Comments on news posted 2013-01-11 09:05:20: While a few paid (by Microsoft and AT&T) pundits like Scott Cleland have insisted demand won't be there for Google Fiber, a new survey unsurprisingly finds that Kansas City locals are thrilled about the possibility of symmetrical 1 Gbps for $70. ..
elray and ITALIAN926 are to be believed then we have no need for fiber. Capped cable and DSL are the best things in the world and anyone who questions why mono and duopolies are allowed on something such as last mile internet just hate the freedom we Americans have and they prove that our unregulated internet infrastructure has no problems with greedy corporations or anything like that and the customers don't need anything more than 3mbit DSL anyways.
Looks like there's actually an interest in a product that provides something more than the pathetic offerings Comcast, AT&T and others provide for high cost with low offering on all fronts. Who knew?
I don't need anything higher than 15mbps. Hell, you can get 3 streams of netflix on that and have a few kbps to spare! It's fantastic! Oh, and don't forget about the ability to backup my storage to the cloud with my massive 1mbps upload rate.
I'd love to have fiber - I'd colocate my stuff in a heartbeat..
The new SuperHD stuff does 7, unless I'm mistaken. I can't speak for the US, but almost all Canadian ISPs, large and small, are on Netflix OpenConnect (either by direct peering, installing the caching box, or because they're hooked up to a public peering exchange that Netflix is on), and can get SuperHD. I assume the US is similar.
Most people dont need Gbps, thats a fact jack. When theres widespread, and popular applications for such speeds, let me know. Thanks for the honorable mention.
So do you think the network should be built first or the applications?
You, being against fast networks for some unknown reason, would say the applications, right? Which I personally think is ass backwards as would probably 95+% of anyone involved in technology.
In technology you dont wait until the limits are reached to figure out how to create new limits. You constantly push the limits and make things as fast and as efficient as you can at all times and let the rest fall into place. It is the way the PC and technology has been since the very day it was created and it has brought much innovation.
Using the ignorance of your method we would progress much slower because no one would want to create apps that a vast majority of the world cant use and the network owners certainly wouldnt invest in improving their networks unless we (the consumers) are pushing them to do so by taking their networks to the limits.
I bet you dont still use a 56k modem so unless you are willing to do that, stop with your BS that we dont need higher speeds.
.... and you think the incumbents should spend a massive amount of money for others to innovate and profit? Makes perfect business sense. I guess they should do it for the sake of "progress".
Im not against fast networks, Google Gbps is complete overkill, at the moment. We'll see if they invent something to utilize the bandwidth. If I had a choice to pay $70 a month for 20/5 , or $80 for symmetrical 1Gbps, guess which one I choose. Guess which one MOST people would choose.
The data above (and in the study) shows that the uptake rate counters your "guess which one MOST people would choose" argument. Last I checked, 60% is a majority (that's a synonym with the word most).
It's the same reason the iPhone penetrates the smartphone market so well. Under your logic, everyone would own a Nexus4 or less, and not a more expensive product, such as the iPhone.
It's why the median car price in America is $30,000, and not $17,000. Most people can see the value in a nicer car with more features. Do both drive down the same roads? Yep. So why pay more for something? Because the not everyone (or even most people) operates under a purely utilitarian rationale.
A cost-benefit analysis dictates that marginally better products and services can overwhelm a market, even at a higher price, because of features that are seldom used--yet potentially offer greater comfort, or peace of mind, etc.
The rest of the world is driving a $70,000 car, and only paying for the $15,000 model. The question is, "why are we so inefficient?" Not, "do we really need this?"
Well , since youre the expert, please explain how Hz applies to HDTV's. Because there is a huge obvious difference between 60 Hz and 120Hz, both of which would be higher than 30Hz.
The point is that 120Hz Refresh exists where no product can yet fulfill. 60Hz would be fine for a 30fps 1080p video, which is what every BlueRay is. Why the overkill with 120Hz? Because new content is being created that can tap into it.
