
Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham - twrkit
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/google-fiber-new-metro-areas.html
======
rkalla
For anyone interested... the whole motivation of Google Fiber to motivate ISPs
to stop gouging us does exactly what it is designed to do.

Cox, in Phoenix, miraculously doubled everyone's speeds > 100mbps last year
because they were concerned with our general happiness levels and wanted to
show their affection.

Nope... that's not it. Ran into two leads at Smash Burger in June of 2014 and
asked them on the spot "When are we getting gigabit speed?" and their reply
was "End of year, we gotta move before Google Fiber gets here."

None of that would have happened if G Fiber wasn't coming - CenturyLink and
Cox were perfectly fine dabbling in 50mbps service for the rest of eternity
without true competition.

Now in less than 12 months my 65mbps service was _freely_ upgraded to 150mbps
and we are suppose to have a 1Gbps option any month now (there are test
neighborhoods live since last year around Scottsdale)

I have no illusions about how fortunate we are being in a well-
wired/competitive environment, but damn am I happy and appreciative.

It actually has more impact on me and where I would want to live than I
thought... the idea of going back to < 50mbps makes me sad.

~~~
evo_9
Given that reality one wonder why the incumbents don't raise all their speeds
to dissuade google from entering there various markets. Perhaps the shear
magnitude of their collective greed obscures their reasoning?

~~~
rayiner
There's no money in building "dumb pipes" to the internet. Verizon's wireline
margin over the last couple of quarters has been under 5%
([http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-
en...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-end-of-fios-
builds)). Note Google has never revealed how much profit Fiber actually makes.

The existing networks are fast enough to service what makes the money: video
services. The cable companies will only upgrade the pipes to the extent that
it threatens usage of their video service.

~~~
adventured
Walmart has 3% net income margins; Costco has 2% net income margins; Target
has 3% net income margins; BestBuy in its best days had 4% net income margins.
By that premise, nobody should have ever built grocery stores or most retail
outlets.

~~~
rayiner
Retail is far less capital intensive. WalMart generates almost 6x the revenue
per dollar of invested capital as Verizon.

------
chiph
Advice to all the folks in the new cities: Google deploys per-neighborhood,
once signups reach a critical level. So get your apartment manager, your HOA,
your neighbors to sign up, even if they don't have any immediate plans to
switch. Post tear-off-tag signs in your community with the url:
google.com/fiber

~~~
cwilson
Yep, I had to do exactly this here in Austin. I literally went door to door,
met many of my neighbors for the first time, and mentioned that we were only a
few signatures away from fiber in our neighborhood. Even after getting all of
the signatures we have to wait until June for our install, which kind of
sucks, but it's better than continuing to deal with Time Warner.

~~~
davidhperry
You went around collecting literal signatures, or got your neighbors to enter
addresses on fiber.google.com?

I'm in Nashville and willing to do a fair bit of legwork if it means it'll
bump my neighborhood up on the install list.

------
slowmovintarget
>> It’s been nearly five years since we offered to build a fiber-optic network
in one U.S. city as an experiment — and were met with overwhelming enthusiasm.

I suspect the enthusiasm had to do with Google not acting like a phone/cable
company. My own hope is that this remains true, and that they come to the
Boston area.

~~~
avn2109
Excavation projects are famously successful in Boston, so the Google Fiber
people are probably chomping at the bit to get their shovels in Beantown dirt.
<\s>

But seriously, your hypothesis about GF's non-evil fundamental DNA is a good
one. It makes for a much better user experience.

~~~
jnem
Lol, I hope that was a joke (i think it was), for those who aren't aware,
this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig)

~~~
tel
<\s> is short for "end sarcasm".

~~~
prothid
</s>

~~~
tel
Eh, I copied avn2109

------
cwal37
I am now surrounded by Google Fiber to the east and west, and Chattanooga's
public fiber to the south, out here in Knoxville, TN. I really wish we could
manage something here. This area has the biggest national lab, and a host of
tech industry around it, I was kind of surprised more options didn't exist
when I moved down a year ago.

It makes sense to me that Google went after these southeastern markets,
because we are the area where Comcast is already enforcing (I've had to pay a
couple times) data caps[1]. It's called a "trial" on their site, but the
charges are real.

[1] [http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-
support/internet/data-u...](http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-
support/internet/data-usage-trials/)

~~~
saboot
Same situation for myself currently. Doing some grad work at ORNL also.

I'm really frustrated by comcast, my fiance and I have a hard time doing
bandwidth using things simultaneously (netflix/twitch). I constantly watch our
data meter to make sure we don't approach the cap.

Although it's kind of baffling because I recently lived in the bay area.
AT&T's UVerse I had wasn't much better in terms of the bandwidth and price, I
don't recall a cap though.

