Google formally announced Google Fiber today, based on their pilot program in Kansas City: <a class="postlink" href="https://fiber.google.com/about/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">https://fiber.google.com/about/</a> Focus: What does this mean for the internet Secondary Focus: Bitch about Comcast/Time Warner and all the other shitty ISPs that Google is going to crush under its massive fibrous boot.
It means absolutely nothing. At least here in Philly. We still can't get Verizon. Not that I'd want it, but why, you might ask? Don't we live in a 'free market' economy? Not really. Since most cable providers are regulated as a Public Utility, you essentially have state sponsored monopolies. Sure, Verizon internet exists, but they can't get the infrastructure (which requires permits, etc.) into place in most neighborhoods. The same will happen to google. Sounds great in theory, however, the big boys will donate millions to local and federal politicians to make sure their little kingdoms aren't interfered with.
Maybe Xhamster will finally fucking stream properly. Err... finally stream fucking properly. Really that sentence works either way. Also, bye bye TV. It's happening already that people are moving away from traditional viewing habits, this will only reinforce the new model. Think of the piracy opportunities. Think of the lawsuits corporations will launch when a pirated movie is disseminated INSTANTLY throughout the world, possibly before it's even released in theaters. I'm also assuming most people don't have the fiber optic wiring to get this service. We can get ATT U-verse, but it's nowhere near as fast as advertised because the wiring in older parts of town are, well... old.
Precious little. I get about 25 mb/s download right now; there is rarely ever a time that I have to wait for anything. Whenever I experience lag in something like a game, it's always the limitation of my hardware; graphics card, processor, and a laptop running shitty Vista. The marginal utility from going from 25 mb/s to 1000 mb/s is surprisingly small. Meanwhile, I imagine the price will be higher.
This is true. I live in Podunk, Montana and I get 30 mbits/s cable. Most of the times, the servers can't keep up. I try to run torrent as much as possible and then finally get downloads at 30 mb/s. However, we are talking about a single session, Once a household starts watching several HD channels at once, then the benefits of the higher b/w will be evident. The company I work for builds fiber concentrators (the central office side of fiber-to-the-curb) and I can tell you that laying down fiber is very expensive and is what is keeping it from mass availability. Most carriers/providers don't want to invest that kind of money in the delivery infrastructure because the pay-off is not proportional to the bandwidth. Maybe Google, being so cash rich, will be willing to pay for that in order to get a long term pay-off and market share.
It's more than just the speed (although I think your imagination is woefully underdeveloped if you can't imagine a use for a 40x speed boost), it's the fact that Comcast/Time Warner/Verizon have a vested interest in pushing traditional cable TV service, and a result have become heavily resistant to being "dumb pipes." What this means practically is that they're acting like terrific assholes on anything that threatens the old pay cable model for content delivery. Comcast's download caps can be hit in as little as five movies if you were downloading them in blu ray quality. An uncapped 1000 mbps connection basically forces the TV/film distribution change that's nearly a decade overdue.
Well, enlighten me. What I can do with 1000 mb/s that I can't with 25 mb/s? This is true. However, realistically, is this a huge deal for most people? We're talking about a very small niche.
Fuck all y'all. This will take at least 10 years to get to South Africa, if ever, mostly because all telecommunications are governed by ICASA (supposedly an independent authority but always seem to take the government's side with everything so basically they're a pseudo-government company; they claim impartiality but most people in S.A. know that's bullshit) and ICASA will simply refuse a licence to operate, because allowing Google Fiber to operate would annoy their government overlords, Telkom. ICASA controls any signal that wishes to enter S.A. airspace and signals originating within S.A., so radios, tv's, internet, etc. all fall under their banner. They also like to fine people for overdue licences when they haven't sent the fucking renewal slip. Cunts. Here in S.A., you have two options for internet: 1) slow compared to overseas or 2) reliable and slower than that. My ISP falls into the second category. It's too slow for youtube to load properly half the time but at least it functions correctly about 98% of the time. If I do a little rain dance, I might get 1mbps (that's megabits per second, NOT mBps, which is megabytes per second) at any one time. I hope Google will now rename to Skynet.
1000 mbps is closing in on the speed you'd need to send a raw HD video feed, which could make remote gaming viable. Well it's kind of chicken and egg. It's a niche because most people don't want to go through the effort of acquiring that kind of quality, and thus we don't bother making it easier because it's a niche. The quality difference between the compressed 1080i that current constitutes HDTV and the much less compressed 1080p that's on a blu ray is quite noticeable. And that's not even accounting for what 4K could do down the road.
