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Google Network The Internet United States

Google Fiber Rolls Out Insanely Fast 2Gbps Service In Two Lucky US Cities (cnet.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the lucky-bastards dept.
Google Fiber has made its 2Gbps service "widely available" in Nashville, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama, the company said Thursday. CNET reports: New and existing Google Fiber customers in Nashville and Huntsville can choose either 1-gigabit-per-second service for $70 a month, or 2Gbps service for $100 a month. The latter is designed for "power users, the latest devices, and advanced smart homes that use lots of internet," Google said in a blog post. The 2Gbps service comes with the Google Fiber Multi-Gig Router, which uses Wi-Fi 6. Google Fiber launched in 2010 with 1Gbps speeds, and now provides internet service in more than a dozen US cities. Customers who aren't in Nashville or Huntsville can sign up to test 2Gbps service through the company's Trusted Tester program.
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Google Fiber Rolls Out Insanely Fast 2Gbps Service In Two Lucky US Cities More

Google Fiber Rolls Out Insanely Fast 2Gbps Service In Two Lucky US Cities

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  • Doesn't mean that your going to get that speed on some sites...

    • (Channeling average dumbass): What, you mean that I can't get 2 Gbps when I'm connected to that guy whose Internet connection is behind a 9600 baud modem?

      :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      So you'll be wanting to cancel your intertubes subscription thereby denying us your vapid ideas?

  • ... watching 500 movies at once

  • I wonder if Google is just reselling Comcast Gig Pro, which also happens to be 2gbps.

    This wouldn't be the first time Google rebrands Comcast service; the "Google Starbucks" access points at Starbucks are just resold Comcast Business connections.

    I guess we'll find out soon enough once a few people have it.

    • Re:Nashville and Huntsville are Comcast territory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Friday December 04, 2020 @11:36PM (#60796286)

      No, at least not in Huntsville. We have what IMHO is the way to go - the public-owned utility ran fiber to the curb throughout the city, and it is an open-access plant. Any company can sign up to put equipment in the huts and light up fiber and run it to the house, and they signed Google Fiber as the initial partner. So I have fiber to the home and into the house to my computer rack, and full-duplex gig service to Google Fiber's Internet carrier network (which is actually operated separately from Google's network).

      I've signed up to try the 2gig service... I in no way need it of course, but I want it. :) I'd already been planning to upgrade my home network to 10gig for my core stuff. I haven't heard back yet though.

      • I got lucky and was picked for the beta program in KC. The line coming out of the Google router is 2.5Gbs (who even knew that was a standard?). If you are looking at getting new nics and switches, that'd be the way to go (and much cheaper than 10Gb).
        • G.984 GPON standard. It's actually more like 2.4Gbps.

          • 2.4 Gbps split to X users?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jon3k ( 691256 )

          The line coming out of the Google router is 2.5Gbs (who even knew that was a standard?).

          Not on the equipment that they are providing for my service (scheduled to install tomorrow morning). It is a "Google Fiber Multi-Gig Router [google.com]" (go to the bottom, click "tech specs") and you can see that it has 1x10GbE. And that 2.5Gb/s standard has been around for quite a while, it is referred to as multi-gig or NBASE-T, there's also 5Gb/s. That's not new at all. It's standardized under 802.3bz [wikipedia.org].

      • No, at least not in Huntsville. We have what IMHO is the way to go - the public-owned utility ran fiber to the curb throughout the city, and it is an open-access plant. Any company can sign up to put equipment in the huts and light up fiber and run it to the house...

        How does an arrangement like this come about? I imagine here Spectrum would call up the local politicians and put an end to anything like that real quick.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Burdell ( 228580 )

          The utility is a public non-profit, owned by the city but operated under an independent board (they also serve electricity to areas outside the city, which will probably eventually be added to the fiber network). They wanted to run a fiber network for smart metering and active monitoring, so they went out looking for partners to give the network more value. The city had campaigned to get Google Fiber (so had contacts) before but had not been selected; this presented everybody a win. The utility got an initi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      What is it that Google offers over "Google Starbucks"? Particularly if the underlying service is Comcast? I just skip their initial search page and use DuckDuckGo anyway. So they've just slapped their brand on a shittier service (in my neighborhood, Comcast can't hold a candle to the local fiber service). Why ever would they do this?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k2r ( 255754 )

        So they've just slapped their brand on a shittier service (in my neighborhood, Comcast can't hold a candle to the local fiber service). Why ever would they do this?

        Well, it seems they didn’t do this, it all happened in your head, only:

        https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

  • "Insanely fast"? (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday December 04, 2020 @11:06PM (#60796224)

    Given that 1Gbps is widely available in urban areas - assuming you're willing to pay for it - I don't see how you could describe 2 Gbps as "insanely fast". But then, I don't take a company's press releases as gospel.

