
Google Fiber Austin - tyroneschiff
https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/home/
======
shittyanalogy
Damn, one time $300 fee for "Up to" 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. That's
like getting free internet for 6 and a half years[1] from current providers
after 6 months. And if you want to upgrade you've already got the hardware.

I wonder what the minimum time of undercutting at a loss service they can
offer is without it being considered anti-competitive.

[1] They guarantee 7 years of free service
[https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/plans/#plan=free](https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/plans/#plan=free)

~~~
josu
Is there any evidence that they are operating at a loss?

For 2013 Comcast reported 13.5 billion operating income on 64.6 revenue [1].
This means that they could potentially lower their prices 20% without
incurring in losses. If we assume that Google is able to operate more
efficiently, which isn't such a bold assumption, they could potentially
undercut prices even more. On top of that, we could also assume that in terms
of infraestructure the cost of offering 10mbps is simillar to offering 1 gbps.

So I'm not that sure that they are operating at a loss.

[1]
[http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CMCSA/3686143613x0xS1...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CMCSA/3686143613x0xS1193125-14-47522/1166691/filing.pdf)

~~~
wmf
Everybody other than Google reports that installing fiber costs over $1,000
per home, but Google is selling it for $300 and saying "trust us".

~~~
rhino369
There are really two costs for installing fiber. The cost to drag it past your
house, which is expensive, probably over 1000. And the cost to bring it from
your curb to your house. I've heard 500 for that, but it could around 300. Or
google could just think of it as an advertising cost.

~~~
exelius
The $500 figure is probably correct - I'm guessing Google is assuming a
conversion rate of some of those customers at $300 turning into paying
customers, and thus they'll get back part of the subsidy. 5mbit internet
blows, and most people will probably want to upgrade.

------
pretz
While I'm excited to see Google Fiber push into Austin, I've been very happy
with my 110 mbps down / 11 mbps up from local company Grande:
[http://mygrande.com/internet/compare](http://mygrande.com/internet/compare).
Austin is lucky to have actual competition among cable and ISP providers,
unlike many other cities.

~~~
jobu
It's surprising and unfortunate that they chose Austin then. There are so many
other large cities out there with limited choices for fast internet.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
That's probably the reason they chose Austin, surprisingly.

It's a lot less legwork to setup shop in a city that doesn't already have red-
tape in place.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Yup, which is precisely why Google won't ever touch anything north of the
Mason Dixon line. Heads would certainly roll if they encroached on Comcast's
home turf.

------
teekert
Here in the Netherlands we also have this but from more companies. A lot of
cities now have fiber to the home, I have 50/50 + tv for 50 euro (100/100
would be 55). Some cities also have Gigabit, for about 100 euros/month
([http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht.html](http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht.html))

Google fiber doesn't seem so special to me. Maybe I should read into how the
money from the fiber network is made here. I think there are some government
loans involved in getting the infrastructure in place, even though there
already was a cable network that is currently advertising up to 200 mbit/sec.

~~~
gtaylor
> A lot of cities now have fiber to the home, I have 50/50 + tv for 50 euro

I have 50/25 or so plus TV for about the same price in southeastern US. It's
not fiber, but I end up with about the same service as you. At the level of
service you and I are getting, fiber isn't necessary.

> Google fiber doesn't seem so special to me.

Probably not if you only have 50/50 for 50 euro. That's not nearly as great a
value as Google Fiber, in my opinion. For that same amount, you get symmetric
1000/1000 with Google Fiber. Blows the kind of service that you and I are
getting away, bigtime.

~~~
zyx321
70 USD plus taxes and fees is about 70 EUR. I don't know if that's really so
much better value.

The utility of an internet connection doesn't scale linearly with speed. Once
you're at the point where you can stream HD video, diminishing returns start
kicking in pretty hard. How often are you waiting for a >100MB file transfer
and can't work until it's completed?

~~~
gtaylor
> The utility of an internet connection doesn't scale linearly with speed.

Sure, up to a point. But when you've got a family of 4+ sharing an internet
connection, 50Mb can be used easily.

