
Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass - dweekly
https://webpass.net/blog/google-fiber-agrees-to-acquire-webpass
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nurblieh
Huge fan of Webpass. 1 Gbps of IPv4/6 with great customer service for $55 a
month. It can't be beat, if it's available to you.

I hope this is a win for the Webpass employees, in the short and long term.
Thanks for all the bits!

~~~
sametmax
Is that a good deal in the US ?

Wow, in France for $40 we got:

\- 12Gbps (100G Fiber at no additional cost in supported area)

\- Free landline call to a 100 countries and free cell calls to France

\- HD TV

\- and a media center with recording capabilities, a blue ray player, public
FTP and network harddrive

\- for 3 more $, you get a cell phone line with 2 hours of communication and
unlimited text, or for $20 unlimited calls and 4G.

And people are still complaining...

~~~
010a
100G fiber? I had no idea France was running 4x EDR Infiniband to their
citizens' homes.

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walrus01
I demand only the finest quality 16QAM low FEC coherent single wavelength 100
Gbps interface for my condo, doesn't everyone have an ASR9010 with $50,000
100GbE linecard in their closet???

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tlrobinson
Dear Google: If you fuck up Webpass, you're dead to me.

p.s. I'm watching you:
[http://i.imgur.com/rS9LGZ6.png](http://i.imgur.com/rS9LGZ6.png)

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JusticeJuice
What tool are you using there?

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tlrobinson
Just a little cron job shell script that dumps the results from a command-line
speedtest.net client into Librato Metrics.

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jordanthoms
Wow, unexpected. I used Webpass when I was in SF and was very happy with the
quality of their service, so them getting more capital to expand is a great
development.

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jaytaylor
Yep, WebPass was by far and away the best ISP I've ever had. They actually
emailed me in advance about planned service interruptions! Wow!!!

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xeno42
Interesting.. I've been very happy with Webpass for the past 8 or 9 years
(though my building's crappy wiring can "only" support 100Mbit).

A Webpass engineer I spoke to last week mentioned they're rolling out fiber to
the building to provide redundancy for the wireless mesh. Surprised me as I
could count on my fingers the number of outages webpass has had since I
started using them. Perhaps it'll replace the wireless portion in the longer
term.

~~~
walrus01
It might look like a mesh on a topology diagram but believe me, it has nothing
in common with wireless "mesh" networking... I don't have insight into the
exact configuration of webpass' routers but they're undoubtedly using fairly
ordinary BGP and OSPF between nodes. The wireless links are exclusively high
capacity point-to-point trunks.

~~~
dsl
It is not "mesh wireless" gear, but it is a mesh at the routing layer (ECMP).
My old building had PtP wireless to multiple other buildings.

Edit: I always speculated the difference between 100Mbps and 200Mbps on-net
buildings was if that particular location was multihomed.

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dsk139
Former Webpass employee here. Was one of the first software eng. hires. This
is a great example of a bootstrapped business focused on customer experience
that built up with no outside funding (that I know of). Congrats Charles &
team.

~~~
osi
Great work. I was a customer at 673 W Brannan in SF back in '07\. Best
residential internet ever.

~~~
ukd1
I'm at 673 for the last few years, it's still great!

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shadykiller
I use Webpass. Get 600mbps on my wifi AC router. It's amazing and I'm super
happy with it. Hoping with google fiber speed gets even faster.

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sanjeetsuhag
How much are you paying ?

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henryw
I paid $550 for a year up front. It's ~$55 per month on a monthly plan.

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nfriedly
Damn. I pay windstream about $65/month for 10mbit down/768kbps up. (They're
the only wired provider where I live, and they know it.)

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tekklloneer
While I worry about large carriers absorbing small ones, this could be an
excellent big step in real competition for bay area internet access.

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aquilaFiera
If you listen, you can hear the sound San Francisco rental managers rejoicing
they can advertise they have Google Fiber.

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jboydyhacker
I have webpass with 1gb for 550 a year. I've had it for 7 years or so.

The bummer is- it's actually cheaper than Google charges in other cities-
hopefully the price does not go up.

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spikels
Webpass does not serve houses or smaller and/or older apartment buildings.
This substantially lowers their install costs per customer relative to
business models, like Fiber, that serve almost everyone n an area.

~~~
rayiner
It's a brilliant business model: expand slowly based on demand only to
dwelling units dense enough to be economically viable.

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techsupporter
It definitely is and a bunch of small companies are doing an amazing job of it
(Seattle has three such companies, for example).

It is also one big reason why I really want municipal fiber. There are a lot
more "houses or smaller and/or older apartment buildings" than there are new
condo or high-end apartment buildings. It would be nice to have some
competition in those dwellings alongside the cable company, usually with caps,
and (maybe) the telephone company, usually DSL with very slow speeds.

