Google Fiber announced for Provo, Utah | Hacker News Reader

Google Fiber announced for Provo, Utah

fiber.google.com

326 pointsvyrotek208 comments

Today we announced that we hope to purchase iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city of Provo. As a part of the acquisition, we would commit to upgrade the network to gigabit technology and finish network construction so that every home along the existing iProvo network would have the opportunity to connect to Google Fiber. Our agreement with Provo isn’t approved yet—it’s pending a vote by the City Council scheduled for next Tuesday, April 23, and also is subject to satisfaction of additional closing conditions. We intend to begin network upgrades when the deal is closed.

We hope to have service to our first customers in late 2013, and will have more information to share soon.

https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/

The city has been looking to get out of the financial obligations from iProvo for a while, it'd have to end up being a really bad deal for them to say no to this.

It is a really bad deal because it eliminates municipal ownership of the infrastructure that would facilitate competition. Instead they are installing a new monopolist which will only seem to improve things in the short term.

Bad for constituency <> Bad for city administration.

Perhaps some ongoing service level agreements (that perhaps even iProvo couldn't provide) for the constituents/customers are part of deal?

There are still other ISPs in the area that will be competing. The change will be from a bankrupt fiber provider that the city cannot afford to a well-funded provider undergoing network enhancements and expansion. Stop complaining.

I'm actually somewhat against the purchase of a municipal line. I think the cities should be running the fiber. This feels like a move in the wrong direction. The problem is there arn't enough noisy people who know to ask for it.

Presumably those competitors won't have access to fiber to the home. Besides the fact that it doesn't make sense to roll out separate fiber for each provider it is clear that municipal owned fiber would decrease barriers to entry and therefore increase competition. You simply cannot expect good outcomes in situations of monopoly/oligopoly regardless of who the monopolists are.

Why would this prevent anyone else from accessing fiber to the home? I thought the whole neat reaction from the Austin, TX fiber announcement was that ATT was planning on doing just the same.

They wouldn't have access to that fiber, they would have to do their own fiber drop and I point out why that's bad in the remainder of my previous post.

Regarding ATT/Texas: Having a competitor is not what economists mean when they refer to competition.

Nice way to gather support for the tuesday meeting ;)

Even better for support gathering purposes is that they didn't mention that they're buying the network for $1 and not assuming any of the $39 million in debt the city has from rolling out the network so far:

    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/56168330-79/google-network-fiber-provo.html.csp

    http://transmission.xmission.com/2013/04/18/the-1-fiber-optic-network

    http://www.freeutopia.org/2013/04/17/i-was-wrong-about-google-fiber-but-this-isnt-a-golden-deal-for-the-city-either/

I appreciate the fact that Google would be making an investment in the network, and that local Provo business or technical leadership apparently cannot manage the project on their own. But taking a public asset -- one that's becoming a key public utility -- and turning it into a wholly private one while assuming none of the costs of the existing investment doesn't seem like a balanced deal.

I think Google should either assume some portion of the debt, or they should agree to the same conditions of letting others provide services over the network that was the vision of the network in the first place.

I was at BYU when iProvo was launched. I believe it was offering 10mbps up/down at the time, which was 10x faster than the DSL I had. Unfortunately, I was in an apartment building and they couldn't install the service without permission from the building owner.

Also, the Salt Lake City corridor was involved in building a fiber network around the same time, I believe called "Utopia".

iProvo was 15Mb symmetric when it launched. I had it as soon as it was available on my street.

Sadly, Utopia is a financial mess (even more than iProvo became).

I had waited forever for them to open up my 'region' and I was pretty annoyed when I found out they couldn't install it in the building.

Given the pricing and speed, I'm actually surprised that more people didn't sign up for it. Was it just a marketing problem? (I left Provo in 2005)

I left Provo in 1983, when BYU was not yet on ARPAnet, Ethernet was really new, and I was one of the few who had dialup access to the Vaxes from home.

Be happy. :-)

Good god I hope these announcements light a fire under the butts of the other US providers.

I think one of the things I'm most excited for is canceling my absurd Comcast agreement.

Me, ATT... <10Mbps is a joke....

My 2mbps internet connection and I envy all of you.

My last apartment had <1mbps with AT&T. I was working remotely for a company that required VPN+VNC into a linux server on their intranet to get anything done. Any time my roommates tried to watch something on hulu/netflix (frequently), our router had to be rebooted.

Your router was shit, then, and probably bad enough that you weren't able to measure the true connection speed. Did you let the ISP provide the router? That's always a mistake.

It was an exceptionally shitty router, yeah. One of my roommates wanted to be in charge of the internet connection; she went with the lowest end AT&T plan, and she had the router that they had given her in her last apartment. On top of that, the cable going into the router was practically falling apart; I didn't actually know any of this until shortly before I moved out, at which point there wasn't a lot of motivation to do anything about it.

Upon moving out, I got a 18 Mbps cable subscription & a Motorola Surfboard Extreme. Now the only shitty piece of networking equipment in my setup is a Belkin wifi router that I haven't been bothered to upgrade.

Yep. I pay 60 bucks a month for 40 Mbps, and Google offers 1 Gbps for 70 bucks a month. I pay almost the same price for 4% the speed (not to mention horrible customer service).

