Google Fiber Is Coming to San Antonio
fiber.google.com
fiber.google.com
Do they buy an existing fiber company in the city ? Do they buy dark fiber ? Do they lay new fiber ?
I'm trying to understand how the process works.
Side note : Is anyone laying new fiber anymore ? I was reading this ( http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-en... )
[1] http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/google-closes-deal-acquir...
[2] http://www.technologybloggers.org/technology/google-fiber-st...
From: http://www.broadbandforamerica.com/blog/regulatory-concessio...
"Municipalities across the U.S., nearly 1,100 of them, competed vigorously to be chosen as the site for the project, but too few had a regulatory environment conducive to the investment that was required."
I believe Salt Lake City sold their unused fiber infrastructure to Google for $1, which I'm sure helped (in return Google ).
But on the plus side, TWC, ATT, and Grande (my favorite) all upgraded their networks in Austin in the year+ after Google's announcement. Even though coverage still isn't complete, we have all of them fighting it out.
Have any cities without large pre-existing fiber networks actually seen widespread google fiber adoption?
I was singing its praises multiple years ago when Austin was announced, but excluding a couple of small neighborhoods in south-central Austin, the city has seen relatively little in the way of google fiber. AT&T, and Grande have actually been expanding much faster from what I can see.
Major business areas still haven't seen Gbps speeds.
Meanwhile, there are places like Baltimore that turned down fiber because they wouldn't agree to regulatory concessions less demanding than what Google requires. Google Fiber is never coming here.
Kansas City?
See, for example, AT&T's eleven-years-and-counting ordeal to roll out U-Verse across San Francisco.
1) they can deal independently with multiple, local bureaucracies, each of which is easier to deal with than a consolidated large city's.
2) there's a ton of high tech / biotech here already, and demand for fiber.
3) The population is highly educated and there are several very good universities (UNC, Duke, NCSU) and smaller schools (Shaw, Peace, Meredith, NCCU, ...) in the area.
4) With the exception of older parts of Raleigh & Durham, all of the cities are pretty well planned and have layouts that make running fiber pretty straightforward, and all of the municipalities agreed to accommodate all of Google's requirements.
Coincidentally, we had 0 fiber ISPs a year ago and now we have 3 (plus TWC is updating all their "extreme" customers to 300mbps). AT&T has been laying fiber like crazy and Centurylink is here, too.
That's true of New York, but I'll also note that NYC has reasonably good Internet speeds in much of the city right now. For example, RCN sells 330 Mbs / down and ~25 Mbs /up for $~60/month right now: http://rcn.com/330. Verizon FiOS is more expensive and probably worse (unless you need high upload speeds for some reason), but it is widely available.
Google Fiber is probably not targeting places that are "pretty good, but could be better;" they're probably targeting places that are a combination of "really bad," along with reasonable regulatory climates.
That being said, there are neighborhoods that don't have anything close to this level of service in NYC, but I doubt they would be targeted by Google Fiber in the beginning.
Not to mention the fiasco that FiOS is going through right now is probably a big warning to stay far far away.
It seems to be more of a PR stunt than an actual business.
The only reason it isn't open is because the state government passed a law forbidding municipal ISPs.
On that note, can Google Fiber come to Minnesota? :(
Municipal fiber doesn't need to be profitable.
Its not to discount the value of gigabit internet, but I curretly have 100/100 megabit and cant imagine what I would use faster speed to do. Most stuff dont max out my current connection event with multiple users.
and by crappy i mean Comcast / AT&T.
Oh the irony of living here and getting screwed over on ISPs.
I'd rather pay evil Google over evil Time Warner.
And even when the voting rolls turn purple/blue in Texas, that's just a green flag for the entrenched Republican elements in TX to break out their book of dirty tricks to stall the inevitable. They're not going to cede power without a ruthless, billion dollar oil money fight.
There are times when too little regulation can frustrate such deployments. For instance, if all the poles are owned by traditional ISPs and there is no regulation mandating they grant access, Google is locked out. Ditto for apartment buildings without any law mandating they allow new ISPs to string wired inside "their" walls. Ease of doing or setting up a business is not always proportional to the number of laws on the books. If it were, there would be no need for antitrust rules.
(My original comment was a take on the assumption that there is a tide of hipsters chasing Google fibre around the country.)
I'm being snarky, but does anyone doubt Google will snoop the shit out of you once you're on a connection of theirs? That's the main reason they got into the ISP business.
It's not like they started snooping only recently either. Remember when their Street View cars just "accidentally" happened to capture nearby WiFi traffic?