
Google Fiber expansion moves fast; San Antonio approves construction - RougeFemme
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/google-fiber-expansion-moves-fast-san-antonio-approves-construction/
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appliedluck
Entrenched ISPs have complained that Google is getting special treatment. I
find that somewhat disingenuous. It seems to me the difference between
existing ISPs limp efforts to expand broadband and Google's is that Google did
a decent job of telling municipalities what they needed to bring higher speed
data to their constituents—and they did it in a very public way.

I think it's a good example of how one can bring attention to the senseless
bureaucracy we all complain about. Instead of complaining, bring about
actionable steps.

~~~
pekk
How do they explain why Google is getting special treatment? It's not like
cities have a special, irrational hardon for Google. It's that Google is
making a reasonable deal to them. If Time-Warner wants to do the same thing,
they can make the same deal.

They don't want to make this kind of deal with cities. They want the
government to prevent this kind of deal from being made.

~~~
rayiner
Is Google making a reasonable deal? I.e. if they didn't have an advertising
business to subsidize this with, would the terms still make business sense?

~~~
drewcrawford
It's sort of a funny question.

Do roads make economic sense if we didn't have a federal government to
subsidize them? Probably not: Texas derives around 58% [1] of its highway
costs from vehicle-related fees (e.g. registration, gas tax, etc.) and the
rest is subsidized from unrelated sources.

Then again if we did not have a road system, our economy would be in poor
shape, because it is harder to get the store to buy things, and to transport
the things around. So from that perspective roads are an economic net positive
even if they were 100% subsidized from unrelated businesses.

Gigabit internet is similar to roads. It probably can't/won't be funded 100%
by the people who use it. At the same time, it is important infrastructure
that opens up new avenues for economic opportunity, and I suspect that any
major city that had gigabit as available as roads or electricity would find
that the benefits exceed the costs, be they subsidized or otherwise.

[1]
[https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAKsWA7R5a0YQGg3ptGBpPlvQ...](https://www.icloud.com/iw/#numbers/BAKsWA7R5a0YQGg3ptGBpPlvQVOwHeYiVwiF/Texas_highway_funding)

~~~
rayiner
It's one thing for cities to subsidize infrastructure with tax dollars.
Another for a private company to do it as a tie-in to its online
services/advertising business. Still another for that company to berate ISPs
while doing it, for not building infrastructure they themselves probably
wouldn't without the cross-subsidy or synergy from their other businesses.

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chrissnell
Go, hometown! As someone who grew up in what used to be an incredibly lame and
mostly uneducated city, this makes me so happy. San Antonio has come so far. A
huge driver behind this is the success of Rackspace and the leadership of it's
chairman and co-founder, Graham Weston.

I hope that founders of startups will consider forming their companies in SA.
San Antonio has so much going for it: the hometown of one of the world's
largest cloud hosting companies, fast Google Fiber coming soon, the booming
Pearl district, Geekdom, low cost of living, great weather, awesome food, and
so much more. I believe strongly that the future of the tech economy will
happen outside of the SFBA and I feel that Google Fiber's bets point strongly
to that.

~~~
dictum
>I hope that founders of startups will consider forming their companies in SA

Which makes me wonder: can businesses use Google Fiber? I was under the
impression it's a consumer-only service.

Would they allow servers not for personal usage for startups?

(I really hope more startups appear in cities where many households have
Gigabit connections. I can't wait to see _what_ could be done with fast
Internet access.)

~~~
masklinn
> I was under the impression it's a consumer-only service.

You're correct:

> We are currently focused on our Fiber-to-the-home network, which is for
> residential consumers. We hope to be able to offer Fiber to small businesses
> at some point in the future. To stay updated on any new developments, please
> follow our blog
> [http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/](http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/)

but that mostly means there's little uptime guarantee, a small
business/startup could use GF either eating potential downtime or with a
backup stabler line in case fiber goes down.

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StillBored
What I don't understand is why google didn't bid on Time Warner.

With very little effort (compared with rolling out fiber in a couple cities)
they could have completed the rollout of DOCSIS 3, and provided everyone with
343/143 Mbps using modems available today (zoom 5341j) and in a couple years
when the 24 channel modems become more wide spread upgrade everyone to Gigabit
operations.

In ten years will google fiber have cost them more than $45 billion? Will they
have 1/10th the penetration that TW has today?

~~~
kev009
Speculative, but culture?

Look at how the Motorola acquisition played out. Motorola was a company that
had a pretty damn good (maybe just a bit heavy) engineering culture.

If you buy out a culturally bankrupt company infested with assholes, you have
to root out all those assholes while simultaneously continuing operations and
developing the future. I dare say this would be much harder than a new build
out.

~~~
kokon
Also speculative, but Google probably has a set of equipments that don't work
well with others. When you play in the access and transport space, there
usually a set of standard that you have to follow, in order for it to work
together with others.

If Google owns the entire infrastructure, they can build their own equipments
that are a lot simpler/cheaper to build, because they don't have to deal with
all the standard-crap that other manufacturers have to deal with.

If they bought TWC, then they need to integrate all those devices, including
all of the OSSes that are guarded by bureaucrats.

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yeukhon
I'd like to see government step up in their bureaucratic process more. I am
not saying we should approve everything at the speed of light.

I feel bad when I read this article yesterday:
[http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/in-9-years-
of-w...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/in-9-years-of-work-
just-3-public-toilets-go-live)

Only 3 public toilets go live in nine years. I hope we can break ISP franchise
and monopoly too so I don't have to move a few blocks down just to get another
ISP.

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infra178
The reason why the customer service at most ISPs sucks is because arbitrary
rules are imposed on them by local governments. For example, if the average
call can't be over 9 minutes long, don't expect help with a problem that takes
half an hour to diagnose. If the same rules aren't being imposed on Google,
then there's a problem.

~~~
Avenger42
I thought they just wouldn't go over 9 minutes due to internal rules (e.g.,
you'll get written up if your average call time goes over a certain level). Do
you have a source for the "local governments" claim? I'd be very interested at
yelling at my city council for imposing stupid rules like that.

(My main source for this goes back to Joel's article on Measurement[1].)

[1]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020715.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020715.html)

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mattquiros
Google Fiber is taking over and people will choose it over their regular ISPs
because it's better. And soon enough it won't matter what OS your mobile
device is running. For as long as you're connecting via Google Fiber, Google
has your data.

~~~
greglindahl
I was a user of Google WiFi in Mountain View, and indeed the terms of service
(which no one reads) allowed Google to collect information by watching what
you did on the Internet. No PII, of course, but we all know that metadata is
enough to identify people.

I solved this problem with a VPN, just like you need with AT&T or Comcast.

~~~
magicalist
No they don't. Maybe you were confused by "We may record information about
your usage of Google WiFi, such as when and for how long you use the network
and the frequency and size of data transfers"?

[https://wifi.google.com/privacy_and_security.html](https://wifi.google.com/privacy_and_security.html)

~~~
greglindahl
I have no idea if the current document was the one I read last decade. At the
time, I was alarmed enough to use a VPN.

(edit: archive.org says this page dates way back to 2012. Presumably it used
to be elsewhere...)

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GabrielF00
So is Google actually planning on running new aerial fiber themselves or are
they just using existing fiber that terminates to city buildings?

~~~
toomuchtodo
They run new aerial fiber. They're asking for the right of way on the poles.

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walesmd
As a San Antonio resident paying out the ass for AT&Ts 40Mbps tier, all I have
to add to the conversation is this: fuck yes.

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kclay
YES!! When can I give you my money.

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izzydata
Yes please. Start putting fiber in Leawood Kansas already.

