
San Jose's Google Fiber rollout is delayed to explores alternatives - WillPostForFood
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_30221848/google-fibers-silicon-valley-rollout-is-delayed-while
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sideband
Verizon's costs to deploy FiOS, which is the same underlying tech as Google
Fiber, between 2004 and 2010 in some MSA's approached a billion in capital
alone. They ended up spending $23 billion in total capital, and only in places
where they already had data centers every few miles, conduit, fiber, poles,
field cabinets, franchise agreements, a local workforce, a large customer
base, storefronts, etc. And that only includes new equipment and construction,
not recurring operational costs. $23 billion is more than Google's entire
capital budget for the past 2.5 years.

This is almost certainly the result of somebody at Google finally asking
serious questions about the total cost, or at least being asked to cut a
particularly large check for the first time.

~~~
wmf
I am also skeptical of Google Fiber's economics, but they have some business
model hacks up their sleeve that FIOS doesn't: redlining and rallies. FIOS
spent a lot of money to pass homes that will never subscribe and they had to
do a lot of separate truck rolls to connect customers over time. Google Fiber
is more like Kickstarter where they don't have to do any work unless the 'hood
is guaranteed to be profitable, then they wire the whole place at once.
Whether this business model is good for society is an open question.

~~~
darkmarmot
Here in Nashville, the are rolling out access to only the richest communities
first. But -- they are also about to wire some poor, subsidized Section 8
housing as well. It appears those of us in typical suburbia are likely last on
the list, if we are on the list, for better or worse...

~~~
Cshelton
Hah. Well in Dallas, AT&T rolls out their fastest Gigabit speed (and most
expensive offering) to the poor communities first. Because city council and
politics. Makes sense.... the poor people, right after shopping with their
food stamps and using their entire paycheck on rent can most definitely afford
$130+/month internet...

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zellyn
FWIW, in Atlanta, signups just opened for residential service in some
neighborhoods (I signed up today). So this is definitely not nationwide.

~~~
wil421
I just got the email. Too bad Brookhaven's availability is limited to
apartments right now.

Looking forward to signing up but I am not sure how it works since I am off a
street and not in a "neighborhood".

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Shivetya
heck they tore up our yards in my sub, sent mail prior that we are getting
fiber, only to now state there is no fiber in our area.

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sparky_
What a joke. So they're abandoning an already-finalized construction plan in
favor of a return to the "service" that was
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearwire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearwire)
?

~~~
wmf
Fixed wireless has been done poorly and it has been done well (Webpass). Fiber
has also been done poorly (FIOS at >$2,000 per customer), so I don't know if
historical anecdotes are useful here.

~~~
WillPostForFood
FIOS may have been expensive to roll out, but the quality of service was good.

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traek
> the quality of service was good.

But that doesn't make it a good business. And when it's not a good business,
it gets scrapped.

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karma_vaccum123
Seems that Google was very premature about announcing these peninsula cities
as rollout targets.

Wireless is better than nothing, but it will never compete with wired
connection to the premises.

As an aside, I've always wondered if 5G or some other pending wireless tech
could be used to one day replace Comcast...

~~~
Cshelton
This is not wireless like 4g/5g or any cellular company you think of. This is
point to point wireless they are talking about. Which can transmit incredibly
high speeds and bandwidth.

Here's the idea, and is actually the current setup I have with a private
company:

A p2p transmitter can broadcast to a lower tower that sits next to multiple
neighborhoods. Then from that tower, lines can be run to individual houses
and/or other small receivers like on people's rooftops.

With this system, they can literally cover vast areas, with just as fast
speeds, in a fraction of the costs and time.

I have this setup right now, pointing my p2p device right at the top of a
building downtown (not in San Jose.). It is crazy fast and even during heavy
storms, there is no disruption.

San Jose, I wouldn't complain just yet, you might actually get your 1 Gbps +
speeds faster than you thought despite this "construction delay".

~~~
sn0v
How does the latency compare to a wired connection? Is it viable for gaming
and the like?

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Cshelton
My connection point is about 1.5 miles away. I get about 4-6ms latency on my
end device. That's going through my router, wireless access point, to my
device.

and it's also very consistent. It's not dealing with the million redirects and
other traffic that going through the phone line or cable line will have.

In very heavy rain and hind wind, my direct TV dish was out at the start of
the storm, my internet p2p connection never lost signal, didn't even slow
down.

~~~
sn0v
Oh wow, this is extremely interesting. Hopefully Google rolls their
connections out soon.

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Animats
Google actually got that far and then backed out? That's incompetent
management.

Palo Alto has mostly underground utilities. No poles. Did someone at Google
not know this?

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benmorris
I'm curious how webpass is achieving this type of coverage. I live in a pretty
small town and our one Wisp has saturated nearly every channel of 900mhz,
2.4ghz and 5ghz. I work with the local radio station frequently that leases
tower space to them. I know for a fact they have no spectrum left for
unlicensed backhauls in those frequencies. It seems like the problem would be
greatly amplified in urban areas unless they used licensed backhauls.

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itisbiz
I put some Google Fiber build, sales and financial data into a basic model to
create forecast estimates Gfiber.us

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Hydraulix989
Why is Silicon Valley of all places struggling to get reasonably fast
Internet?

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lern_too_spel
Most of these cities already have gigabit fiber through AT&T.

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cjbprime
Title's misleading -- it's only delayed in one area (Silicon Valley).

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sctb
Thanks. We updated the title, which originally omitted “San Jose”.

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gumby
They've also put Palo Alto (which has already had the fiber backbone in place
for decades) and Mountain View on hold.