    Heck, I live in a semi-rural area and I can get gigabit service from freakin' Comcast.

    The only marketing schtick missing from that "story" is a line that says something like "the less expensive tier, 1Gbps, is good enough for basic web browsing and email".

    • Mostly Iâ(TM)d say itâ(TM)s the price. $70 for gigabit is less than I pay for 100/10.

      • I'm paying $150 a month for 50/10. That's the price for living out in the sticks...

        • Ouch Iâ(TM)m going to stop complaining about my ISPs prices $92/month 300/300 ( not metered and as far as I know un trolled) and ipv6 whit a full /48 that has not changed in 2-3 years. Ok fair enugh I donâ(TM)t have tv and cell phone is a separat bill ( unrelated company)

          • Oh, yeah, and it's not a wired connection. It's line of sight wireless. Single digit pings and only one 4 hour outage in the past year, but, damn, do I pay for it. I'd give my left pinky toe to have that 2 gig fiber to my house.

    • I pay $120/month for 1Gb/sec and I live in the country and happy to get it for that price. I don't know what "insanely fast" is, but I'm totally happy with 1 Gb/sec.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Japan's baseline in major cities is 10Gbps, in smaller places it's 2Gbps but the upgrade is coming soon.

      Thing is once the fibre is there the speed can be upgraded simply by changing the equipment on either end. Maybe Google got a good deal on used 2Gbps gear that is being sold off as other places upgrade to 10. Otherwise why not install current gen tech?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Given that 1Gbps is widely available in urban areas - assuming you're willing to pay for it - I don't see how you could describe 2 Gbps as "insanely fast". But then, I don't take a company's press releases as gospel.

      Heck, I live in a semi-rural area and I can get gigabit service from freakin' Comcast.

      Comcast's "gigabit" service isn't close to symmetric gigabit speeds, it's shared 1 Gbps download and 0.035 Gbps upload. To get symmetric gigabit you have to pay a few hundred dollars a month for their 2 gigabit tier.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      Longmont's municipal fiber is $60 a month, pretty good deal. We've also had one minor outage in the last 5 years that was fixed within a couple of hours without us having to call in.

      I haven't gone looking for routers that can handle more than a gigabit. I imagine you might have to buy 10 gig gear for that. That stuff's super-expensive and doesn't handle wireless from what I've seen.

      • Ya, consumer grade stuff is hard to find over 1gig, and most of the time you'll find the backplane throughout is around 1 gig no matter how many ports it has. They're basically taking the 10/100 backplane stuff and slapping it in a box with 1gig ports on it.

        You really have to start looking at lower end Enterprise gear if you want something with better capabilities, at least for now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by poptix ( 78287 )

      Yeah, I can already get 10Gbit fiber from US Internet in Minneapolis -- and it's ethernet instead of shared infrastructure like GPON.

      Not to shit on the service, just the author of the article overselling it.

    • I wish I could get 1Gbps, its never been available in my state. To be honest I thought it was still limited to like, SF/Seattle type places. 50/10 for $149/mo is the most you can get here, and that is the "turbo" package.

  • It's just "luck." Someone at Google threw two darts at the map while blindfolded and happen to hit Nashville and Huntsville.

    How is Seattle doing for bandwidth, anyhow? You all still "protecting your property value" from the dreaded trunk cabinets of doom?

  • Nashville's had talk of Google Fiber for years, off & on. Still not in many/(most?) neighborhoods. Not sure how/why this is news.
    /Nashvillian, wants Google Fiber. Trying to sign up today produced the same lame "sign up for email updates" response as in years past.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      It's not everywhere but we have it here in East Nashville, it seems to be all over the place on this side of the river. I really don't know what percentage of the population is covered.
  • to hear Google state they would be rolling out 1Gbps Internet throughout the country. In 2012 I was disappointed to hear that Google would not be rolling out 1Gbps Internet throughout the country but instead only a few major cities. In 2020 I could care less about Google because of the monopolistic, peeping Tom ass hats they have become.

  • What do people use it for? (Score:3)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Saturday December 05, 2020 @01:59AM (#60796510)

    Are there many sites that support anywhere near that speed?
    I think have 250mbit.

    That is enough that my wife and I can both work high tech jobs logged into remote computers. Its enough for in principal 10X 4K movies simultaneously. Most software releases download faster than they install or at least quickly enough that its never an issue (including big stuff like Matlab with all toolboxes).

    What do people do with 8X that bandwidth.

    I could see a real advantage to lower latency if that were possible, since that would allow better real time interactions.

    Not objecting to people who need more bandwidth, just curious what they use it for.