~~~
rayiner
Municipal fiber wouldn't be "competition" in any meaningful sense of the term.
The Chatanooga rollout cost about $5,000 per subscriber and was heavily
supported by cross-subsidies from electricity ratepayers. I'd support
municipal fiber as a complete government monopoly in places that have shown
themselves capable of operating public infrastructure (e.g. NYC). But billing
it as "competition" is disingenuous. You can't meaningfully "compete" with an
entity that gets non-market revenue.

~~~
tssva
I have Verizon FiOS. Installation of it was subsidized by targeted tax breaks,
use of government owned right of ways, and laws which substantially limited
their liability for property damaged done during installation. I'm also pretty
sure Verizon used funds gained from their other services to pay for the
installation.

~~~
rayiner
In most places FiOS deployment involves huge taxes, such as franchise fees and
forced build-out into neighborhoods that will be unprofitable. (Tax breaks, to
the extent they exist, are often carrots for the latter). Also, in many
(most?) places Verizon pays the utility pole or conduit owner (usually the
power company) for access to those rights of way. In Virginia, for example,
you'll get a line-item on your bill for the right-of-way fee.

~~~
warfangle
In most places telephone deployment involved huge taxes and forced build-out
into counties that would be unprofitable. Also, the telephone company paid
non-discriminatory fees to the pole/conduit owner.

This was often paid for / subsidized by the Universal Service Fund, because
telephone service was seen as something absolutely necessary for modern life.
Back in 1934.

ISPs, unfortunately, are not able to be subsidized by the Universal Service
Fund. AFAIK.

~~~
rayiner
Note that the Universal Service Fund is funded by a tax on telecommunications
service. So a big company like Bell Atlantic (Verizon's predecessor) never
received a net subsidy--the government just forced it to take money from some
of its subscribers to offer below-cost service to other subscribers.

That said, the USF is a big step up from the "forced build-out" into
unprofitable areas, which is what used to happen with telephone, and still
happens with broadband. It highly distorts the market. E.g. if build-out
requirements were imposed on Webpass, it'd basically ban their business model.

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atburrow
This is exciting news! In Chicago, I'm currently living in a high rise where
the fastest plan I can get is 24 Mbps for around $80/mo. My high rise has an
exclusivity contract with AT&T U-Verse. I've spoken with AT&T reps and they
can't offer any higher speeds. I also talked to property management and they
said there's nothing they can do for me. They are locked into an exclusivity
contract with AT&T for the wires in the building.

Does anyone have experience dealing with properties who claim to have
exclusivity contracts? I talked to people at Webpass, and they've stated it is
available in my area. They'd come in and set everything up free of charge. I
don't see the downside for my building to allow Webpass to come in. I do know
the FCC has regulations about exclusivity contracts with video providers, but
I couldn't find any documents on things like internet. It seems like my only
option is to find a place that does not have exclusivity contracts with
providers.

~~~
visarga
> I can get is 24 Mbps for around $80/mo

Bucharest internet pricing is 10$ / 1gbps, so that would come at about 320x
price ratio, and still 5x cheaper than Google Fiber.

Funny thing, the ISP I am getting this from set the price for 100mbps and
300mbps the same, 7$/month. As if a 200mbps difference is trivial.

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kevenwang0531
Hopefully this will speed up Fiber's rollout in San Francisco. I remember
Google's announcement regarding Fiber in SF a few months back. This
acquisition is a no-brainer for both companies!

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codemac
God, I hope the support doesn't end up like most other Google product's
support. I have webpass and my heart dropped. My project fi experience has
been bad enough already.

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jrockway
I work on Google Fiber. We have pretty good customer support; call us 24/7,
someone in the US will help you with pretty much anything you want that's
Fiber-related (WiFi too slow? TV remote not working? That sort of thing.)

~~~
curiouscats
I just hope the commitment to good service that Google Fiber has started with
isn't trashed by foolish executives.

The state of customer dis-service in the USA is so strong that it seems pretty
likely any company that has good service for awhile will shift resources into
bigger paychecks for executives and fewer resources for customer support. I
hope Google Fiber avoids this situation. Some companies do but not very many:
Trader Joe's, Costco...

~~~
jrockway
I think good customer service is pretty much essential to running a service
like Fiber, because there is no code that I can write that's going to smooth
over the fact that we killed your lawn while running the fiber through your
yard. It happens :/

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slg
I was a happy Webpass customer for about 3 years before moving to an area not
served by them. I would be curious to see if they are folded into Fiber or if
they are kept as a separate brand. As it currently stands Webpass has much
stricter limits on who they are willing to serve. Last time I checked they
required that all customers lived in multi unit buildings that were built
within the last 20 years. I imagine this was meant to keep their installation
costs low while hopefully benefiting from economies of scale. That makes sense
for a new niche ISP, but Google has the resources and motivation to abandon
those restrictions.

~~~
gkop
Has Google Fiber sold fixed wireless under the Fiber brand before? I think
they would have to keep a separate brand at least until they can get all of
the many Webpass fixed wireless subscribers switched over to fiber.

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tbrock
I hope this reduces the cost of their business offerings. I love the service,
and the home offering is the deal of the century, but $500/month for 50Mb/sec
symmetric or $250/month for 20Mb/sec symmetric is hard to swallow for our
business (or any other).