You're well off. Here in Ontario, I pay ~$75 a month (after taxes & extra fees) for 25mbit. I would kill for $60 40mbit service.

Seriously! These people don't know how bad it can be.

Don't forget the data caps.

Have you looked at Teksavvy? They sell a cable package in Ontario that gives you 60 mbits for a bit over 60$ (more after tax and all that)... You can get pretty decent download caps with them (it starts at 75 gigs/month, but I have upgraded to 300 gigs/month for a bit more. they also have an unlimited option).

I was with TekSavvy before I moved (2x25mbit mlppp). Everything was great, and there was even a promo for "no activation fees" when I signed up.

When I moved a year later, they told me I would have to pay that activation fee again, because Bell treats move orders like setting up a new customer, and thus they can't waive the fee. I ended up going with another ISP that had a similar promo.

Different areas have different packages, or at least differing availability. The best package available in my area is 28mbps and unlimited bandwidth for $62/month.

Why does Canada have such terrible internet? Is it a regulation thing, competition thing, or what? Why do you guys have such extreme data caps?

As an American in Canada, I most often hear that a duopolistic system is the root of the country's internet problems. I haven't heard a single suggestion that there are technical limitations or lack of consumer demand.

Many reasons. 1. We're a unpopulous country for the area we occupy. 2. Our investment environment is much more conservative. 3. We gave some sweet deals to telephone companies in order to get 80 percent telephone coverage back in the 70s. Toronto isn't bad though. You can get 250 mbit for a decent price

AFAIK Internet is unregulated here. The CRTC is [basically] run by Bell & Rogers, they seem to do what they want. When one has a deal, the other shortly follows - when you cancel with one you're stuck going to the other.

As long as they each gain the customers the other loses, they win.

Oligopoly (or duopoly in most cases) with regulatory capture.

Same here on the Central Coast of California. In my town though there is only one cable internet provider (Comcast).

My only other option is DSL

Comcast is still sadly better than Charter (though I think Charter is owned by Comcast now?).

You've got it good. Here in Santa Cruz California at the southern end of Silicon Valley, I pay $70/month for a whopping 6mbit (ADSL). This is via a reseller of everyone's darling Sonic. They helpfully include "free" phone service I have no use for, which is then responsible for a not free $10 of that bill, $7 of which goes to Sonic for providing the "free" phone service.

Who is the reseller?

I bet he's talking about Cruzio's Velocity service.

(I'm on it too)

As bronson said, it is indeed Cruzio. There was 26 hour outage yesterday due to a fibre cut in SV. It didn't affect people on Cruzio's DSL service but did affect those of us on the resold Sonic Fusion service.

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/capitola/ci_23040335/at-t-c...

And yet it gets worse: here in South Africa, I'm paying just over 140 USD for a 8mbit ADSL, with a +- 50 GB bandwidth cap.

I suspect the New Zealanders are about to chirp in with their extortion-level rates :)

and I pay around 80 in TN for 25 mbps

I pay $40 for 3 mbps. Palm Springs, CA, Time Warner. Fios is not here yet. Only cable.

Wow, I spent some time in Palm Desert, CA and I was able to get 20Mbs for about $40 for the summer. Month to month no commitments. (with Time Warner)

Seriously? I'm paying $70/month (no modem rental fee as I own my own) for this http://www.speedtest.net/result/2652775120.png in the Nashville area.

What part do you live in? I think they're upgrading everyone? Or maybe it was just the middle Tennessee area. Either way, the $70 I'm paying is 10 times slower than the internet Google Fiber users get for the same price so even $70 is still grossly overprices for what I'm getting.

wow...im in Mid TN, the Smyrna/Murf area. I am not in the Metro area at all.

I also use my own modem. My speeds are nowhere near your results, it is actually closer to 15-20mbps down and 2-4mbps up.

I need some more info from you on this, I'd love to find out where they have this speed out here...

I only pay for internet and regularly go over my 300GB/month data cap as well

I live in Cool Springs. I had the 50Mbps service which they recently doubled to 100Mbps (with the same 300GB cap unfortunately). They had been playing advertisements on the radio about doubling speeds and someone in my area mentioned they power cycled their modem and got the new speeds, which worked for me.

I don't have TV or Phone service from them, only Internet. I'm not sure if it's a promo or not, but that's what I've been paying since January 01 when I cut my TV service.

does google have customer service for the internet service?

You're lucky. I have to pay comcast $70/month for 12mbps

I just called comcast and got them to drop me to $50 and upgrade me to 50mbps. I was really going to quit until they did that

I don't need 1gbps and would love something like 25mbits for, say, $20. They really need a midtier connection between free 5m and 1G.

Hell, I would pay $40 for 5mbit if they beat down the latency. Remote-desktop type applications would be much more pleasant.

I pay $75 a month for 500gb of data and a 20mb cable connection here in Australia... The Government is rolling out a whopping 100mbps network which is due for completion in 2025... One can only dream that Google would try and implement something like Google Fiber in Australia but the limited capacity of undersea cables probably means it won't happen for another 100 years.

I can't wait to cancel my TWC internet. I'm paying $58/mth for a 20mbps plan but the max speed I can get is ~11-12 mbps. Can't wait for google fiber to come so I can dump TWC.

