Google Fiber

Google Fiber has announced there price structure for Kansas city Missouri and Kansas city Kansas.

The cable company where I am at charges $50/month for 50 Mbs, and $90 for 50 Mbs + television. So Google Fiber is faster by a factor of 20.

Presumably only a hard core Luddite would refuse the lowest level, $25@12 months + free for up to next 6 years. Presumably, the assumption is that Google will be able to save upfront cost by wiring the entire neighborhood at one time, and the people with 5 Mbs service will grow jealous at some point and pay for the monthly service.

As usual there will be multiple junk fees for taxes, access charges, + options for pay per view, premium channels, etc. The article doesn't mention telephone service which seems very strange as that is now an inexpensive add on to most cable service.

If Google shows up in your town next year, which choice would you make and why?

Is there a total for this speed? Example my air card with AT&T limits me to 5 GB per month ($45), then the extras get charged.

This from the N.E. USA. Why not CT, MA, NY, RI, NJ, first? This is a MAJOR Market, and an EPIC Fail/ Oversubscription will be immediately exposed. Besides... Apple iTV is coming, cracked satellite codes and all that.

Considering that all CATV nodes are over-subscribed, and the 60Mb rate is halved to quartered on certain nites/events... NO. Google has learned this trick, and its legal. As advertised comes with a big asterik. Considering the marketplace, I predict the following will happen... Google rolls out 1Gb service and vastly oversubscribes the nodes. Even that will drop the rates to 200Mb. CATV, the only 20Mb+ game in your town (Re: you can't even switch to a competitor, due to marketing territory agreements: BUT they wil always advertise {figure THAT one out}) will lose some subscribers, and the speed will actually increase to 40Mb+ in the locale. Google has correctly predicted the death of the personal phone... its all e-mail/skype. Sure a phone is needed, but for far fewer reasons with much less traffic/bandwidth. Using a phone for bandwidth is already old and expensive, one really does need computing power and wifi to accomplish the on-demand needs of today and tomorrow.

Quote: DeMango

Is there a total for this speed? Example my air card with AT&T limits me to 5 GB per month ($45), then the extras get charged.

There are no caps, no throttling and no limits to the amount of data you can send or receive.

The fact that they did not include landlines is interesting. It seems like most cable companies sell a triple-bundle of Cable TV, Internet, and Phone lines.

1 Gbit/s? No thanks.

What? How? Let me explain.
I've had a 100 mbit line (averages 25 mbit worldwide) for a couple years now. So, this sub-100 kB page should load in under 0.04 seconds. Guess what? Pages even here still take over a second to load. SSD, top CPU, heavy o/c, any browser. Most pages take seconds, some can take half a minute.

Google is writing checks that can't be cashed. Put it this way... suppose you got a check for 100 million Sealand Dollars, officially equal to USD (they really exist and are). But there isn't even 1 million worth of goods and services in Sealand, and the platform itself isn't for sale, not for Sealand Dollars anyway.

Same thing with gigabit internet. You can only really load it up with seeding torrents. Then $70/mo is pretty good value, I think I'd even take the $120/mo plan if I was a capper.

Quote: P90

1 Gbit/s? No thanks.

The Gigabit Challenge is focused on unique applications that are enabled by Google's first-in-the-nation 1 Gigabit Fiber network. It is a business plan competition looking for the brightest, hungriest and most passionate entrepreneur superstars who are looking to think big...with a gig. Individuals, teams or businesses with an idea, a complete business plan, or an early-stage operating business are invited to enter for the chance to work on the first-in-the-nation Google Fiber network and a prize valued at $100,000.

Your assessment is pretty harsh. They obviously are expecting amazing things from this new service.

I am in K.C. Unfortunately my suburb - as is true of most here - is not being included in their rollout. It appears they want to beta test the product in the downtown areas initially, on both the Kansas and Missouri sides. Many biz customers available to them there as well. If they stay at $70/mo. We will likely sign up when available, and/for the higher amount incl. TV.

I don't think the TV option will be just $120 with the extra programming we have at this point. If it did, I would have chosen that option.

As someone has already mentioned, I think that this product will be super fast at first but the network bandwidth will end up becoming clogged once too many customers join in. Think about what happens in an emergency on your cell phone--the towers get jammed with calls in the area of the emergency, even though they normally work just fine--my internet service is similar now; it has great speed at off times but is slow in the evenings when everyone gets on their home computer.