Infrastructure has to be there before the consumer can take advantage of emerging technologies. Anyone who has built their own computer knows this. Will a Core 2Duo work fine for most things? Absolutely. Is the Quad-Core i7 paired with a GTX690 overkill? Absolutely. Is one future-proofed, and therefore justify the build-costs? Only you can be the judge of that.
This is off topic, but according to your info, 120Hz DOES accommodate 1080i, which is the best that stations broadcast at. 60Hz looks like crap compared to 120Hz.
120 is the lowest common multiple of 60, 30 and 24, all of which are common framerates used to display content on HDTVs.
If you try to display 24 FPS content on a 60Hz display, it's not possible to display each frame for a consistent amount of time. Some frames will have to be shown twice, some will have to be shown three time, and as a result the movement will be less smooth (it will jitter a bit).
If you only ever displayed 30 and 60 FPS content (broadcast TV), it wouldn't matter, 24 FPS content (movies) is what throws the wrench in the works.
Because 120 is evenly divisible by both 24 and 30--nothing dropped, nothing inserted. (You do know what makes the numbers '24' and '30' significant, right?)
.... and you think the incumbents should spend a massive amount of money for others to innovate and profit?
Not at all. I think they should spend a massive amount of money to continually update their networks to fulfill the demands of their customers because they charge us a massive amount of money and are capable of doing so and they for the most part are a duopoly or monopoly in a vast majority of every market in the US.
Others will continue to innovate and profit on their own. It is the American way.
You can argue until you are blue in the face if you want, but one FACT will remain: Your stance on this would be considered wrong by virtually everyone in technology and would only be supported by those that have a direct financial interest in NOT innovating and upgrading.
.... and you think the incumbents should spend a massive amount of money for others to innovate and profit? Makes perfect business sense. I guess they should do it for the sake of "progress".
Im not against fast networks, Google Gbps is complete overkill, at the moment. We'll see if they invent something to utilize the bandwidth. If I had a choice to pay $70 a month for 20/5 , or $80 for symmetrical 1Gbps, guess which one I choose. Guess which one MOST people would choose.
The incumbents that spend billions of dollars to make sure that current non-incumbents don't build population backed networks that are faster than what incumbents offer? Or are there some other cheap, friendly, local, non-corporate.. incumbents that I've missed somewhere.
How about the non-incumbents get to do whatever the hell they want without interference like the interference in my state where PUBLIC network providers CANNOT sell internet to the PUBLIC!
A bunch of stupid pathetic industry shills and and the people that believe they're just concerned consumers is the downfall of broadband in the united states. Go freedom! (as long as it doesn't interfere with decades old corporate monopolies)
Most people dont need Gbps, thats a fact jack. When theres widespread, and popular applications for such speeds, let me know. Thanks for the honorable mention.
Who cares about what most people "need" we WANT this.
People don't need sports cars, and yet people buy them. Do you really need me to explain why?
Early on in the history of photography still images were all that existed. Someone, somewhere, invented a high-speed shutter mechanism. What was the point? Certainly no one needed such a fast shutter!
Except that until such a shutter was invented, no one truly envisioned the possibility of motion pictures as we know them today. Sure - there were techniques that "faked it" - "Magic Lanterns" and such, but no true motion pictures.
The point being that it's difficult to envision a future state without enabling technology which, at the time of its invention, was useless. Who, after all, needed the Internet in 1970?
Early on in the history of photography still images were all that existed. Someone, somewhere, invented a high-speed shutter mechanism. What was the point? Certainly no one needed such a fast shutter!
Except that until such a shutter was invented, no one truly envisioned the possibility of motion pictures as we know them today.
Certainly not.
The high-speed spring-loaded mechanical shutter was developed for *still* photography -- not for motion pictures.
In motion picture cameras, the shutter is a simple disc that rotates once per frame, mechanically synchronized to the intermittent gear. The disc has a cutout in it. The "standard" shutter in the motion picture industry is a 180-degree shutter -- i.e., a semicircular disc. At 24 frames/second, this is equivalent to a shutter speed of 1/48 second.