I'm not sure that speed would be enough to want me to go with Google, but I'm paranoid that way. I'd welcome the competition and the presumed price drop at Comcast. It's fast enough for me.

For the prices they're charging, just get a VPN, still be cheaper than cable in most places...

About a month ago Comcast doubled the speed of my connection for free (50/10 -> 105/20). I was delighted as I assumed it meant that a competitor was rolling out fiber in the area or something, and I was very disappointed when an hour scouring the internet for announcements revealed nothing. Somehow I don't think that was the intended reaction.

Then again, Comcast tries to get me to "upgrade" to packages costing half as much as my current one on a regular basis, so who knows what they were going for.

Wait for the other shoe to drop.

The pattern is raise the speed, then wait 60-90 days and raise all the prices.

I totally agree. Comcast is not the worst. My parents happen to live in an area serviced by a ma and pop cable company (Service Electric Cablevision). 20/2 internet with a 200GB cap for $51 a month. Comcast, which is available to the community less than five miles away, crushes this. This is only 45 minutes from Philadelphia!

What's just sad is you can hit 200GB a month with a 80kb/s connection.

In non-Fiber cities, has anyone seen a change in price from the big providers like Time Warner Cable? Anecdotally, I haven't seen one.

Completely anecdotal, but Comcast just bumped me up about 30% from 15 mbps. The customer service still stinks, and the service itself is still very spotty and unreliable.

My personal anecdote: When I lived in a small town with fios and Time Warner and Comcast, every offer was far cheaper and better than when I moved to a much bigger city with only Time Warner.

Here's an article from somebody that claims Time Warner hacked their bill down when Google Fiber opened in their city.

http://consumerist.com/2013/01/30/time-warner-boosts-my-spee...

I don't know if it applies as I'm in one of the few markets Comcast trialed 150Meg service. But they basically bumped everyone here up to the next highest tier. So if you were paying for 100 you get 150, 50 you get 100, 30 you get 50, whatever else was lower up a bit.

It was nice, but to be honest this should be happening more often not just once every... ever really.

How could it? Google would own the infrastructure in the city making competition extremely difficult. New monopolist, same as the old monopolist.

Except that the "new monopolist" is currently thrashing the "old monopolist". It's almost like they are having to... compete.

Also, they bought out a municipal fiber outfit. They're not kicking competitors out. They're just completely outclassing them.

The problem is that when a company owns the last mile it has a natural monopoly. An incumbent being overthrown isn't the same as having long lasting competition.

Provo actually already has a fairly significant fiber rollout from multiple failed local and municipal coalitions to bring 100Mbps+ residential connections to the area. I believe these lines are owned by the city, and that Google plans on utilizing the extant network as far as possible. It is pretty likely that this won't be the typical municipal telecom monopoly that we've seen to attract cable providers and the like.

The point is that the lines will no longer be owned by the city.

I'm glad that this is gonna be so close to the Bluffdale, UT NSA data center. Now they wont even have to build too much of their own cable to listen in on every single packet!

Damn. Hadn't thought of that. :(

End-to-end encryption, folks. Fuck the NSA.

The War on Citizens will make encryption illegal again.

The fact that this is close to Bluffdale only helps support (just a little bit) the likely thesis that Google has decided to ally itself with the US surveillance state (which is probably has little choice about anyway).

It seems fact at this point :(

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-nsa-secrecy-...

TL;DR: trash-talking Google's record doesn't seem fair to me.

Here are some things that are public knowledge:

1) Google considers some kind of network traffic to be attacks (obviously). Google claims (and no one doubts) that in some cases Google reports these attacks to law enforcement authorities, and to other companies believed to be affected. The main example of this that I'm aware of is Operation Aurora (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora ), the purported 2009 attack, allegedly by Chinese state actors. AIUI, this is the source of the Google/government collaboration mentioned in that Wired article that clobber linked. I think that any reasonable person would agree that this type of data-sharing between victims of crime and the government is not necessarily tantamount to "allying oneself with the surveillance state" (although a reasonable person could point out that once you start cooperating with governments, sometimes it's a slippery slope).

2) Google wants to position itself as a defender of user rights against governments. Maybe this is for-real, maybe this is bullshit; what do we know? We know that Google publishes a transparency report ( google.com/transparencyreport ) , you can read it for yourself. Google claims that they comply with the law, and thus obeys e.g. National Security Letters (including the gag orders that come with most NSLs). If you want to say that obeying legally-constituted surveillance law is necessarily "allying oneself with the surveillance state", well, maybe... but I dispute that this is in-general true.

3) Google also purports to push back the limits of this legal surveillance. For example, in the case of the IRS claiming (until a few days ago) that it can warrantlessly read your email, Google alleges that they refuse to respect such IRS demands, instead requiring a warrant. That is, Google claims to be daring the IRS to take Google to court, since Google thinks the IRS is overreaching their government authority. I cannot prove (or disprove) that Google is in fact doing as they claim, but if so, I see this as a mildly courageous act that protects civil society.

For Google's claims about IRS email surveillance, see e.g. http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/279441-f...