I picked the $70 option--it would still be faster than my current service at the same price.

Quote: RonC

I don't think the TV option will be just $120 with the extra programming we have at this point. If it did, I would have chosen that option.
I picked the $70 option--it would still be faster than my current service at the same price.

I would presume that $120-$70=$50 month would get you just the basic level of TV service. That is more or less standard around the country. But you would have to pay more money on Google network or any other cable TV network for tiers of service or additional channels. But having the TV service hooked to a 1 Gb pipeline means that you could easily have a 2 Terabyte storage disk, with recording ability for up to 8 channels at one time. That would give you the opportunity to time shift. You would also be able to download from all kinds of old movies or tv series much easier.

Theoretically with 2 terabytes you could preselect and record everything on TV for the week that looks reasonably watchable. Then you watch the shows when you want after they've aired, and you simply delete the turkeys.

Quote: P90

1 Gbit/s? No thanks.

What? How? Let me explain.
I've had a 100 mbit line (averages 25 mbit worldwide) for a couple years now. So, this sub-100 kB page should load in under 0.04 seconds. Guess what? Pages even here still take over a second to load. SSD, top CPU, heavy o/c, any browser. Most pages take seconds, some can take half a minute.

Google is writing checks that can't be cashed. Put it this way... suppose you got a check for 100 million Sealand Dollars, officially equal to USD (they really exist and are). But there isn't even 1 million worth of goods and services in Sealand, and the platform itself isn't for sale, not for Sealand Dollars anyway.

Same thing with gigabit internet. You can only really load it up with seeding torrents. Then $70/mo is pretty good value, I think I'd even take the $120/mo plan if I was a capper.

The term P90 is looking for is latency. Anyone who played games on a dialup modem, or with people on dialups, should remember this very fondly. In Starcraft and Warcraft 3, the host would ping everyone before starting the game and kick people above a certain latency (All I remember is that 100ms was good enough).

One second latency is ridiculous and would make web surfing HORRIBLE. Most of my cell phones have been similar, high internet connection but also high latency.

The capacity for saving shows is of little use to me, but I do know people who would use a whole lot of space...I just don't record and watch large amounts of TV shows at any point. I'll record something but if I don't watch it with a few days, it never gets watched. i don't do time-delayed sports, either. It is either live or it is over!!

Quote: ahiromu

The term P90 is looking for is latency. Anyone who played games on a dialup modem, or with people on dialups, should remember this very fondly.

Usually called ping. Yeah, I know what that is. Speedtest rates mine at 3ms at the closest server.

Page loading latency is almost entirely on the server end, a little on your ISP's end, and finally just a bit to transfer the actual page.

Ultra-broadband is great for Lord of the Rings Extended Cut Bluray Remux standing at full 211 GB of uncut Greenlandic prowess.
Everything else... Well, it's not bad - but it makes little difference if you throw a Weisswurst or a Braunschweiger down a corridor.

Quote: midwestgb

I am in K.C. Unfortunately my suburb - as is true of most here - is not being included in their rollout. It appears they want to beta test the product in the downtown areas initially, on both the Kansas and Missouri sides. Many biz customers available to them there as well. If they stay at $70/mo. We will likely sign up when available, and/for the higher amount incl. TV.

Just looking at KC census. About 220K houses in KC Missouri, and another 62K in KC Kansas. I wonder what kind of penetration they are expecting.

Presumably Time Warner won't give up without a fight.
TWC (from their 2nd quarter) for residential gets
$74.78 per month video
$37.17 per month for internet (14% fewer customers than video)
$33.64 per month for voice (60% fewer customers than video)
Presumably the smaller number of voice customers is because many people only use cell phones, Skype, and Magic Jack

So Google has shown no interest in VOIP.
It would be insane not to pay $25/month for 12 months and get free 5 Mbs for the following 6 years. Even if you don't have a computer, you could go out and spend $200 on a Kindle Fire and have some computer access.

How will TWC counter this offer? Is Google going to make any money? Presumably $120/month is not enough for them to make a profit, so they must have a plan to grow this business somehow.

Paco, I think Google views the entire K.C. Install as a big test site. Remember that this community's biggest fault is our unfailing Niceness factor. They probably decided to come here thinking the debug process will prove least burdensome as compared to other areas. Pricing clearly secondary for them.

