Fair Use Policy

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Thu Aug 23 02:15:45 UTC 2012


I just wish that someone...Google or ANYONE else would do something like Google Fiber in the technological wasteland where I live instead of focusing only on hotbeds of high-speed internet and well-connected customers like Kansas City, parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, etc.

Here in my bandwidth ghetto, TPC can't do better than 1.5Mbps/384kbps and Cable has different limitations (ridiculous fees for static addresses, for example[1]), extremely variable performance (most days, I do pretty well getting 50-70Mbps/10-30Mbps on a line where I pay for 30/10, but often enough to be annoying, I get 7Mbps/3Mbps for 8-10 hours at a time...Just long enough to go through the trouble report process but not long enough to still be a problem when the tech shows up to address the issue.), etc.

I'd love to ditch the DSL line and relegate the Cable circuit to backup status (and move to a lower pricing tier on it) with my primary on FTTH.

[1] I _HAVE_ business class cable service, but I find the idea of $5+/month for an address that costs them less than $0.001/year ridiculous.


Where is this barren wasteland of bandwidth you may ask? It's in San Jose, California. Capitol of Silicon Valley. If I stand on the top of my roof, I can see 55 South Market Street on a clear day. (but I have to stand in just the right spot and look through just the right piece of the 280x680x101 interchange).

If anyone wants to do a fiber build in my neighborhood ala Google, I will happily go door to door soliciting my neighbors on their behalf.

Owen

On Aug 22, 2012, at 18:46 , Benjamin Krueger <benjamin at seattlefenix.net> wrote:

> A unique position? Unlike those poor residential ISPs who only have literally millions of subscribers to use as leverage in peering negotiations. Perhaps more accurately, rather than saying "Google can afford to start almost any project they want" we should say "Google doesn't suffer the temptation of wringing every last penny out of their aging infrastructure to ensure maximum profits from minimal investments".
> 
> I don't want to turn this into a long-drawn debate, so I'll simply say that I take Google at their word when they say this is profitable from Day 1 and I surely take their product offering at its word. I'm not sure who proposed we require anything, but I suppose we can let the market decide what ISPs are "required" to do. I can say that I don't know anyone who wouldn't drop any existing residential service for what Google is selling. Perhaps they will succumb to some unforeseen boogeyman as you allude to, but to be honest that sounds a whole lot like the wishful thinking of an industry that has been deftly out-manueverd at its own game and now finds itself dramatically behind the curve. Frankly, if I were in the ISP business I would be shitting my pants.
> 
> On Aug 22, 2012, at 6:05 PM, Jimmy Hess wrote:
> 
>> On 8/22/12, Benjamin Krueger <benjamin at seattlefenix.net> wrote:
>>> Yeah, totally can't be done. It especially can't be done profitably.
>> 
>> Google can afford to start almost any project they want,  and they are
>> in a unique position to negotiate peering and access to a ton of
>> bandwidth, with their Youtube, Google Search et al. As to whether  it
>> will be profitable, well, obviously, that is their claim. It's yet to
>> be demonstrated.
>> 
>> I gotta reject the idea that broadband providers should be required to
>> follow in Google's footsteps though.
>> 
>> For now, Google fiber is another risky experiment,  that could have a
>> great payout if successful, or could be shuttered within a year or so,
>> or fees/rate incs tacked on,  when they figure out just what a mess
>> they have gotten into.
>> 
>> 
>>> http://fiber.google.com/
>>> http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/the-economics-of-google-fiber-and-what-it-means-for-u-s-broadband/
>>> 
>> --
>> -JH
> 





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