A recent example:

* Younger kid running HD Netflix stream downstairs. * Older kid listening to music and downloading a game in his room. * I'm watching an HD Amazon stream movie rental. * Wife is shuffling large PSDs to/from remote storage.

This definitely doesn't apply to everyone, but a family can put some hurting
on an internet connection. Particularly during the winter when it gets dark by
5PM.

------
parktheredcar
How is Google Fiber's customer service? I have heard lots of complaints about
support for their free products, and most US users know the typical (Comcast,
Verizon) ISP has terrible service, but I haven't heard anything about Fiber
itself. Does anybody have first hand experience?

~~~
NoNotTheDuo
Excellent, based on my interactions with them. I've had fiber in KC for just
over a year and have had to get online with them a few times for various
issues. Never called in, always just done the online chat option.

And as a side note, their installers are top notch. I was scheduled to have
mine installed at say 9am. They called at about 830am and tell me that the
original installer may not be right on time, so they are sending over a 2nd
group to start the process while we wait on the first group. Both groups show
up 10 minutes early - hell, they beat me to my house. They always put on
protective boot coverings when they are inside, make sure you understand
what's going on, answer any questions, etc. Very professional and a lot more
fun to deal with than TimeWarner.

------
oimaz
It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber

~~~
discardorama
Agreed. Whenever there's a comparison of our pathetic speeds with those in
Korea/Japan, people claim "the US is a huge country", etc. However, San
Francisco's density (6600/km^2) is higher than that of Tokyo (6000/km^2); why
doesn't SF have FTTH?

~~~
cthalupa
Where is the majority of Japanese internet traffic going? Where is the
majority of San Fransiscan internet traffic going?

There's more than just population density to take into account. It makes a big
difference when you don't need nearly as much long haul backbone capacity
because almost all of the destinations for the traffic are close to the
subscribers.

~~~
pixl97
No, not really. The US has had a massive amount of backhaul fiber, huge
amounts of it stayed dark for years. That in turn dropped transit prices to
almost nothing. Bandwidth at data centers and other places near transit hubs
is very cheap. The U.S. problem is a last mile problem.

------
ausjke
I live at Austin and my Time Warner cable modem worked for me fine and the
speed suffices for my typical needs, however it's $64/month, I would switch to
Google-Fiber anytime soon as long as it opens in my community, though I don't
know how I am going to use that 1Gbps bandwidth.

If 1Gbps becomes a reality, then each house can become a small data-center,
which was limited by upstream speed (less than 2Mbps) in the past.

~~~
shittyanalogy
Imagining what you would do with 1Gbps is difficult because bandwidth of that
speed is not common. If such bandwidth were common, products specifically
leveraging it would also be.

Better streaming, easier remote backup, more devices connected, smoother
remote computing, etc

------
gojomo
Hypothetical for advocates of federal net neutrality regulations:

Google is offering a "free" (after one-time installation) tier: "up to 5 Mbps
download and 1 Mbps upload speed".

Suppose on that tier, they also offered a temporary "turbo" option, 1Gbps+ for
the next hour, or next 5GB, or for the duration of a session with a particular
site, whatever. And this "turbo" was available on reasonable, non-
discriminatory terms to either the customer, or to remote sites serving data
to the customer.

And of course, Google itself would usually enable the "turbo" for bulk and
profit-maximizing interactions with its own sites, like HD media purchases, HD
teleconferencing, or big software downloads.

Is this an unconscionable and punishable violation of the ideal of network
neutrality, or just a boon to all involved: great baseline service for free,
and spot acceleration available to everyone at non-discriminatory prices?

What if other upstarts could also offer such a "free" tier in other regions on
similar terms – but only by assuming the extra occasional sales of "turbo" to
both residential customers and bandwidth-heavy internet services?

