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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

I realize this is very much a "first-world problem," but I find it infinitely frustrating that Google Fiber will probably never be available where I live (Long Beach, CA). Apparently this is because the various environmental regulations in California make it prohibitively expensive to deploy it here.

On the one hand I like the environment. On the other, I'm on DSL. :(

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The great thing about working for an Internet company (I'm assuming you do since you've been on Hacker News for a while) is that you can really live anywhere. I moved my most recent startup to Austin after living in the Valley for 10 years and SoCal for 2. I'm already ridiculously happy with the move. And it seems like much of California is following me here--we are even getting an In-N-Out Burger this year!

Austin is a great place to run a company. Lower cost of living, lower taxes, and now Google Fiber. Plus the people here are amazingly friendly. I'm happy to compare/contrast vs. the Valley or SoCal--shoot me an email (email in my profile) if you have questions.

I live in Dallas and I like the lower cost of living and everything. But now I wish I lived in Austin. :)

The thing I hate about both Dallas and Austin is driving. I used to live northeast and could walk everywhere much easier. Austin seems to be pretty bike-friendly though, and Dallas is becoming more so.

The city proper not so much, but the immediate northern suburbs are increasingly bike-friendly.

The necessity of driving is also one of my biggest issues with the area. My list is quite a bit longer than that, though. I would already rather be in Austin, and this announcement just makes that worse.:)

After growing up in Southern California and moving to a city in the north east, I really miss driving. And the sun. Austin is sounding better every day.

If you choose where you live and work carefully, living without a car in Austin isn't so bad. In particular, car2go is a godsend. That plus my bike and the bus get me around.

I would agree with you if it weren't for the heat. And don't give me anything of that "It's a dry heat" bullshit; >90 days in a row over 100 degrees is enough to make the city turn into Do The Right Thing.

My office for the past few summers has had a shower, so I biked most of the time. Riding the bus isn't bad either as long as you can wait in the shade.

Lived in both Austin and North Dallas. Compared to Austin traffic, Dallas is a parking lot. Austin has random spouts of traffic and a plethora of backroads. Dallas, the side highways are the backroads. Beltline Road would be backed up from 6 AM to 2 AM daily. Awful, awful traffic.

We tried to go from Dallas to Plano one time on a weekday at 4:30. Took 3 hours for a 15-20 mile trip. Nuts to that.

There's a couple of choke points where you can't take backroads in Austin without going all out of your way. In particular, anything crossing Lady Bird Lake.

Redbud Trail is great.

Other than that, yeah, you're going to fight traffic.

>And it seems like much of California is following me here--we are even getting an In-N-Out Burger this year!

California has been driving people away for decades: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_71.htm#.UWRs1Bkhf... . My own family moved out of CA when I was 10 for the usual reasons: high housing costs and long commutes. Housing costs have stayed high and so have commutes; consequently, a lot of people are leaving for the usual places: Phoenix, Austin, Seattle. . .

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"

Shhhh! Don't tell him that Austin is great. Everyone will move here, then turn it into California.[1]

EVERYBODY: AUSTIN SUCKS, DON'T MOVE HERE! [2]

[1] it's possible that this has already happened, of course. [2] I just moved back (from Hawaii) in 2011.

California, once one of the friendliest states to do business in, has turned into a nightmare. The entrepreneurs I know are already looking for exits to Austin.

The people might by friendly, but aren't the taxes quite high? Last I read, the state+federal together added up to almost 50%.

Texas has no income tax. Federal tax applies equally to living in any state and seems ridiculous to mention.

Property tax is high, 2%-3%. Sales tax is high, 8.25%

California's base sales tax is 7.25%, but CA's municipalities can bring that up to 9.25%. I believe ~8.5% is the average for the Bay Area.

I think we won't see Fiber in California. They will use wireless technology to transfer data from final optical fiber node to homes. That way it won't need a lot of digging.

Wireless data is getting faster and faster, so it should be possible to transfer gigabit per second data over wireless transmitters.

Right now my iPhone's LTE is faster than my home Comcast cable connection. I hope wireless gets cheaper and faster to replace Comcast in future

Wireless data is getting faster and faster in terms of providing what would previously be considered massive bandwidth but generally the latency still sucks for things like fast-paced online gaming. I still want fiber.

Over in SF, I have Webpass, which uses wireless data to deliver Internet to the building. I consistently get around 100/100 with <5ms ping (and that's for $50 a month!)

So yea, wireless data has gotten really really good.

Mind you, that's not LTE. It's microwave wireless... so a different type of wireless tech.

Is that using microwaves? I've heard of buildings getting pretty great speed using that technology.

There's also DOCSIS 3.1 on the horizon for cable providers. It will allow for a quick and dramatic increase in download speeds over existing cable HFC infrastructure. All the big market cable ISPs will be offering 1Gbit/sec download speeds in the next 2-3 years at least in some competitive markets. Within 3-5 years it will be pretty widespread. Within 5-7 years it will be fairly universal to have multi-gigabit/sec broadband just about everywhere in the country that is serviced by cable ISPs.

It could be that laws in general need to be more flexible, and to keep in mind the end goal more than the boundaries of strict limits in the language of the rules. That way, you don't have this one-or-the-other decision.

What environmental regulations?

Maybe the California Coastal Commission. They have a notoriously long approval process for almost anything.

Remove environmental, and you've got it.

California in general has a ridiculous set of regulations for doing anything related to building.

Individual counties are even worse (often requiring fighting with county-paid or city-paid arborists to remove trees on your own property, etc)

For giggles, read the story of PEX tubing and California. PEX has been used in Europe with no issues since the 60's. For many years, California was the only state to ban PEX, for no reason.

After it's adoption into the 2006 UPC, california started to take steps to add it to the california codes.

This resulted in 3 environmental studies, two environmental impact reports, 2 lawsuits against California for trying to adopt it, and 5 years of work.

http://www.bsc.ca.gov/Home/New/PEX.aspx

This covers only the post-2009 part of the saga.

CEPA, the California Environmental Protection Act, is the most obvious, and IIRC the most onerous state-mandated environmental act in the country. It's (one) part of what makes building in CA so difficult.

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