(For full-on heroics, see John Doe vs Ashcroft, revealed to be Nicholas Merrill of Calyx, so mad props to him. Also see http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/nsl-found-unconstit... , another piece of brave civil challenge to the same surveillance bullshit).

------

So, what's my point here?

Look, we don't know that Google isn't doing sinister shit. Google knows a lot, and has a lot of secrets, so it's appropriate to be wary. (Knowing a lot is key to the huge benefits that Google provides, btw.) But I think we have basically zero evidence of this hypothetical sinister behaviour; all secret-sharing we know about is appropriate and above-board. And we have some meaningful evidence that Google is actively pursuing the public interest by resisting over-sharing (not that I'm claiming this is the #1 corporate goal).

TL;DR: trash-talking Google's record doesn't seem fair to me.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, I have a pro-Google bias, I have no insider knowledge of any of the things discussed in this comment, and if I did have insider knowledge I wouldn't post it on Hacker News.

I was more trashing the NSA's record because they ARE doing sinister shit.

We just don't know 100% if Google is being forced to play along. I'd say it's really naive to think there would be public 'evidence' in the first place. You say it's unfair but I say it's critical thinking. Given the circumstance and the history, I'd say it's completely fair.

Either way it's terrifying, wouldn't you agree?

I agree with almost all of this comment of yours (contrasted with the previous one). The NSA should be assumed to be invasive, we don't know how much Google is being forced to play along, there would be little or no public evidence. And critical thinking is good, especially given the circumstances and history.

Your previous comment said that "the likely thesis that Google has decided to ally itself with the US surveillance state" was "seem[ingly] fact at this point". That's a completely different statement, and I strongly disagree with it; I do not think that is Google's decision or allegiance, nor that it's established fact. I think the parent to your comment accused Google of malfeasance, and I think that is neither critical thinking nor fair.

Either way, I'm not personally terrified, but I do think it's worth awareness and resistance, on principle.

I'm the one who claimed they seem to have "allyed themselves with the surveillance state," so I guess I'm really the one you're responding to. I wouldn't consider that to be trash talking, exactly, but I don't mind you saying that.

I actually don't know many of the facts on the ground, as you do. I mean, you can cite evidence and provide links, and I can't.

What I do know is that Google is a humongous red target painted on it that is screaming, "I have a huge proportion of all global email and lots of other kind of data! Governments and other malicious actors, come and get it if you can!"

So, I think it's absolutely insane that so many of us trust Google with so much. I think we should all be encrypting everything as a matter of principle and policy, and I don't think we should all be using Google so much.

I mean, how much of China's annual budget is devoted just to hacking Google via technical and social engineering means? Tens of millions of USD? That sounds very reasonable. That's what I'd be doing if I were on their side and had authority.

Also, it's worth noting that individual rights are no longer considered absolutes in the US, and our legal system is currently in a trend of slow erosion. So, eventually, the government authorities are probably going to be able to demand whatever they want of Google. They possibly already have ways of doing this.

As an aside, I don't begrudge you for working there. In fact, once I'm on the job market, I may even try to get a job there (not sure if they'd still have me, though, since I make the above point not infrequently).

> so I guess I'm really the one you're responding to

Partially, yup.

> facts on the ground

Again, I emphasize that I learned most of what I know by following privacy-oriented links on HN, and reading public sources. And I know these things because I, like you, think it's very much worth thinking about. I want to know whether or not Google is evil.

> Google is a humongous red target

Absolutely. No doubt.

> we should all be encrypting everything

I think I agree with your reasoning, but I disagree with your conclusion; I think this is simply evidence that I value my privacy much less than you value yours.

> trend of slow erosion

This one flows back and forth. The battle is not lost, even in the US. See e.g. that last link my my previous post, re Judge Susan Illston

possibly already have ways of doing this

You know what an NSL is, right? As far as I can tell, the FBI can ask for anything of anyone at any time. If surveillance scares you, get scared. Though, again, c.f. Susan Illston.

In any case, I once again think it is important to distinguish between the good points you make in this comment, and the shitty summary you made in the previous comment, which in my opinion is vastly under-supported and also probably wrong.

> not sure if they'd still have me, though, since I make the above point not infrequently

They hired me.

I don't know how you can jump to that conclusion. Provo is one of the few municipalities with a fiber network already in place. Combined with Provo wanting to get out of the fiber business itself makes Provo uniquely suited for Google Fiber. Google probably didn't consider the fact that the NSA building was 20 miles away at all when making this decision because it has very little to do with their deployment. The NSA would tap backbones, not last mile fiber deployments.

I'm not saying it has anything to do with directly tapping wires. I'm just saying that the DHS has an interest in building up infrastructure in this particular place.

I didn't even know Google was interested in buying fiber deployments and redoing them. I thought they were trying to build them from scratch.

First, you imply that underlying intention behind the Fiber deployment in Provo is to make surveillance a piece of cake by practically serving up data on a platter. You admit no other possibility, since this "only helps support" your thesis.

Then someone calls you on it, and you back off and say you weren't implying anything, just that [the NSA] has an interest in building up infrastructure there.

Did you even consider the possibility that both parties might be coincidentally interested in Provo for entirely different reasons?

This is an important point that will be ignored. But who cares since we can to sign into our facebooks with fiber internet, right?