The reason we didn't get motion pictures until the late 19th century is that there was no film until the late 19th century. You can shoot still photos on glass plates, but not movies!
But film wasn't developed in a "build it and they will come" manner, either. It had direct applications to still photography.
Most people don't need a gigabit per second to their home, but it's a chicken-and-egg problem. ISPs won't provide that kind of speed because no applications take advantage of it, and applications don't take advantage of it because no ISP provides that kind of speed. At some point, somebody has to break that paradox on one side of that, and it makes more sense for the ISP to do so.
If you release an application that only works well on a very fast connection (say, it needs hundreds of megabits), nobody will use it at all, because nobody can. But if you as an ISP provide people with more speed than they need (like a gigabit), people can still use that connection, even if it's more than they need.
There are lots of things that you can do on a very fast connection (like a gigabit per second) that aren't practical or possible on a slower connection (like 5 or 10 or 20 megabits per second). Some of these we could think of right now, but other things somebody might not have even thought of yet. There are also classes of service that work better on a faster connection.
For example, imagine a virtual external hard disk. Right now, while there are services like dropbox or skydrive, you don't typically use these like an external hard disk; you wouldn't put things on it and run them entirely over the network. But if you've got a gigabit connection, and low latency to the server, that's fast enough to treat such a service as a network disk instead of a download service. That is to say that you can leave the data entirely on the remote server and access it read-by-read over the internet. Suddenly, you could provide a virtual hard disk service that would have a pretty different experience from dropbox (which stores everything locally and syncs to the server).
Another might be really low latency video streaming. Think something like OnLive, but with much lower latency and much higher quality, to the extent where you couldn't tell the difference between a game running on your local computer and a game running in the cloud. That's an example of something that works today, but could work much much better if we had really fast connections.
I'm sure there are many more kinds of things that people haven't invented or discovered yet that would also be enabled by very fast connectivity, but if I knew what they were, I'd be rich
Ive never said never. I hope they come out with popular applications to utilize Gbps speeds. I just dont see it happening anytime soon, not when you need 7Mbps to stream netflix "superHD" , whatever that means.
If something is created for such speeds, we'll see what Google comes up with in KC. We'll see if its applications that dont erode their very own TV service revenues. If something occurs, other providers will follow.
Ive never said never. I hope they come out with popular applications to utilize Gbps speeds. I just dont see it happening anytime soon, not when you need 7Mbps to stream netflix "superHD" , whatever that means.
If something is created for such speeds, we'll see what Google comes up with in KC. We'll see if its applications that dont erode their very own TV service revenues. If something occurs, other providers will follow.
The problem in the case of Netflix is most people simply don't have the connection speeds as it is to watch above 480p without tons of buffering and/or pissing off anyone else trying to use the internet in the house at the same time. An Average of 5.3Mb/s doesn't go that far.
Ive never said never. I hope they come out with popular applications to utilize Gbps speeds. I just dont see it happening anytime soon, not when you need 7Mbps to stream netflix "superHD" , whatever that means.
If something is created for such speeds, we'll see what Google comes up with in KC. We'll see if its applications that dont erode their very own TV service revenues. If something occurs, other providers will follow.
You're just throwing out misleading nothings hoping people believe it.
Most people can take more pictures in day on a single camera they own than they could possibly upload in a year because the damn internet upload for most people sucks. One photo here averages about 3 MiB. 30 Minutes of video 4 gigs.. on a non-profeesional 2 year old device. We've had the real world popular real things for years and no internet to deal with it for even a large minority of the population. Quit making out like there's no use today for super fast internet because it's not true, it's here, it's been here and the internet in the United States has been lagging behind the technology creating data for a decade!
Most people dont need Gbps, thats a fact jack. When theres widespread, and popular applications for such speeds, let me know. Thanks for the honorable mention.
It used to be said that no one had a need for dsl. What use was there? Then they got dsl...