    • Content creation requires very large assets. Lots of artists and video producers work from home now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "Content creation requires very large assets."

        Are these "very large assets" required to be accessed repeatedly over the internet? Are multiple creators required to write to these assets simultaneously?

        Imagine if there was a technology that could save "very large assets" locally so that subsequent access would accelerated! Perhaps you could patent that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cboles ( 2626815 )
      I think you are looking at this from only a download speed perspective. Most cable modem (DOCSIS) based ISPs provide a highly asymmetric DL/UL speed ratio where your 250Mbps down could be less than 20Mbps up. Often the upload speed goes up a paltry amount even when you pay for something closer to 1Gbps down with cable. The brief period of time where I had fiber internet service (Sonic), the speeds were a symmetric 1Gbps. That could be 20x to 50x the upload speeds I get with cable. If you are uploading con

      • I think you are looking at this from only a download speed perspective. Most cable modem (DOCSIS) based ISPs provide a highly asymmetric DL/UL speed ratio where your 250Mbps down could be less than 20Mbps up. Often the upload speed goes up a paltry amount even when you pay for something closer to 1Gbps down with cable. The brief period of time where I had fiber internet service (Sonic), the speeds were a symmetric 1Gbps. That could be 20x to 50x the upload speeds I get with cable. If you are uploading content, doing backups to the cloud or other machines you own, or streaming video those upload speeds start to matter.

        Yep, 300/20 here for ~90 USD/mo

        Previously used 2x 100/5 (~$100/mo total, 1 for me, 1 for my roomie so we didn't cross our adorable little upstreams) as the laughable 5 mbits was the highest offered by Charter/Spectrum at this location until a bit over a year ago. No fiber, only other "option" here is 25/3 DSL from the AT&turds (making cellular look palatable by comparison). I've been considering spending a few months with them in pursuit of a year of promo rates with Charter, as they seem exceptionall

      • That's usually because of how the US/DS frequencies are sliced up. As Cable companies move from RF to IP based video delivery for their set top boxes, they free up huge chunks of wire spectrum and will be able to allocate a lot more to upstream. But for now, they're trying to squeeze as much download as they can in order to "outclass" DSL. And until recently there still hasn't been a lot of demand for upload... it's growing for sure but the vast majority of consumers will still buy a 100/5 over a 50/50 at t

    • Not objecting to people who need more bandwidth, just curious what they use it for.

      As pointed out in a sibling post the highly asymmetric upload and download speeds might mean needing this level of a data plan to get enough upload bandwidth for everyone.

      I agree that there's a point of diminishing returns. I was forced to upgrade from a 5 Gbps plan (as I recall) to a 60 Gbps plan after Mediacom upgraded their DOCSIS equipment around here and dropped their slower plan options.. I didn't notice any difference in how the internet performs.

      With my old plan I don't recall ever having speed is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      I have Google Fiber 1Gb service and they are coming tomorrow to install the 2Gb service. For me, I'm probably not really doing anything different, it's just getting done more quickly. I routinely see downloads via HTTP at >700Mb/s. I have a ton of vms, and download ISO to try out different things oh and also patching all these new systems is just insanely fast. I also backup my NAS offsite regularly, and the 1Gb upstream is amazing for that. It's not like there's some crazy thing like 12K VR Space P

  • ...Google were to spend their collective time and energy figuring out ways to connect more and more people to the Internet in areas where infrastructure is less and less.

    And I don't mean by those fantasy LOONy balloon technologies or that expensive SpaceX LEO satellite stuff that requires a $500 ground terminal.

    Figure out a way to extend infrastructure into places where little or no infrastructure exists today and do it at a reasonable cost to the end user.

    What would be reasonable? How about pricing compara

  • passively looking at the sites that you visit and use this to further build its profile about you ? It seems to me that having Google as your ISP would be bad for privacy.

    • You can always point your DNS (over https) to another provider and enable HTTPS everywhere - that greatly neuters what information they can glean from your traffic. If that still doesn't seem like enough, you'd probably have to commit to a OS level solution like an integrated VPN.

      Google is hardly the only ISP taking advantage of close integration with clients though - several have started mining for information profiles to sell or monetize into ads.

  • and only for $40 a month.
    US broadband is a joke.