The NSA is cracking your SSL encrypted Facebook session so they can read about what your friends had for breakfast. Right.

Oh yes, precisely my point rolls eyes. Since you seem to be aware of the NSA's intentions, aside from your sarcasm, perhaps you could explain the purpose of this data center: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

Just because you're not paying attention doesn't mean shady things aren't happening.

Just because the NSA is building a datacenter doesn't mean shady things are happening.

That's cute. Quite the shadow of the doubt you have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_electronic_surveillance_pro...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

But move along, nothing to see here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9-3K3rkPRE

I wish Palo Alto could get out of their limited and never very awesome metro fiber business (run by the city, like their other utilities) by getting Google as a partner. For Google, it would make sense from a marketing perspective -- if I got 1Gbps fiber at home in PA due to Google, I'd be more positively inclined toward the company in general (for working, M&A, other products, whatever).

San Francisco, I have zero hope for due to the totally dysfunctional city government, but Palo Alto, Mountain View, maybe EPA (for political reasons), Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino all seem pretty sanely governed.

If EPA had Google Fiber, I'd probably brave the (moderate, now) security risks, air quality, and floodplain.

CA makes it impossible unfortunately. I wish you were right, but this state is setup to allow every crank to block any sort of development.

How does California make it impossible? State PUC, or just NIMBY culture?

I've posted this elsewhere, but take a look at the California Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), which is overlaid on top of the national version (NEPA). I've worked on projects in CA that hit CEPA problems, and the level of bureaucracy can be really hideous.

NIMBY stuff doesn't help either: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... ; that's primarily about housing, but there's a strong "People united against everything" front.

This: http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2011/11/15/no-att-lightspeed-inter... is about San Francisco, but Palo Alto is not exactly known for its developer-friendly environment either.

Jseigler's done a great job of it, but you can ask Google themselves - CA's CEQA process is hell on earth. From the horse's mouth, so to speak:

"Many fine California city proposals for the Google Fiber project were ultimately passed over in part because of the regulatory complexity here brought about by CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] and other rules. Other states have equivalent processes in place to protect the environment without causing such harm to business processes, and therefore create incentives for new services to be deployed there instead."

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/04/google-fib...

San Francisco, I have zero hope for due to the totally dysfunctional city government

Are you voting in municipal elections? If not, you're part of the problem, not the solution.

I don't live or work in San Francisco, and would mostly choose a moderately quick and only fairly painful death to that option.

In other news, AT&T expects to be able to be sold the same fiber network at the same rate with the same privileges as Google.

Tis only fair.

I was really hoping that when AT&T and TW complained that Google was getting a better deal than them that the cities would simply reply "Sorry, but that offer is for new customers only. Thanks for being a valued customer."

This is definitely one of those situations where when the big telcos heard about Kansas - they were prolly thinking..."meh...who cares about Kansas".

But it feels like every few weeks, Google makes a new announcement. This is definitely going to shake-up the entire ISP market in the US.

I am happy for you guys - I no longer live there, but when I did RoadRunner wasn't TOOO bad.

I guess Comcast is the biggest offender and I hate to see customers taken advantage of.

http://kansascityisinmissouri.com/

Isn't Fiber in Kansas City, Kansas, as well?

Yes

Can someone explain the impact of widely-distributed fiber on DDOS attacks? As I understand it, if 1-2 of these nodes get compromised, then add in the 10-100x magnification via DNS, you're looking at 10-100gigabits of bandwidth off only two nodes? Compared to the recently published high of 300, this seems disproportionally high.

Let's get providers to stop packets from leaving their network when the IP source doesn't match any on their network.

Bye bye DNS amplification.

Pedantically speaking, it's difficult - in fact darned near impossible - for a single residential type host (ie, likely a laptop running windows) to utilize anywhere near the full 1Gb capacity offered.

That said, a botnet host running on this network would be substantially more capable of causing damage than a host on an 8Mbps upstream.

Hopefully google has plans or already has implemented some ability to mitigate that type of problem...

Those attacks only work from networks that don't impose egress filtering.

Luckily, if a node becomes compromised, it can be disconnected under the "you can't run servers" provision of the ToS. :)

DNS amplification as a strategy is a symptom of shitty network management on the part of incumbent ISPs.

I'm pretty sure Google will be more responsive in addressing these kinds of outbreaks.

I'm curious what the size of the upstream pipe is? Is it 1G up/down? Even without DNS amplification, it only takes infecting a couple hundred machines on fiber to have a massive botnet. Hopefully ISPs will better handle DDoS attacks, because likely a few host machines could take down many sites.

Holy cow that's great! I sure hope that means they can easily expand to Salt Lake City (about 50 miles North of there—and where I am) after building the infrastructure there.

There is already a fiber ISP in the area called Utopia who are in cities near here, but have been disallowed into the bigger cities (Provo and Salt Lake) apparently due to lobbying by the Qwest / CenturyLink and Comcast ISPs.

I wonder if this announcement has anything to do with the fact that Comcast recently doubled my speeds (from 25/5Mbps to 50/10Mbps)

Utopia is around 1Gbps for $600 though, right? I actually work right across the street from their facility on Redwood Rd.

Not sure about 1Gbps speeds—that always seemed so out of reach to me, I never paid attention. Their normal residential speed was said to be about $70 / month for 50Mbps up and down.