So, what you're saying is don't build the pipeline until the applications that need the speed are in place.
Clue: The applications that would use this technology can't be built and deployed UNTIL the infrastructure is in place to support them.
The simple fact is, these speeds are already useful to most families. They provide the ability to do concurrent tasks in short time without negatively impacting the other tasks. We're just used to the limits currently imposed and so therefore limit our usage and expectations to fit.
Most people dont need Gbps, thats a fact jack. When theres widespread, and popular applications for such speeds, let me know. Thanks for the honorable mention.
Might not need it, but when your average Joe buys that nice new download game on Steam or Xbox 360 or PS3, they sure as hell won't mind having it done in seconds or minutes rather than the better part of an hour or day(s) for those of us still stuck on DSL or slower cable.
elray and ITALIAN926 are to be believed then we have no need for fiber. Capped cable and DSL are the best things in the world and anyone who questions why mono and duopolies are allowed on something such as last mile internet just hate the freedom we Americans have and they prove that our unregulated internet infrastructure has no problems with greedy corporations or anything like that and the customers don't need anything more than 3mbit DSL anyways.
Looks like there's actually an interest in a product that provides something more than the pathetic offerings Comcast, AT&T and others provide for high cost with low offering on all fronts. Who knew?
Do not confuse "need" with "want" (demand).
That said, I've never, ever, been opposed to overbuilders like Google or Sonic attempting to offer fiber, so long as they play by the same rules as anyone else would have to. My objections are primarily focused on those who would form Munis, using the public purse to subsidize service (forever), and in doing so, take the incumbents' franchises without compensation.
If Google can sell 60% of its footprint at $70/month for broadband, that's fantastic - more power to them. Likewise for Sonic and Surewest, if they can deliver 50M+ for $50/month or less, to more than a zipcode or two.
We'll see - if Google stays in the ISP business, and whether they expand Fiberhood. We'll see - if (hopefully) Sonic survives their foray into the Streets of San Francisco.
Whatever business is it that your are in or run, etc, it sounds to me like a hope from you that Google does not stay in the ISP business.
Why would a company do something this disruptive and at great cost if it does not intend to ensure it's continuity to pay back for itself and to grow profits for the future? The downside that you appear not to have expected, is the 60% interest that can translate into unprecedented demand this early in any deployment. If I were Google and assuming that this was very successful and moreover profitable and contribute to advancement of my core business I would sure as hell be looking to burn up other Cities with Fiberhood!.
Whatever business is it that your are in or run, etc, it sounds to me like a hope from you that Google does not stay in the ISP business.
Why would a company do something this disruptive and at great cost if it does not intend to ensure it's continuity to pay back for itself and to grow profits for the future? The downside that you appear not to have expected, is the 60% interest that can translate into unprecedented demand this early in any deployment. If I were Google and assuming that this was very successful and moreover profitable and contribute to advancement of my core business I would sure as hell be looking to burn up other Cities with Fiberhood!.
I have no desire to see Google exit the ISP business. I have no dog in the fight. I am only concerned, as an investor and taxpayer, that Google, other over-builders all play by the same rules - likewise for Munis, NGOs, non-profits, coops and public utilities.
One should note that the "60%" figure only the results of a survey - wherein answers are highly dependent on how you phrase the questions. It does not, in any way, represent actual sales of $70/month broadband. Far from it. Interest is not demand.
If you posed a similar survey in "Fios-qualified territories" six years ago, I submit you would have seen similar answers.
But we're only in the parking lot, the first quarter of the game hasn't started. Google could certainly surprise us and offer a middle-tier like Surewest/Sonic, 100M for $50, and/or a TV package for substantially less than $120/month.
So long as Google isn't violating anti-trust laws, isn't in effect, buying favorable treatment from the city, the city isn't violating the MSO and telco franchises or the takings clause, I wish them the best of luck. Their mere threat/presence will make Cableco offer up some sweet deals for pay-tv bundles.