~~~
wmf
Hypothetically it hurts the "two guys in a garage" who have to hire a third
guy (or pay a middleman Turbo Distribution Network) just to handle dozens of
ISP turbo contracts.

~~~
gojomo
How does it hurt them compared to the baseline where it's not even an option -
the standard 5Mbps is all the customers have, and if garage-guys-service
benefits from bursts of more speed, neither the customer nor the service can
easily pay the few dimes it might cost?

Or the baseline where, because there's no revenue from 'turbo', a freemium
broadband tier isn't offered at all, leaving customers without even the free
5Mbps, or (having paid for broadband instead) with less budget for garage-guys
services?

(Also, if such a upsell were available, from Google or others, it'd not
necessarily require bilateral contracts. It could and should be an automated
service, discoverable in a standard way.)

------
norcimo5
Yet another reason why I love living in Austin. Yay! ;)

~~~
LandoCalrissian
Ya big jerk, can you send some of that fiber to your Minneapolis brothers in
the north?

------
javajosh
Does anyone know for certain whether Google data mine's their Fiber data?

~~~
logn
_All information we collect about the use of Google Fiber TV (including use of
programs and applications available through Google Fiber TV) may be associated
with the Google Account being used for Google Fiber TV._

... _information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of
websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the
Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any
applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental
request._

[https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html](https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html)

They don't really mention what information not associated to a Google account
is mined except that it follows the company-wide privacy policy. So they
probably mine it. It's probably comparable to Google DNS:
[https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
dns/privacy](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy)

    
    
        Request domain name, e.g. www.google.com
        Request type, e.g. A (which stands for IPv4 record), AAAA (IPv6 record), NS, MX, TXT, etc.
        Transport protocol on which the request arrived, i.e. TCP or UDP
        Client's AS (autonomous system or ISP), e.g. AS15169
        User's geolocation information: i.e. geocode, region ID, city ID, and metro code
        Response code sent, e.g. SUCCESS, SERVFAIL, NXDOMAIN, etc.
        Whether the request hit our frontend cache
        Whether the request hit a cache elsewhere in the system (but not in the frontend)
        Absolute arrival time in seconds
        Total time taken to process the request end-to-end, in seconds
        Name of the Google machine that processed this request, e.g. machine101
        Google target IP to which this request was addressed, e.g. one of our anycast IP addresses (no relation to the user's IP)

~~~
javajosh
_will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber_

This phrase has rather a lot of qualifications which make it trivially easy to
circumvent. For example, Google might associate the data with a different
account, an internal "ghost" account that you specifically _don 't_ use for
Google Fiber (but which is identical to it in every way).

I for one would like to see ISPs make an effort to construct systems where
even the owner of the ISP doesn't really store any information. For example,
they may store differential information about traffic spikes, to help avert
DOS attacks. But other than that, they only do what they get paid to do:
shuttle bits back and forth across the last mile of internet.

~~~
wmf
_systems where even the owner of the ISP doesn 't really store any
information_

This is basically the default on routers if you don't enable NetFlow. Likewise
DHCP and DNS daemons can trivially disable logging. It doesn't cost an ISP
money to remove default surveillance; it costs them to add it but the value of
the data is worth it.

------
wcchandler
Why don't we see more startups in the fiber-to-the-premises realm? Is cost
really that high and difficult to obtain? HN has led me to believe that a good
idea with motivated founders will get funded, no matter what. And I can't
think of a better time to enter this market.

~~~
rayiner
Because FTTP involves massive upfront costs with no hope of 10x or 100x
returns. Say you sell fiber at $70/month. The operating profit margin of a
company like Charter, which doesn't have a media-arm to rely on, is like
10-15%. So per year, each subscriber is worth $80-126. Over 10 years,
discounted, that's under a grand. And to wire them up, you have to spend about
that much if not more, up-front.

~~~
adventured
And that's when companies like Charter aren't busy going bankrupt.

------
blueskin_
Anyone with or otherwise knowledgeable about google fibre: I've heard their
normal router is terrible, but that you can put your own in if you configure
the VLANs and QoS on it - but as for the TV, my understanding is that the TV
boxes go onto your LAN - will they play nicely with a better router, or do
they force use of the google one? They also double as wireless APs - can that
functionality be disabled in favour of a customer's own APs?

Edit: Did some research, seems it needs IGMP proxying, which should be doable
on a decent router.
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterG...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterGuide.pdf)
was a very useful link.

------
jmsduran
I have been living in Austin for roughly 4 years, but after checking the map
it looks like my area may not get fiber for some years to come, as well as
much of the greater Austin city limits, based off the progress I see from
Google's initial Kansas rollout.

The one thing I hope that comes out of this, and the one thing I believe will
benefit all Austin residents, would be the ability to negotiate for a lower
monthly rate when their Internet/Cable contract renews sometime next year.

I hope that by April 2015 I have the leverage to call TWC and say: "Hey,
Google fiber is offering Gigabit + TV for $130 a month, why can't my $155
monthly bill be lowered considering I pay for Internet + TV that is only 1/4
as fast?"