"Holy Cow" - confirmed, we have a Utahn here.

Ha ha... I'm not your typical "Oh my heck" Utahn though—I do drop the hard swears when appropriate, just not online.

It's ok man, I've got your back. I'm the OP of this submission and I'm from Lehi of all places. :)

From Springville, live in Provo, so I certainly can't talk. Just wanted to point it out :)

I'm honestly a little surprised to find another Lehite here. We could have a two-person meet up. :)

On a side note, I added my name/zip code to the request page. Anything we can do to let them know there is demand further north is good.

> apparently due to lobbying by the Qwest / CenturyLink and Comcast ISPs.

You don't need any conspiracy to explain why it didn't come to every city in the area. There were huge bonds associated with UTOPIA membership that the city counsels were afraid of. How UTOPIA has played out shows the cities that opted-out made the right decision. It's been a financial disaster (and I say this as a consumer who had high hopes for it).

Just a couple links I quickly Googled can explain in more detail how bad UTOPIA's finances are:

http://www.dailywireless.org/2012/08/07/utopia-financial-aud... http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/54928063-79/utopia-networ...

UTOPIAs pitch to the cities was based in subscription rates absolutely divorced from reality. I can't believe they got any cities on board.

I'm holding out hope that maybe Google just buys up UTOPIA like they did with iProvo and turns it into Google Fiber and then just extends it throughout the entire valley. I don't know if UTOPIA could actually be sold like that though.

Rochester, NY has a municipal fiber network running through its sewers, and Verizon is absent from the city. In the past before Kansas City, Rochester and county were vying for Google to come to town. With a favorable environment and a supportive government I'm hoping we'll be next.

http://www.monroecounty.gov/google-map

So that's a municipal line running through the subway? I never knew that.

If they are getting into the habit of buying failing public-sector fibre networks, can they come and take over Digital Region South Yorkshire too? It works reasonably well, but is incredibly ineptly run, has a tiny number of users and has been facing the axe for as long as I've been using it.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/general-news...

They just announced they'll offer a free trial period for every home.

... a trial period of 7 years.

It's Google Fiber Beta™.

Wasn't this announce from the very beginning?

A bit slower(100Mb?) with a one-time installation fee(~700USD I think) that could be financed.

Free Internet at 5 mb up/down for a $300 installation fee.

you mean $30 fee

_for a $30 activation fee (plus applicable taxes) and no monthly charge for at least 7 years_

From the linked site:

Up to 5Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speed • No data caps • Free service guaranteed for at least 7 years • Includes Network Box $300 construction fee (one time or 12 monthly payments of $25) + taxes and fees

Don't see that on the linked page; you might be looking at the info for Topeka, where they don't already have the fiber laid. Your parent is talking about the provo specific page that the article actually links to, where it very clearly says that it's a $30 activation fee for homes already on iProvo.

When I go to that link, I go to the home page for Google Fiber, not the Provo specific page, after clicking through to the Provo specific page I do indeed see the $30 one time fee.

How odd, since the URL is

    https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/

$300 in Kansas, $30 in Provo. Existing network might make it cheaper.

Not sure, but given the wording it might just be $300 as well for homes in provo that aren't on the existing fiber network (like it would be to thread up a new home in Kansas City). Totally guesswork though; could be more or less as well.

from the article: "we’d offer our Free Internet service (5 Mbps speeds) to every home along the existing Provo network, for a $30 activation fee and no monthly charge for at least seven years"

Holy crap....that's kinda insane! I thought the 7 year figure was a joke.

Looks like the Kansas City rollout went smoothly, if Google is willing to ramp up deployment in other cities.

Cue AT&T announcement in 5... 4... 3...

The telco is CenturyLink in Utah.

My comment was a tongue-in-cheek snipe at AT&T for the way they handled Google's Austin Fiber announcement; and for continuing to extract rent from their shabby old infrastructure when there is clearly a demand for more data services.

Comcast, Verizon: You're officially on notice.

Prepare to be disrupted.

It's Comcast and Century Link here, but I am so ready for them to be disrupted. I'm just 10 miles too far away. :(

Wish this had happened a year ago; it's not entirely clear what the effect will be on me and everyone else who already has a service contract on the iProvo network. I suppose if Google is upgrading the network, though, that can only be good.

If they (Google) are purchasing the whole iProvo network, then I would think they could also undo the service contracts so you could sign up for their normal services? Or, maybe you mean that you have a contract to work on the network—like a technician or something?

Found it: http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/what-goo...

"Veracity customers' accounts will be transferred to Google Fiber automatically."

Of course, that's still a very vague statement; there's a lot of fiddly details to ask about (like, does the contract actually get changed so I'm not paying a bill every month anymore), but I am encouraged.

Downtown Boston. Please. I'm paying $1,500/m for a 50x50mbps primary and $350/m for a 100x10mbps backup. The alterative is DSL from version at 1Mbps peak, or a T1 - 1.5mbps for $500/m.

We need something new in this old city of copper.

That's just obscene! It has to be price gouging, plain and simple.

How can any provider justify charging such an outrageous amount for mid-range copper? I'm surprised Boston, being as metro as it is, still doesn't have enough competition for lower prices. Then again, New York isn't all that much cheaper for T1, but FiOS is more acceptable.