I'm here for a few years before fleeing back to CA. I've been researching how
to start any sort of movement for reasonable service in town but it seems the
town council is pretty alright with comcast, even though some tech business
have actually moved from knoxville to Chattanooga for the internet. So really
not sure what to do other than give up.

EDIT: Wow, I actually didn't realize how bad the situation is here in
Knoxville, read more here
[http://www.metropulse.com/stories/features/downtown-
knoxvill...](http://www.metropulse.com/stories/features/downtown-knoxvilles-
broadband-internet-access-kind)

~~~
cwal37
Unrelated to this, but do you guys like board games or really almost anything
else? I made the mistake of living in Oak Ridge and I've had a hell of a time
meeting people ( I mean, clearly, I'm propositioning a random person in an
unrelated HN thread). When my mentor isn't around I can go days without
talking to people, and it's starting to drive me a bit mad. I keep buying
board games and local multiplayer PC games, but they all languish unplayed.

Back onto the topic, I seriously feel Comcast is "trialing" their data caps
her because the southeast is perceived as less tech-savvy, and they're
probably aware they can get away with it more.

EDIT: Thanks y'all, I'll be sending out some emails when I get home.

~~~
saboot
Hah, I feel the same way! We have carcassonne and pandemic, but playing with
just my fiance and I got boring quickly. I usually play single player pc games
for the same reason. I'm in a bit better situation socially since I take
classes at UTK and commute to ORNL twice a week so I talk and meet other
students, but I'm always up for meeting new people who are similarly bored :)
I'd probably be available on either the weekends or Friday, feel free to
email. I'm also trying to get into hiking and exploring the area if you are
into that stuff also.

I agree with your data cap comment. Although it's not just the southeast. Any
cornered internet market seems to have them. They're pretty widespread in
Canada.

------
evanm
I'm fully aware of the extreme cost of rolling out a fiber infrastructure in
new locations, but I still wonder why Google isn't more aggressive with their
expansion. While the upfront costs are great, they more or less have
guaranteed success in most major cities. Nobody likes the incumbent telcos--
they're hated all over the US. I just dream of a world in which we aren't
getting raped by Comcast, TWC, and Cox. They are absolutely abysmal and have
no incentive to make their customers happy given their market
monopoly/oligopoly.

~~~
specialp
Google does not want to be in the telco business at all, it just has to be to
protect the source of its revenue which is people connecting to them via some
ISP. They are purposely building out in cheap to build areas. If they started
hooking up rural areas and areas with high land values and labor it would be a
very expensive exercise. What Google is trying to do is get into enough homes
as cheaply as possible to light a fire under other telco companies without
actually having to build out the whole country.

------
goostavos
It's kinda sad that the current ISP climate in America is such that faster
speeds being rolled out is at the top of Hacker News.

That said, I'm excited as hell for the roll out. I'm not in one of the target
cities, but Google Fiber spreading gives me hope that they'll eventually make
it to me. I've lived with Bright House and their terribleness for far, far too
long.

~~~
adventured
There's nothing trivial about 1gbps consumer broadband (maybe if we were
talking about 100mbps). It's very worthy of attention.

Very few countries have competitive access to 1gbps consumer broadband. You
can name them on one hand.

------
jksmith
Whatever Google's motive, this does help the internet to fully self-realize:
every endpoint should be able to both consume and provide services. I don't
care if it's a phone or a tablet, or a smart toaster.

------
Avenger42
I wonder if, for customers who sign up for the basic (free after install fee)
package, Google will ramp up their speed if the FCC announces that "broadband"
is officially 25/3\. That'd be a nice bonus.

------
wil421
Can any Google fiber user tell us how the TV offerings differ from
Comcast/Uverse/TWC/Direct TV? Do they include local channels and other
channels I've come to expect?

What is missing from Google TV?

~~~
winslow
Here is the TV lineup for Kansas city Google fiber customers. Looks like they
have all the local and traditional channels. Then add-ons like HBO for
$20/month.

[https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/channels/](https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/channels/)

~~~
wil421
Seems slightly more expensive than the Comcast/Uverse packages I've had but
with much much more bandwidth (not that I am capping out my 45mbs right now).

------
technofiend
Although I'd love to see them come to Houston, we're 640 square miles, so it's
not really possible to do a "city" rollout. If Google ever rolls out fiber by
Zip Code, that'll be for us.

I would love to see these guys bring us their MVNO Sprint product and/or build
a technology park fed by Google Fiber instead, either of which would still
have the desired effect of lowering consumer bandwidth costs.