But Google has a habit of abandoning things without comment or explanation. They're really not happy with the idea of ... doing customer service. After a while of being regulated like a telco, cableco and ISP, and after they're "forced" to wholesale their service, permit servers, and otherwise follow the network-neutrality rules that everyone here fawns over, I do indeed, expect that they will want "out".
elray and ITALIAN926 are to be believed then we have no need for fiber. Capped cable and DSL are the best things in the world and anyone who questions why mono and duopolies are allowed on something such as last mile internet just hate the freedom we Americans have and they prove that our unregulated internet infrastructure has no problems with greedy corporations or anything like that and the customers don't need anything more than 3mbit DSL anyways.
Looks like there's actually an interest in a product that provides something more than the pathetic offerings Comcast, AT&T and others provide for high cost with low offering on all fronts. Who knew?
ITALIAN926 never tries to back his arguments with anything other then his opinion, and never explains why that is his opinion.
.... so can anyone tell me why for the love of God i wouldn't get 1Gbps for $5 more? I mean seriously??
I don't need 1Gbps download but better than 8Mbps upload would be nice, say 20-30Mbps (got cloud backup). Pushing 1-10GB of data per day up to the cloud on 8Mbps isn't so bad per say, takes a few hours but man it would be sweet if i could do it in 1hr or less
I don't care if Google Fiber goes nationwide. I just want it to come to my city. I'd sign up in an eye blink.
Show me anyone under 60 or 70 who doesn't want faster speeds and no bandwidth caps... I'm 65 and I use several hundred GB per month, mostly video (legal) and streaming audio. Around our house over-the-air & cable television are pretty much history.
I have 10 mbps --unlimited-- cable internet (Canada - $47.95) and the peace of mind knowing that I'm not going to get whacked with some astronomical bandwidth overage bill because we watch a few too many programs or movies is wonderful.
Now all I need is the speed of Google Fiber and for uncompressed hi-def 3D streaming video, 3D video conferencing, etc., etc.
As time goes on and I grow older, speeds like Google Fiber's and unrestricted bandwidth will become more important. Even more-so than now, the internet will be my window on the world and my connection to friends and relatives as I become less mobile and possibly infirm with increasing age.
Thank you Google for starting the snowball rolling down the hill. Please keep it up.
I turned off my TV Cable, and kept only the internet at $70. For that price my ISP provides 18m Down and 2.5m up service. My cousins in UK, pay $36 for my service speeds, and in Japan they pay $60 for 1 Gig service.
The demand is there in large numbers, but why would ISPs provide service when bundling price fixing has us locked into paying providers big money for what they provide mentality, so they can report large earnings. All cities should have a separate cable/fiber company, and any provider should be able to provide service, or build their own fiber delivery.
The corporate lobbyist that keep the elected officials flush with money, to manipulate the US consumer and keep that consumer under their heel, is the bane of a once free country.
Cable and DSL bundling is like the Oil Cartel and they price fix like there is no tomorrow. The justice department needs to destroy this cartel, I am surprised that Google is being allowed into a city that has such tight control over what their consumers are getting.
4k/8k resolutions will hopefully force most cable/telcos to iptv, which in the end will feed the need for higher bw needs. Right now if you want to stream a full 1080p blueray movie not re-encoded down to some ***t format, you are looking at about 25-40gigs of data. This does not even exist yet, along any of the current 'streaming services' because people would be hitting caps in a movie or two. Don't tell me netflix or hulu streams in full 1080p and that it doesn't use this much bw, you will loose this argument.
Maybe google will be the first to provide a 4k stream or at least a true full 1080p stream. This would kick the competition in the a** some I think.
it's about the simplicity. You just plug-in and never have to think about it. You don't have to wonder if you're being throttled down to some artificial tier. You don't have to worry about going over some artificial usage cap. It's a simple decision: you get to use a real network for the same price range as the "competition". It's a no-brainer.
What is the meaning of "60% of those who qualify are very interested in obtaining Google Fiber"?