I imagine that Google will be working its way north, up through Orem and Bluffdale where the NSA, Adobe, and a number of other large tech companies are. There are some SLC suburbs up north that are running failed fiber networks, too, so I imagine they'll eventually fill in the Salt Lake area.

I'm surprised about Utah, even with the existing fiber. The population density in most of the valley is really low, and the installation cost to subscriber potential must be higher than it is in more compact urban areas.

Maybe there's a sidepoint to it - that it really isn't as expensive to build the last mile as telecoms have been claiming.

I'd not be surprised. They've also been claiming that I don't actually have a use for faster internet.

Realistically speaking, if all these various roll outs go smoothly for Google, how many years until we see Google Fiber in major cities (LA, SF, NY, etc.)?

Provo, Utah has about 100k population. There are about 250 US cities with at least 100k people. If Google doubles the number of cities they serve every year, and starts with the smallest cities, that's 7 more years to reach the largest cities.

Most people assume they'll stop when AT&T + Verizon start investing in land lines again, but who can say if Google will have the desired effect.

Here is a little more information

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/central/provo/what-goo...

Is it cheap because google doesn't have to make money on this product?.

I doubt any other company would survive providing 1Gbps fiber service $70/month, it costs a lot to dig through everybody's yard and create a fiber network.

Almost certainly going to help the nice folks at Bluehost out.

they could use some faster servers too

and better admins, but let's not be mean :)

As someone who lives in provo aka silicon slopes, this is great news!

I don't think most people realize how tech-based this area is and this should only help the companies in the area!

Fast forward some years: The United States of Google.

Great skiing a few miles away and the world's fastest internet? Sounds like most of what I need to be happy. I wish I could move there.

It's easy to do. There are a lot of jobs in the area. I'm getting contacted multiple times per week by recruiters.

New Orleans is an area with a growing tech community that could REALLY use some infrastructure improvements. nudgenudge

our startup just got google fiber TODAY courtesy of brad feld! http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/04/the-feld-fiberhouse-...

Why not come to Bay Area? I feel this is a suitable place for high speed internet.

it's probably much cheaper and quicker to roll fiber out in multiple smaller cities then in one giant city.

Here's to hoping this goes through and that google can turn iProvo around!

I'm really excited that they continue to expand.

Come on, Seattle!

Launch in the EaDo area of Houston, please!!!

Fantastic. Glad to see further expansion.

How many cities are they going to go to?

Dear Google,

please buy EPB's fiber network in Chattanooga, TN.

Love,

Where?

edit: Though this is great for that city.

about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Provo is a city in Utah. It is most notable for being the home of BYU (Brigham Young University) the main University of the LDS Church (Mormons).

HQ of Novell and Qualtrics apparently.

Adobe has a dev center there (unsurprising, given Adobe's history.)

That was largely due to their acquisition of Omniture.

I didn't realize that, thanks. I figured it was an old-school Utah tech connection.

There are some well known tech companies around here :)

http://www.siliconslopes.com/company/search-companies

Sure. I was more referring to the cool graphics work being done at the University of Utah (Adobe, Evans & Sutherland, &c.)

Adobe's new facility for Omniture is north of Provo.

Yes the new Adobe building is closer to Point of the Mountain/Thanksgiving Point than it is Provo but the old Omniture offices were up near Technology Way in the Provo/Orem region. At least that is how I recall it.

Their old office was on the old Word Perfect campus (now called Canyon Park), near Provo Canyon.

IMFT has a fab just north of Provo in Lehi (near Adobe's campus) http://www.imftech.com/locations/

I can see how buying fiber networks like this helps their implementation strategy, but Provo where? I've literally never heard of this town. I'm wondering if these Google Fiber experiments wouldn't be more impactful if they weren't in big cities. KC and Austin are good choices with solid tech centers to see innovation from high network speeds, but Provo, Utah? Really?

It's a college town, probably more creatively vibrant than you would think at first glance, anti-Mormon prejudices aside.

I would like to think that HN is free of any anti-Mormon prejudices.

So would I. I grew up in Mormon country and even though I don't share their beliefs I always find the mainstream undercurrent of disdain very upsetting.

No significant online tech community is free of anti-religion prejudice, let alone anti-Mormon prejudice. Mormonism in particular attracts ire because it is very inflexible on behaviors that most religions have compromised on recently, and its unusual origins.

Utah has a pretty solid economy, and lots of outdoors enthuiasts love it.

I don't know much about Provo, but the drawback to me about Utah is that you have to live in a state that is strongly controlled by the LDS, which is great if you are a mainstream Mormon. Not so much if you aren't. My good friend recently left the Salt Lake City area after several years. When his neighbors found out he wasn't Mormon (LDS to be exact), they pretty much ceased all meaningful social interaction with his family.

Oh yeah, the beer is watered down too unless you buy it at the right place.

I'm not LDS, and generally dislike religion, but I wonder how bad an LDS-controlled area really would be.

I assume it means good disaster/etc. preparation, a relatively strong social safety net for participants (and thus less abject poverty, random crazy people, etc.)