------
russnewcomer
Competition isn't always the boon to free enterprise that we would like it to
be. I live in Omaha, NE, where Cox and CenturyLink are the primary ISPs.
CenturyLink has limited gigabit fiber in some neighborhoods (not mine,
unfortunately), launched late last year.

Cox has raised internet rates about 7% twice in the last 14 months.

------
aceperry
I wish Google Fiber would come to SF. I understand they're doing something
like that in the southbay though.

------
Zigurd
Apple earnings, @ $18 billion, are a smidge higher than Sprint's market cap.
T-Mobile US has at various times been for sale. It makes you wonder if the
major Web ecosystem players won't just start buying SPs so they can break out
of bandwidth scarcity as a business model.

~~~
walterbell
Also LEO and MEO satellite internet, balloons, drones.

------
eitally
Hooray for me and all my Raleigh-Durham brethren! Besides just being a great
development, I think this reflects the rapid growth of the tech sector in this
area, and having cheap fiber ISP options will go a long way to ensuring we
continue to attract top talent & companies.

~~~
santaclaus
Any idea what cities in the Triangle are actually getting this? Cary? Chapel
Hill? Durham? Raleigh?

~~~
jbrackett
If you go here:
[https://fiber.google.com/newcities/](https://fiber.google.com/newcities/) and
hover over the main cities it gives you a breakdown.

Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Morrisville, Raleigh

It has it in the hero picture at the top here:
[https://fiber.google.com/cities/raleighdurham/home/](https://fiber.google.com/cities/raleighdurham/home/)
as well.

------
taivare
I believe Cleveland will still have the fastest 100gig
fiber.[http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/11/clevelan...](http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/11/cleveland_prepares_to_light_up.html)

------
ubertaco
Sadly, though, the Atlanta rollout only goes as far north as Sandy Springs and
Smyrna. No love for those of us up here in Cherokee county.

Hopefully it'll at least scare Comcast and AT&T into stepping up their game.
I'd be really thrilled if it straight-up killed Windstream.

~~~
rjbwork
But also no love for places near Atlanta like Decatur, Avondale Estates,
College Park. They're just gonna go for the core + rich northern suburbs. It's
a business decision and I get it, but hopefully they'll expand out to those
areas soon. To many of those communities in the southern unincorporated areas
of fulton/dekalb and southern near-suburbs, free "high speed" internet will be
a HUGE boon to the younger generations.

------
JoshTriplett
I wonder what put those cities ahead, while Portland remains "potential".

~~~
ben336
I had a chance to hear a discussion with the Durham City Manager about this
last year. Basically the cities that are most willing to work with Google
(favorable laws/willingness to guarantee removing construction red tape/etc)
have a huge leg up. There are strategic reasons too, but Google wants to come
in, lay down a bunch of cables and move on to the next.

They have the leverage to ask cities to actively pull down barriers that other
ISPs would face, and the cities willing to do that are the ones who get
consideration.

------
morganvachon
Only the wealthiest of the Atlanta suburbs, it seems. What good is
"affordable" true broadband that challenges the cable and DSL companies if it
never makes it to those who could most use the savings?

~~~
deskamess
Which suburbs are they? I tried 30004 - part of Alpharetta and had no luck.

~~~
morganvachon
I'm going by the map graphic they have here[1] showing certain suburbs
highlighted. Granted, College Park and Hapeville aren't necessarily wealthy
areas but they are near the airport so that makes sense. I was thinking more
of Sandy Springs and Avondale Estates, and to a lesser extent Decatur.

Of course, that graphic could have zero to do with their plans and I'm going
on about nothing. I do wish you could check by ZIP code alone instead of
needing a street address as well. It would be nice to know just how close the
service is to me geographically.

[1]
[https://fiber.google.com/cities/atlanta/home/](https://fiber.google.com/cities/atlanta/home/)

------
xacaxulu
MY SWEET REVENGE ON TIME WARNER CABLE AND COMCAST!! Take my money Google. I'd
love to see the look on their faces when they realize that Google is coming to
eat their lunch.

------
rjammala
I really wish they start the service in the D.C Metro/VA regions too. We have
FIOS but they charge ridiculous prices (i.e. ridiculous compared to G Fiber
prices :-))

------
squiguy7
I'm surprised they didn't choose San Jose. There must be some things outside
of their control considering they would have expanded into their own
neighborhood.

~~~
es09
In the middle of last year, Google announced that they will also look at other
bay area cities like Santa Clara for Fiber. I don't see what happened to that
and there is no more mention of Santa Clara in the latest post. Maybe it fell
through? The last update I see is from the city claiming that the discussions
have ended -
[http://siliconvalleypower.com/index.aspx?recordid=3191&page=...](http://siliconvalleypower.com/index.aspx?recordid=3191&page=2065)

I wish I knew the reasons for not picking a city.

~~~
ojbyrne
Santa Clara was always included (and still is) in the potential San Jose
rollout. As is Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto.

------
mkr-hn
I just hope it doesn't take too long to radiate out from Atlanta. Barrow
County is the middle of nowhere, but it is right on the road between Atlanta
and Athens.