Reading the article, it says that 30% have paid the $10 pre-registration fee (OK, that's a hard number!) and that another 30% are "expressing interest", whatever that means! That could even mean they have never heard of it, but are interested to learn what it actually is. How did this translate into "very interested"?
Still, in the brand comparison, google is clearly much more trusted than the competition, according to the numbers in the article.
interest means nothing until people are willing to put their money down. The fact that those 30% wouldn't put down $10, means they really aren't all that interested.
While I'm not looking to get Gigabit per second, for how sweet that would absolutely be to get I am just looking to get off of the DSL and also not have to put up with the Cable Internet in this neighborhood. For now a speed boost from 1Mbps to 5Mbps from Verizon has been keeping me at ease but it certainly isn't enough for the things I'd like to go.
I'm hoping someone brings 100Mbps/100Mbps Fiber to me that doesn't cost $6,000 a month and requires me to pay $250,000 up front to get a Fiber line installed. I'll be willing to pay $80 a month for that if it would get here.
Either way, Google has the idea. Let's see what they can do.
Here's a Start-up utilizing GF for Video Conferencing.
If you want real-world application for technologies employing super-high speed connections like Google Fiber, then check out: »www.fastcompany.com/3004 ··· -meeting
The telco+cable companies have a right to get as much profit from their investments as possible. The responsible thing would be for all large companies to agree to offer a 5GB cap on ALL broadband lines(with overage charges for those who need it). Content companies news rooms would be willing to tell the truth on ALL channels how great this would help our country. This would also spearhead America again as a leader showing the world how to use the internet more efficiently. Training real Americans how to use the internet more efficiently would stop proliferation of damaging new technologies like online pirate streaming. Homeland and security would also benefit as more Americans would waste less time on the computer at 5GB month cap/family and work more productive hours outside the house. You can't stream the evils of Communism with a 5 GB cap!!! Good lobbyists need only show a embattled congress the way forward! The money will decide who gets elected!
/end sarcasm
Guys THIS is your future period. Big money has already cast their vote in the house and senate. YOUR ONLY WORTH to this countries leaders is your combined money and that is already spoken for small as it may be....
Verizon hinting at 1gigabit? Plenty of hot air, zero action. Isn't it great to have an incumbency with duopoly price and technology deployment collusion? Plus corrupt government who've winked an nodded (off) the last decade while you got fleeced?
THIS is what google fiber's been deployed to combat.
$70 is actually more than I'm really willing to spend for just internet, but at least Google is giving some decent upload, which is what I would want more than that unusable download speed! Anyone in the world knows that most servers you get anything from don't come close to serving it up that fast!
I'd also be concerned to death about what info Google might be stealing from you just to be connected through them! Heck, we all know how much info anything else of theirs steals and sells!!
Google fiber in Kansas City is not a business model, it is a test. If it was setup as an actual business that was trying to expand and be profitable they would not be charging 70$ a month. The folks in Kansas City are lucky at least for these first two years. If google decides to pull out, which their insane contract lets them do, Kansas City might have a problem.
It would be similar to a Kansas City Dealership offering Ford Mustangs for 5,000 dollars it doesn't matter if you need them or not you would not buy it cause its a amazing deal and the rest of the country would be jealous and mad that their Dealerships cant offer the same thing.
I've always wanted things like HD Voice, HD Videoconferencing, 60fps online TV services, and at least 30fps remote desktop (a.k.a. splashtop)
These things all somewhat exist but aren't very mature because not enough people have access to sufficient bandwidth to make it worthwhile.
I mean, even something like online gaming, we could probably get much better experiences if we had guaranteed 10ms latency to many popular servers. Once superfast connections get popular, developers have a reason to optimize their apps to take advantage of super responsiveness.
It also forces ISPs to build more backhaul to more places. Right now, I have no faith in being able pull more than 4-5mbits consistently from servers that aren't in some efficient setup that puts servers close to me (like netflix or youtube).