The non-LDS or ex-LDS people I know who live in Utah (from Defcon or whatever) seem pretty cohesive as well. Maybe because it's a smaller tech scene than other cities, or because of LDS mainstream culture, or whatever.

I guess my question is how hard is it to be involved in business or other parts of civic life if not LDS but also not openly hostile (I mean, as religions go, I don't personally find it any worse than the others, and I'm fine with respecting participants, if not the religion itself, by not attacking it, and accommodating their beliefs). Could you be a non-LDS company in Provo and still reasonably hire a mix of LDS and non-LDS employees?

To answer your last question, yes. I work in Provo, and many of us here are LDS and many aren't. Most of us don't care who is and who isn't. Everyone gets along great. No one is left out and religious standing has zero affect on job status.

There may be exceptions in other companies, but this has been my experience.

As a member of the Church that attended BYU (in Provo), I'm always a bit surprised to hear people outside the church express these kinds of questions.

In Utah due to the large percentage of the population belonging to the Church, there is a somewhat unique culture (it's a Utah Mormon culture, not a Mormon culture in general, if than makes sense).

Us Mormons believe in respect and love towards all, regardless of belief system. We're taught to be accepting of all people and to not judge others (since we're all imperfect).

The parent post suggests an anecdotal evidence that this is not the case, but I would discourage you from associating that behavior with the religion as opposed to those individual people.

To answer your question, I don't see any reason that religion should affect the way a company operates or hires (other than, hopefully, trying to be more moral and honest in business dealings).

I guess I was comparing it to other countries I've worked in with one dominant religion (and stories about Israel from other people, where if you're not Israeli or at least Jewish you're fairly excluded...). All of the Mormons I've met (admittedly, outside Utah) have been positive outliers as individual people, but I assume when you have a larger sample set there is the normal range of human variation.

I'm also a member of the Church who went to BYU. I loved Utah the state (and wish I had had the time and money to explore it more), but the Utah Mormon culture there really rubbed me the wrong way. It ended up being a major factor in our heading back to the East Coast. That said, I'm still an active member so it was just Utah that was my problem.

I work at a tech startup in Salt Lake. I don't really know who is Mormon and who isn't. I can guess by drink choices when we eat out, but we all get along just great. :)

I'm very Mormon and I've ended up hiring almost exclusively non-LDS employees, and more of my friends are non-Mormon than otherwise. Most people work together just fine. Some extremist ex-Mormons have problems, and a handful of really, really stupid Mormons may hypothetically have certain problems (though in professional practice I've never encountered these), but pretty much everyone gets along just fine.

> "I wonder how bad an LDS-controlled area really would be"

It's got some outright bad stuff, some good, and some that's just oddly different.

For example, alcohol sales in Utah are extremely restricted because of an LDS prohibition on alcohol consumption [0].

Many Utah communities recently passed "free speech zone" ordinances, which seemed only to be enforced against people who were critical of the LDS church. Some friends of mine joined with the ACLU to get at least one of the ordinances repealed [1].

The social safety nets in Utah are strong, but in some circumstances there's also a lot of religious pressure tied to them. In other circumstances they're really great.

Being a stay-at-home dad in a heavily LDS community is a strange experience. It's a society that expects men to work and women to take care of children; I got a lot of funny looks when I'd go places with my son.

Many companies in Utah hire both LDS and non-LDS employees. I've heard quite a few people describe significant workplace tension. Others had no problems at all.

Net result: it's a really mixed bag.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Wisdom#Prohibitions

[1] http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/brigham-city-free-speech-zon...

Ranked #1 by Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/06/27/the-b...

Tech companies in Provo: http://www.siliconslopes.com/company/search-companies

Maybe the double-take says more about the our prejudices than about the strength of the tech industry in Utah county. The BYU/Mormon association makes it not a top destination for techno-hipsters, but that's not the same thing as being a tech backwater. The fact that they built iProvo in the first place is a pretty good sign.

(I lived in Utah until about 10 years ago.)

Provo, UT was home to the former headquarters of Novell. There are still a number of tech companies in the area as a result of the concentration of talent there.

Provo, Madison, Boulder seem like pretty ideal candidates for this kind of thing -- techie, fairly small (well, Boulder is borderline), relatively sane local government, good potential takeup.

KC actually seems like the outlier, due to size and a larger range of incomes/education.

Bellevue, WA might work, too, or college towns like Blacksburg, Pasadena, Cambridge, Urbana-Champaign, and near some of the National Labs. (Is Huntsville still an outlier for the state?)

Orlando would be interesting, or even the Disney-specific district, due to tourism, along with obviously Las Vegas. Selfishly I'd love it if they did Hawaii.

Bellevue, WA would be... interesting, but would be a far easier incremental step than Seattle.

Seattle already has a dark fiber network. All Google would have to do is light it up. Given Google's relatively large presence in the area (second only to Mountain View I believe).

Boulder is currently in the process of trying to kick out Xcel Energy and operate their own power infrastructure. I've been wondering if this is a step towards making a bid for Google Fiber. (Since having a city-owned utility seemed to be an important factor in the Kansas City, Kansas selection, for streamlined access to poles.)

It somewhat feels like there's some political purpose behind the choices. Kansas, Utah, Texas - all big GOP strongholds. Hmm.

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