Comments on: The economics of Google Fiber and what it means for U.S. broadband

By: Shadow

Shadow — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 06:43:35 +0000

VCU TelegRAM for Students – Sept. 30, 2012

By: KCMOgal

KCMOgal — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 18:12:07 +0000

Actually, Kansas City MO is generally referred to as Kansas City, in conversation, by everyone. It is much bigger than than Kansas City KS, which is referred to as KCK.

Most of the destinations you’d want to frequent are in Kansas City MO: museums, performing arts venues, professional baseball and football stadiums, multiple 4-year universities and the zoo.

KCK has professional soccer and NASCAR.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 17:08:18 +0000

What is it you don’t like about the word activate?

By: papaulsblog

papaulsblog — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:37:38 +0000

Convergence of Systems, Network and user end devices will be the future. http://wp.me/p1ZsI2-26

By: 007KC

007KC — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 22:29:07 +0000

its in both KCMO & KCK

By: Dave Kliman

Dave Kliman — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:43:29 +0000

The only way that a high speed internet will get faster is if whoever lays the cables has nothing to do with any services. there should be ample competition at every level. When one company offers tv, phone, and internet, there is a conflict of interest that will eventually cause the provider to drag their feet when new faster speeds become possible that will hurt the phone or tv business.

If the internet were allowed to grow naturally, phone and tv would be absorbed, along with all their extra profits.

By: Joe Nickence

Joe Nickence — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 17:18:34 +0000

“Why are the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world complaining about how much it costs to serve up broadband when Google can deliver 100 times the traditional ISP’s top speeds for the same or a lower price.”

One word: greed.

By: Liddell

Liddell — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 07:54:31 +0000

I have just returned to live in the UK after 20+ years in the US and Asia telecom world. This article is a refreshing read after listening to a Radio 4 program this morning where Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries in the UK) and a completely irrelevant House of Lords Committee (Chaired by a Lord Inglewood) debated the future of broadband and whether coverage or speed are more important. Vaizey defended the current UK strategy with the comment that the BBC iPlayer only needs 1mbps and the country average speed is 7mbps ( … god knows how he calculated that). Here is a country truly living in the dark ages, where policymakers and politicians are clueless. Say what you might about Google but at least they plan to demonstrate the importance of high speed connectivity. Perhaps I should complain to my local MP (who happens to be the Prime Minister).

By: StationStops

StationStops — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 02:59:25 +0000

Google isnt the first to lay consumer fiber, Verizon was, Ive had FIOS for 6 years and I think Ive had to call support maybe 3 times, and were impressed every time with the responsiveness and expertise. FIOS simply rocks.

Meanwhile, the product has been rollout-frozen (no new neighborhoods) due to high cost and low demand since 2010? (couldnt find latest). Although Im a mobile developer and often wfh, to be honest I could make do with a cable connection at half the price and be fine…Id miss it, but its a luxury (dont tell my wife!)

If I cant make a financial case for my $70/mo 25Mbps, I dont suppose many in Kansas City can do the same at 1Gbps.

For web surfing its a quickly diminishing point of return – recently Ive seen much more impressive performance deltas from technologies like Google’s own SPDY then raw bandwidth.

For streaming, either you can get an HD stream up and running in realtime or you cant, and that threshold is lower than what I have. Dropbox and mobile devices have really squashed my need for a lot of remote access. Its mostly just there to help an old guy kick some kids butts in COD4.

its way, way too early for Google to be declaring this a revenue win. Also – are they figuring in the capital expense of all the original dark fiber purchases I assume are being leveraged for this?

When Verizon froze FIOS rollout in 2010, they quoted $750 per household setup costs – you have to put a highly trained engineer in the house to do a significant head-end install, rolling your own isnt going to save on the real labor cost, Thats not even a break-even on a 1-yr at $70 (including ongoings like marketing, support, etc), never mind subsidizing the ‘realistic’ tiers.

(not to mention growing competition from mobile for consumer internet dollars…Id rather pay $70/mo for better LTE coverage than faster fiber – and what will be the conflict when users are expected to kick down for a third mobile data account for thier Google Glass?)

Dont get me wrong, I want the whole world to have Fiber, but this is the company who said Google TV would be built into every major shipping TV this summer, and who built the $300 Nexus Q and Chromebook.

Talk is talk and their wild optimism is flying in the face of much different precedent from a major telecom and a sketchy record of homebrew cost control. Prove me wrong Google!

By: Ron Rossman

Ron Rossman — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 19:37:09 +0000

But you’ll be hard pressed to find a consumer router that can do those speeds between the LAN/WLAN segment And the WAN segment. It’s hats enough to find one that doesn’t bottle neck even with 100-150Mbps that Comcast offers now (DOCSIS 3.0 modems can handle the speeds, but add in a regular consumer router and you may create a bottle neck)