Quote: midwestgb

Paco, I think Google views the entire K.C. Pricing clearly secondary for them.

I agree, which is why I put it as a poll. So far only 3 of 7 people consider it worth purchasing the whole package. I did forget that the TV inclusive package includes a Nexus table ($200 retail) which has an app to work as a remote control.

So assuming $120 is the "barely cover expenses price", and if the profitable price is $200 per subscription, then how many people will shell out that much?

I was living in San Diego in the late 80's when the first HDTV's were released. San Diego was one of the first markets that they were sold. At the time, I remember who would shell out $10K or $20K for a television. Sure they looked nice, but who budgets that kind of money for a fairly pedestrian activity?

Panasonic is selling this 152 inch TV for close to a million dollars. Now I suppose that someone can make a business case for nearly anything.

I hadn't even heard of Google Fiber until this thread. I had to ... Google it ... to learn more. LOL.

Quote: pacomartin

The article doesn't mention telephone service which seems very strange as that is now an inexpensive add on to most cable service.

They are probably thinking that cell phones and Skype are taking over so why bother trying to reach the home phone market, and/or that anyone still interested in a home phone will use MagicJack.

For the record, we cut off our home phone service a few months ago.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

They are probably thinking that cell phones and Skype are taking over so why bother trying to reach the home phone market, and/or that anyone still interested in a home phone will use MagicJack.
For the record, we cut off our home phone service a few months ago.

The number of landlines peaked about 12 years ago, so it is true that it is a dying market. But there are still a significant percentage of people interested. One does not normally ignore such a large percentage (at least 1/3) of the people. Voice is 10% of Time Warner's Revenue Stream.

But if they are hoping to pass Comcast as the number one cable provider in the country, maybe they felt there would be fewer regulatory hurdles if they didn't compete with a dying business.

Now it would be really interesting if they intend to compete with Verizon and the other cell phone providers by offering wireless service.


Operating Metrics (as of March 2012)
57.9 M Cable Video Customers (began 1970's, peaked 2001 at 66.9 million)
46.4 M Digital Video Customers (began 1998)
48.5 M High Speed Internet Customers (includes commercial) (began 1997)
25.9 M Cable Phone Customers (began 1998)

Rank	MSO	Basic Video Subscribers
1	Comcast Corporation	22,294,000
2	DirecTV	19,966,000
3	Dish Network Corporation	14,071,000
4	Time Warner Cable, Inc.	12,653,000
5-25		28,467,000
5	Cox Communications, Inc.	4,756,000
6	Verizon Communications, Inc.	4,353,000
7	Charter Communications, Inc.	4,341,000
8	AT&T, Inc.	3,991,000
9	Cablevision Systems Corporation	3,257,000
10	Bright House Networks LLC	2,079,000
11	Suddenlink Communications	1,250,000
12	Mediacom Communications Corporation	1,059,000
13	CableOne, Inc.	622,000
14	WideOpenWest Networks, LLC	460,000
15	RCN Corp.	333,000
16	Knology Holdings	256,000
17	Atlantic Broadband Group, LLC	254,000
18	Armstrong Cable Services	239,000
19	Midcontinent Communications	229,000
20	Service Electric Cable TV Incorporated	217,000
21	MetroCast Cablevision	169,000
22	Blue Ridge Communications	168,000
23	WaveDivision Holdings, LLC	159,000
24	General Communications	142,000
25	Buckeye CableSystem	133,000

Will Google Fiber Waste $28 Billion? is an article in Forbes that basically says Google is going to go broke with this investment, and they would be better off trying to work with existing copper technology.

Challenges And Opportunities For Google's Fiber Project: A Reality And Sanity Check by Neal Lachman. This article cites VERIZON's experience with FIOS to add to his skepticism. Basically it says Verizon could only get 1 out of 3 homes to sign up for their service (out of the number of homes passed), and hence is ultimately unprofitable.

Google is having neighborhoods pre-sign up. They are only connecting neighborhoods that show a strong interest. They are coaxing the skeptical with the offer of 12 payment of $25 for the connection and FREE 5 Mbps service for 7 years. Ultimately the profitability will depend on if they can wean these people away from their free service to paying for the full service.