    • For comparison, in France Iliad is selling its 5G/700M plan uncapped for 40€. It’s triple play with phone and TV included, same price everywhere -- that is where it is available, about 2/3 of homes are. 1G for 40€ is about average now, all offers are uncapped, rates higher than 1G are beginning.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      1Gb from Google is $70/mo. The US has a GDP that's 50% higher than Japan and lower taxes. So a smaller portion of their average net income would probably be required to pay for the same service, or at least very close. Also last I heard NTT was still $55/mo, but maybe there are other providers. And I say this as someone who loves Japan and has travelled there multiple times.
  • Many cities in Italy are covered by FTTH (Fiber To The Home) broadband service which gives (real) uncapped 1 Gbps download / 200-300 Mbps upload for 20-25 euro / month.
    • People forget how large the US is. We have some regions which have similar population density to EU countries, but a very large amount of rural area with very low density. And a lot of varying terrain and environments to deal with.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jon3k ( 691256 )
        And those dense places have extremely high average incomes. The US has a nearly 50% GDP advantage over France for example. So yes, obviously things cost more. We are also taxed at a lower rate. So as a percentage of net income it is basically a wash.

  • Unle you want to wire up a hotel, I don't think a single family can ever use 2Gb/s (correct notation for Gbps, by the way), if only because the limitation would be their combined full-field eyesight and genral resolution of senses.

    Unless you want to burst-download movies for later. But what's the point if you got an all-so-great connection.

    I'm sure, somebody will come up with a way to waste even more data, of course. But that's not a justification. Because there is still no necessity.

  • Having read through the comments so far I'm seeing a number of people claiming that this level of internet speed to the home is largely pointless, and I can agree on many levels. There's just a point at which it's only worth having for bragging rights. Such as perhaps owning a car capable of nearly 200 mph that will never get above 90 mph because it's always driven on public roads, and only then by violating speed limits.

    Cellular networks and smart phones have been tested in some places to show 1.7 Gbps i

  • how shared is it? + only 1 gig up!
    comcast 2 gig is 2/2 and uses an rackmount router (likely way better then any home router)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Comcast Gig Pro also costs $300 per month. Three times the price of Google Fiber's 2Gb plan. Not to mention a $500 installation and another $500 for service activation. Google charges $0 for install. (source [nexttv.com]).

  • I have has 1Gbps for about 3 years now. At this speed most servers will turn out to be the bottleneck instead of the network. Hence the only thing insane here is calling it "insanely fast".

  • And how much has Google rolled out their of their "nation wide fiber" in the past decade? Oh, that's right. Like most people I forgot that they cancelled that entirely. So, do you really think that this will come to your area? Not a chance. But if you do, say hello to Hunter Biden the next time you have a snort or two.

  • I am on Google Fiber's "Basic" plan. $300 for equipment and installation, then ZERO charge for 7 years. 5mbs down and 1mbs up sounds lame, but it is plenty fast enough for what I do, and that includes running VoIP telephone service. 1K YouTube videos play just fine. My email server is happy. I download Linux distributions with no problem. I have never had an outage, nor any problem that required calling customer service.

    Google's router is the very latest 1995 technology, except for having gigabit Ethe

  • I hate to sound like that '640k is enough for anybody', however at some point you reach the point of plenty and the rest is just for advertisements and data collection.

    Has no one done a study of how much of our paid bandwidth is wasted on advertisements and data collection?

  • Virtually no one needs that kind of speed; we have a small data center that only uses a few hundred megabits. It's become a marketing ploy to be able to advertise big numbers and little else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Just because you don't want that speed doesn't mean I don't. I spend a lot of time downloading linux ISO and software updates for vm installations. I'm very excited about 2Gb service. This can turn a 10 minute job into 2 minutes.

  • ...and a 20 MB hard drive.

    That's what most of these comments read like.

  • Didn't Google already try their hand at being a high speed network provider in many other cities and failing miserably? Why should this be any different?

  • I cannot wait until Google Fiber comes to my town!

    For the last 5-6 years, I've been plagued. I've tried exercising, drinking more water, hell, I even bought a squatty potty.

    No help.

    I think what I've been missing all along, is Google Fiber.

  • Google Fiber is *TECHNICALLY* available in Nashville and "widely available" means a very small footprint in and around Downtown and pretty much nowhere else. I live West of the city and was extremely excited when it was announced that they would be moving into our part of Nashville. I watched as our streets were marked where utilities were located under streets and yards throughout the neighborhoods in my area, including mine. I hammered Google Fiber on a regular basis asking when their service would be

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )

      Google Fiber is *TECHNICALLY* available in Nashville and "widely available" means a very small footprint in and around Downtown and pretty much nowhere else.

      It's all over here in East Nashville, I've had it at two different houses I've lived at over here. Google Fiber is not expanding any more, so I wouldn't expect any new street addresses to be added.

      Google continues to trumpet about their services here in Nashville online and this 2Gbps is nothing but smoke and mirrors aimed squarely at those people who are moving from other tech cities to work at places like Amazon and Alliance Bernstein who have or are implementing large infrastructure here in the city.

      They're installing mine tomorrow so we'll see! 1Gb service has been phenomenal, I regularly see 800Mb/s+ downloads.

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