They offer faster service (gigabit and probably more) but what startup can pay
10k/month for their business internet?

What's worse is monkeybrains and webpass should seemingly compete on price for
business offerings but it seems like they actually collude. Their pricing for
businesses is exactly the same.

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Tinyyy
I'm curious, why is it that business plans are so much more expensive than
residential ones?

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gruez
Price discrimination. Businesses tend to be more able to pay than home users.

~~~
pyvpx
if by discrimination you mean guarantees versus best-efforts. business class
services, speaking generally, are less or not at all over subscribed while
providing contractual guarantees to service performance and problem
resolution.

residential is best effort. they'll do their best to keep it up and give you
the speeds you pay for, but if it doesn't work out that way sometimes, well,
they're sorry about that.

~~~
curiouscats
Price discrimination is an economic concept - charging different prices for
very similar products or services to get the value that each customer is
willing to pay. That is often difficult and what normally happens is each
customer is charged the same price.

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BWStearns
I'm pumped. I live in a Webpass market so hopefully Comcast starts doing their
damn job now that it's a Google market.

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cardigan
So will Webpass be faster now?

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boulos
My webpass is already 1 Gbps symmetric. If yours is less, it's a per-building
upgrade (so maybe with additional capital they'd do that in more places) and
may not be feasible.

Disclosure: I work at Google (but not on Fiber).

~~~
bobbles
Coming from australia and not familiar at all with Webpass... is the latency
low? ie. could people use this for gaming internet connections?

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pbarnes_1
As someone who used to live in Sydney and now in SF with Webpass... I can tell
you that Webpass would be what a proper NBN rollout would look like. It's kind
of amazing. It only costs $60/month and you just get an ethernet drop.

No login, no metering, no shaping.

Example latency:

    
    
      admin@RT-AC5300-E6A0:/tmp/home/root# ping -c 5 8.8.8.8
      PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
      64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=0 ttl=55 time=3.526 ms
      64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=1 ttl=55 time=3.559 ms
      64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=2 ttl=55 time=3.547 ms
      64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=3 ttl=55 time=3.518 ms
      64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=4 ttl=55 time=3.584 ms
    
      --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
      5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
      round-trip min/avg/max = 3.518/3.546/3.584 ms

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rosege
Someone will probably roll something like this out in the metro areas and it
will eat the NBN

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pbarnes_1
Webpass only serves multiple dwelling units AFAIK.

You can already order microwave and fixed fiber links in Sydney CBD, Pyrmont,
etc but they cost a lot more than $60/m.

The NBN was a solid idea. Execution is always kind of the issue though.

~~~
tacticus
> was

:( such a sad truth.

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gkop
Webpass has only been doing fiber for 10 months [0], as far as I know the bulk
of their customers in SF are on fixed wireless. I'm discouraged by this
announcement - now it seems there's zero chance of widespread Google Fiber in
SF.

[0] [https://webpass.net/blog/fiber-is-here](https://webpass.net/blog/fiber-
is-here)

~~~
jerryr
I'm surprised by your downvotes. While "zero chance" might be a bit dramatic,
it seems like this warrants discussion. Does this mean that Google thinks P2P
wireless is the way to cover urban areas? Will it disincentivize them from
persevering through a city-wide fiber installation because P2P wireless is
"good enough"? Or is it a good opening play for fiber in SF because Webpass
was already navigating the zoning/regulation/rights and just needed capital to
succeed? I'd be very interested to hear others' perspectives on this.

Disclosure edit: I'm a current Webpass P2P wireless customer. I was literally
about to switch away from Webpass to another P2P wireless solution (we have a
site evaluation next Monday) because Webpass has been unreliable for us
lately. I'm really curious what, if anything, this means for Webpass and
Google Fiber in SF.

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rayiner
I don't really get this phobia of fixed wireless. The technology is improving
by leaps and bounds--while the technology for digging up city streets isn't.

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pdx6
The city hasn't been doing a great job of dropping in fiber either. Maybe in
SoMA, but up here in the hills I had my street repaved and there was no plans
to put in fiber or upgrade sewer while it was being dug up (I checked with
DPW). Fixed wireless is the future in SF, even with SF's dig once policy
([http://sfgov.org/dt/dig-once](http://sfgov.org/dt/dig-once)).

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mmwave
For those interested, you can get an idea of Webpass' network (with
downloadable KMZ) by searching for their 70/80 GHz link registrations here:
[http://www.micronetcommunications.com/LinkRegistration/Query...](http://www.micronetcommunications.com/LinkRegistration/Query.aspx)

Search on Licensee Name Webpass

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TheMagicHorsey
I'm a Webpass customer. Pretty amazing service. Although lately they have been
suffering from some slow speeds at peak times. I think its just growing pains
due to large increases in their customer base. I believe it will be back to
high speed soon.

speedtests put me at around 100Mbps consistently when its "fast" and about
20-30 Mbps when its slow.

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shmerl
I hope it's not a sign that Google is slowing down fiber rollout and plans to
switch to "new hot" wireless, but rather they'll push both.

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andrewfromx
does anyone know the eta for los angeles?

