Howdy neighbor: I live in NYC too. A lot of NYC already does have fiber in the form of FiOS. I'll also observe that NYC's overall Internet situation appears to be much better than many places; right now I'm paying $50 a month for 50 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up through RCN. In Tucson, where I used to live, I was paying $70 for 12 down / 1 or 2 up.
Google is presumably targeting the places with the crappiest service and the most amenable local governments; NYC's service isn't terrible and its government isn't exactly known for being responsive.
That hurts. We're looking for a new place to live and I have been asking landlords if their buildings get FiOS service. It doesn't seem to be an uncommon question, and the ones without it seem somewhat unhappy about the situation.
And I'm paying $54 for 20 Mbs/down on Time Warner, which is already a "discounted rate". (I'm in Manhattan).
The building next door to me has FiOS, but my landlord has no incentive to let them wire my building too.
I agree that New York City isn't the best target for Google Fiber, but the Internet situation here varies very heavily based on where in the city you live (not just the neighborhood, but which physical building and management company).
Is your building rent controlled?
If not, I suspect your landlord is short sighted. I am curious to see whether property values will start to diverge based on quality of internet access. With more people wanting to work from home, I think availability, speed, cost, and quality of Internet access will have an impact on property values.
(Of course, you're in Manhattan, which means landlords can do almost anything and still charge insane rents, so this may not apply to you. Sorry.)
> I think availability, speed, cost, and quality of Internet access will have an impact on property values.
In New York, that's vastly dwarfed by the many other factors that affect property values. As much as you and I think Internet access is important, most NYC tenants care more about location, bedbug history, sunlight, etc.
i feel so violated.. at some point i even asked how those questions are relevant to checking Fios availability, to which i was told "these are just part of standard questions i ask everyone"
if you call Verizon, refuse to answer any questions until they tell you if Fios is available at your address.
A crappy anti-muni broadband law was passed at the state level a couple of years ago (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed-anti...), so apparently the network has to be run by a private company?
There is joint initiative by local municipalities and universities to bring in a private company to run fiber (http://ncngn.net). It's not clear to me how this will be affected by the Google announcement. (They released a rather vague statement about it.)