I just wish that someone...Google or ANYONE else would do something like Google Fiber in the technological wasteland where I live instead of focusing only on hotbeds of high-speed internet and well-connected customers like Kansas City, parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, etc.
Here in my bandwidth ghetto, TPC can't do better than 1.5Mbps/384kbps and Cable has different limitations (ridiculous fees for static addresses, for example[1]), extremely variable performance (most days, I do pretty well getting 50-70Mbps/10-30Mbps on a line where I pay for 30/10, but often enough to be annoying, I get 7Mbps/3Mbps for 8-10 hours at a time...Just long enough to go through the trouble report process but not long enough to still be a problem when the tech shows up to address the issue.), etc. I'd love to ditch the DSL line and relegate the Cable circuit to backup status (and move to a lower pricing tier on it) with my primary on FTTH. [1] I _HAVE_ business class cable service, but I find the idea of $5+/month for an address that costs them less than $0.001/year ridiculous. Where is this barren wasteland of bandwidth you may ask? It's in San Jose, California. Capitol of Silicon Valley. If I stand on the top of my roof, I can see 55 South Market Street on a clear day. (but I have to stand in just the right spot and look through just the right piece of the 280x680x101 interchange). If anyone wants to do a fiber build in my neighborhood ala Google, I will happily go door to door soliciting my neighbors on their behalf. Owen On Aug 22, 2012, at 18:46 , Benjamin Krueger <[email protected]> wrote: > A unique position? Unlike those poor residential ISPs who only have literally > millions of subscribers to use as leverage in peering negotiations. Perhaps > more accurately, rather than saying "Google can afford to start almost any > project they want" we should say "Google doesn't suffer the temptation of > wringing every last penny out of their aging infrastructure to ensure maximum > profits from minimal investments". > > I don't want to turn this into a long-drawn debate, so I'll simply say that I > take Google at their word when they say this is profitable from Day 1 and I > surely take their product offering at its word. I'm not sure who proposed we > require anything, but I suppose we can let the market decide what ISPs are > "required" to do. I can say that I don't know anyone who wouldn't drop any > existing residential service for what Google is selling. Perhaps they will > succumb to some unforeseen boogeyman as you allude to, but to be honest that > sounds a whole lot like the wishful thinking of an industry that has been > deftly out-manueverd at its own game and now finds itself dramatically behind > the curve. Frankly, if I were in the ISP business I would be shitting my > pants. > > On Aug 22, 2012, at 6:05 PM, Jimmy Hess wrote: > >> On 8/22/12, Benjamin Krueger <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Yeah, totally can't be done. It especially can't be done profitably. >> >> Google can afford to start almost any project they want, and they are >> in a unique position to negotiate peering and access to a ton of >> bandwidth, with their Youtube, Google Search et al. As to whether it >> will be profitable, well, obviously, that is their claim. It's yet to >> be demonstrated. >> >> I gotta reject the idea that broadband providers should be required to >> follow in Google's footsteps though. >> >> For now, Google fiber is another risky experiment, that could have a >> great payout if successful, or could be shuttered within a year or so, >> or fees/rate incs tacked on, when they figure out just what a mess >> they have gotten into. >> >> >>> http://fiber.google.com/ >>> http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/the-economics-of-google-fiber-and-what-it-means-for-u-s-broadband/ >>> >> -- >> -JH >