The size of screen you'd need to actually be able to appreciate 4K resolution is ridiculous. 40-inch screens are about the bare minimum for 1080p, and that's a 1/4 of 4K... I really hope the relevant industries focus on other things before they start pushing 4K.
I guess that is the problem with large scale services like this. There is so much infrastructure that has to be laid down to make it useable, that cities and states are basically forced into monopoly situations. Think about electricity, for example. Even if a big organization can scrape enough money together to build plants that can supply a whole area with electricity, they THEN have to take the time and money to put down lines to all private and public areas, AND they have to get permits to do so. Though, I guess if anyone can kick all current companies for a loop, it would be google. Even if they do, then what? Then we have another semi-monopoly that can be an ass. The other option seems to be to have cities control their own infrastructure that other companies...ISP's, electrical, etc, use to run their services through. The federal government does this already to an extent with things like cell phone airwaves (airwave space, not infrastructure like towers as far as I know). The only thing is, only the big names can afford the bids on these contracts. So again, you're stuck with maybe 5-6 main companies and presently, in my opinion, they all kind of suck in their own special way (the main thing being, contracts are pretty expensive for what you're getting...but that is a rant for another time).
Don't know if you live in the city proper, but the problem is Philly gov't mandates new providers provide equal access to different income brackets. You could get FiOS now if you lived in Strawberry Mansion, even though all the people in Strawberry Mansion can't afford FiOS. You want it in Center City? Psh, you're fucked. I'm not bitter at all, I promise.
And here in Kansas City, they did it pretty much the opposite way. They ignored the most affluent area in the metro when rolling out their pilot program.
My understanding is that Google merely bought up the pre-existing fiber optic cables (the "dark fiber" we heard about a couple of years ago). So, someone already did all of the digging and building. I'm just not sure why the telecom companies never activated them.
Back in 2008, a local town, Monicello, which is about 40 miles outside of Minneapolis, decided it wanted to offer fiber as a selling point to attract more residents. The local ISP, TDS Telecom, didn't want to bother with the infrastructure costs and hassle of laying fiber at that time. So, the city brought up the idea of starting their own municipal ISP and laying fiber themselves. The city held a referendum and the idea passed with 74% approval. The $25 million would come from tax-free government bonds. Sounds like a good idea, right? Not according to TDS Telecom. They sued the city of Monticello in order to prevent the city from doing so. When pressed as to WHY, TDS responded by basically saying it was because they cared about the community and sued to prevent the city from getting in over their heads. Gotta love it. The place I am moving into next month has fiber, and I am fucking ecstatic. Currently I have Comcast, and the only company I can think of that I despise more is Wal-Mart.
Don't know a ton about the technical side and just glanced through the website linked, but it looks like there's an option for free internet if you pay the $300 construction/ installation fee. That could be pretty cool. At the very least, this will be interesting to watch develop.
Not just gaming, but yes, this is something that's been coming for years now. Once you have enough bandwidth to consume a high resolution, uncompressed (or lightly compressed) video, you suddenly have a ton of options for fully remote processing of data. Plus, this is all a very typical-Google move. Do something new, different - push some boundaries. Then analyze the fuck out if it and find out what people are doing with your new product. The Nexus Q was universally panned by reviewers, but they missed the point - it wasn't a finished product. It wasn't supposed to be a finished product. Make something that has a purpose and some intriguing properties, and figure out what people want to do with it. In the case of the Q, they gave it a USB port, open access, and let the dev community play with it. Google does public betas of everything so they can better understand the market.
In many instances multiple trunk lines are placed as duct banks go in for future expansion. With daisy chaining / multiplexing becoming common, at best a handful of fibers are used out of one trunk leaving a ton of dark fiber all over the place
Whenever the original duct banks / conduit were placed for fiber, multiple trunk lines were laid with the assumption future expansion that would take place, but after daisy chaining / multiplexing became the norm plenty of times only a handful of fibers off one trunk were ever used leaving a shit ton of dark fiber floating around with no use.
[/quote] My understanding is that Google merely bought up the pre-existing fiber optic cables (the "dark fiber" we heard about a couple of years ago). So, someone already did all of the digging and building. I'm just not sure why the telecom companies never activated them.[/quote] Plenty of times when the original duct banks / conduit was laid, multiple large fiber trunk lines were placed under the assumption future expansion would make use of them, but after daisy chaining / multiplexing became the norm often only a handful of fibers were used and a shit ton of fiber remained dark.