propaganda and you're about to get tossed onto someone's dinner plate.
Telecom infrastructure is MASSIVELY profitable. Just ask Carlos Slim what a "money pit" it has been for him. The reason why Google can't pull it off is because the ROI is measured in decades rather than a few years that every wants to demand t
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Telecom infrastructure is MASSIVELY profitable [..] Google fiber would have been a huge money maker 30 years from now
This is absurd. The kind of "massive profit" you're suggesting would mean that people in 1985 would have known exactly what kind of telecom infrastructure would be in use today. It's not even realistic to predict that wired connections will still be relevant in 5 years.
Your numbers don't add up unless the ISP can milk the cow.
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Wireless has been getting better, but it's still shit connectivity. Sure, their are cell towers everywhere, but they provide a fraction of the bandwidth that a wired connection has, usually with many many horrible restrictions (data caps, horrific data charges, movies now getting auto-downsampled on a wireless connection). The current cell companies would have to be forced out of the infrastructure, as they've proven themselves especially poor stewards. Hell, I can't believe even Comcast is better.
Wireless
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Fiber in the ground is a 100 year utility - nothing on the horizon is going to compete with it for capacity, reliability, or even long-term ROI.
And "640K of memory ought to be enough for anybody".
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The little red hen then patented the idea of 'bread' and decided she owned any and all loafs regardless of who baked them.
She then traded 'her' bread for the land the baker used so now no one could grow any other non-bread food.
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Begone, foul troll.. Or bot, or whatever ignorance of which you are created.
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Begone, foul troll.. Or bot, or whatever ignorance of which you are created.
I can't help but notice that people who resort to name calling rarely have meaningful information to provide, other than "my way or fuck you".
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Re: Google is not the saviour of mankind (Score:2)
The infrastructure, and the maintenance thereof, *is* the service. Yes, carrying bits is vital too, but that's the easy, invisible part of it. Hardly anybody buys a router for its firmware -- it's the hardware, the infrastructure, that they care about.
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Most people get fiber because they want something, like movies or web surfing or something like that. The physical infrastructure is just something they pay for to get the good stuff.
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it's just that right now they don't have to, so they don't.
Exactly. So either you accept the current mediocre service and high-five yourself for net neutrality, or you let the market do its job and you allow better options for people who don't mind paying for them. You can't have it both ways; it's your principles, not Comcast's, so it's your problem, not theirs.
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I'm in the Pacific Northwest. If I brought an 850-mile-long cat6 cable down to your place, could you spare a wall port?
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it spooked the other players in the market enough that one of them brought Gigbit fiber to my house and charged me the same rate google charges in their service area.
That's exactly what Google was hoping would happen. Everyone I knew from Google (although no one involved in the project, so no inside knowledge) indicated that Google wants high speed Internet everywhere, because as far as they're concerned, more Internet = more Google.
The incumbents were dragging their feet, so Google Fiber was created mostly as a project to spook the incumbents into doing their own Fiber faster.
Unfortunately, I suspect Google found out *why* the incumbents were dragging their feet. Jus
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Yeah, because central planning never had any issues at all and always provided everything that people wanted and needed.