~~~
exelius
In April 2015, you won't be calling TWC, you'll be calling Comcast. Pretty
sure they don't give a fuck about the price of a product you don't have access
to - if you can't cancel your service, they don't care.

~~~
wmf
Fortunately TWC already upgraded everyone in Austin by 5x.

------
Someone1234
The business account is $30 more, which is normal (presumably goes to better
support, no word on improved upload/ratios?). But I will say it is a little
odd that it doesn't ship with at least one static IP. Plus $30 per IP is kind
of crazy.

Most host providers, even REALLY inexpensive ones, charge $3-5/month/IP. So I
consider $20-30 a massive markup for something pretty useful for a business
account.

~~~
mey
I was just quoted $20/mo for 5 static ip's from Frontier, 4 years ago it was
$10/mo from Comcast. At this point I think it's the lack of IPv4 addresses
hitting home. Hilariously neither vendor can speak to their IPv6 roll-out.

------
shekhar101
Here in a major IT city of India(Hyderabad), I pay around $40 for 50
Mbps/10Mbps(up/down) and it's unlimited. I guess it'a pretty good deal. We
have good number of companies offering services. I say it's a good deal, but
of course not as good as this.

------
justaman
I still think Google is at risk of forming a monopoly and are at risk of
becoming Bell 2.0. Unfortunately due to the lack of quality ISP's, the first
to offer residential fiber to the perimeter will rapidly absorb the market.

~~~
bretthoerner
Maybe in some areas. Here in Austin AT&T, Time Warner and the local ISP Grande
are all now offering cheap plans from 300Mbps to full gigabit because Google
is coming to town and they need to compete. I pay something around $50 for
300Mbps (no cap) from Time Warner and it works great.

~~~
knodi123
yep, that's been my experience too. google fiber forced the entrenched
providers to become competitive. now, they have become competitive, and I have
no clear motivation to switch to google fiber.

I may still switch, but I'm about a half mile away from the "sign up now"
zones.

~~~
djloche
This is exactly what Google needs - in order for their vision of the future to
happen people need to have far better connections on average than they do now.
When Google Fiber enters a market, everyone wins - even if you don't switch to
Google as your ISP.

------
crymer11
Surprised they want a 1 year commitment and are charging a construction fee.
EPB here in Chattanooga offers $69.99 month to month pricing for 1Gbps (and no
construction fee).

------
bengotow
Man—was really hoping they'd go for Nashville next!

~~~
fjarlq
They haven't chosen their next city yet. Austin was selected on April 9, 2013,
and Provo was selected a week later.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Locations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Locations)

------
NietTim
Welcome to the 21st century, Austin!

~~~
jamesblonde
Not really. In Stockholm, I have 250Mb down, 100Mb up. Costs 50 bucks/month.

~~~
sandstrom
I think these two graphs are interesting. Fiber and low prices for broadband
seems to be correlated (Japan, Korea). Unfortunately there isn't more data
points in the Economist graph.

I think it helps if the fiber is owned by a party other than the access
provider, e.g. the community or city, to avoid having a monopoly squeeze out
all the consumer surplus.

How will this work with Google Fiber?

[http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...](http://cdn.static-
economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-
size/images/2014/03/blogs/schumpeter/20140301_wbc414.png)

[http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/oecd-
broadba...](http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/oecd-broadband-
June-2013-border_0.jpg)

Full html pages (where images were found): \-
[http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/oecd-broadband-stats-show-nz-
im...](http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/oecd-broadband-stats-show-nz-improving-
still-could-do-better-internetnz-boss-ck-150641) \-
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/telecoms-m...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/telecoms-
mexico)

------
bspecht
You're welcome.

From, Kansas City