~~~
ubertaco
I've got family in Winder. Y'all are kinda out there.

------
coldcode
I bet it never comes to the DFW area. Home of Verizon FIOS. Oddly enough I
live in Arlington and FIOS is not (nor ever will be) available.

~~~
atwebb
I dunno, Nashville's got the AT&T building, heck Google put it squarely in the
shot and images for this rollout, seems almost like a message, though it is
pretty iconic in a city with little other skyline.

------
pcmonk
Man, that map is impossible to read. Even as a fairly mildly colorblind
person, there's no way I can distinguish the colors.

~~~
mikestew
Perhaps you're not color blind _enough_. :-) I'm much more than mildly color
blind and I can distinguish the legend items just fine. Certainly more so than
most graphs/maps I see.

------
knodi123
I live in Austin. Can't wait until they make it available to me. Some day.
Years from, probably.

------
huntermeyer
As someone living in Atlanta I can't friggin wait for my break-up call with
Comcast. Soon!

------
re_todd
I'm perfectly happy with 15mbps. I'd rather see prices go down than speeds go
up.

------
evo_9
Is there any rime or reason to the cities that Google chooses to put fiber
into? Is it a matter of more friendly local government, less resistant local
teleco's, a combination thereof or some other factors?

Just seems the locations aren't exactly tech hubs so I'm trying to get a
better idea of how the expansion works.

~~~
nostromo
Friendly local government is a big factor.

For example: Google looked at Seattle's NIMBY laws regarding utility boxes on
sidewalks (each requiring a lengthy community approval process) and said,
"Nope!"

Seattle's new mayor is now looking how to streamline the process to make the
city more Google friendly, should the opportunity arise again.

~~~
dingaling
> Google looked at Seattle's NIMBY laws regarding utility boxes on sidewalks
> (each requiring a lengthy community approval process)

Which is good, as sidewalks are for walking, not utility installation pads.

In much of the UK outside conservation areas BT has powers to install cabinets
as it sees fit. Combined with utility poles there are now some pavements on my
town impassable to prams.

~~~
TorKlingberg
The parent was downvoted, but this is actually true in the UK. The are utility
boxes in some really strange locations. Such as a bicycle lane that runs
straight into a box, then just continues on the other side.

------
dmritard96
Could be really good for getting some tech love in the southeast.

------
deeviant
Google Fiber: Coming to a neighbourhood other than your own soon!

------
therealmaxwell
I'm looking for an apartment now!

------
ForHackernews
Does anyone know if Google Fiber monitors your network traffic to serve
targeted ads?

~~~
jrockway
Take a look at the privacy policy:
[https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html](https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html)

"Technical information collected from the use of Google Fiber Internet for
network management, security or maintenance may be associated with the Google
Account you use for Fiber, but such information associated with the Google
Account you use for Fiber will not be used by other Google properties without
your consent. Other 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."

------
qlikchris
PHILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYY! We have Cheesesteaks...

~~~
jecjec
Philadelphia is insanely corrupt, owned by Comcast, and will not allow Google
to build a network like these other cities will.

Read about the building of Comcast Tower and how a plumbers union forced
Comcast to install unnecessary pipes:

[http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-166039.htm...](http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-166039.html)

~~~
qlikchris
Wow! But do they know we have cheesesteaks?

------
mattbgates
No Albuquerque?

------
freeasinfree
Great for competition now, sure, but once copper and coax become obsolete
Google becomes the new incumbent monopoly. How is that good for anyone?

~~~
elif
I believe that in amsterdam, even though you only have 1 fiber line running to
your house, you can choose from many ISPs over that line. Since (I assume)
google is not installing an entirely new fiber network, but merely buying
fiber rights and doing last-mile construction, it seems like that would also
be a reasonable framework to establish here.

I'm not saying it would be easy. It would take a lot of legal work. But if
google's missions to not be evil, and disrupt the ISP market are to believed,
they could make it easier.

~~~
wmf
Google said they considered the open access model but rejected it. I don't
think they explained why, though.

~~~
danielweber
They don't want to dig only to have someone else undercut them.

~~~
wmf
Usually in open access the wire owner sets prices so that they're profitable
regardless.

------
Shivetya
Listing cities is really disingenuous as the number of neighborhoods they will
actually serve will be quite low, let alone the metro area of cities like
Atlanta is quite large and the area most likely buried under cable.

