Found something strage attached to my house on Fri.

[Jeff V.]

And the point of that much bandwidth?

By itself, not much. At least it's a symmetrical 1 Gb up and down, rather than the usual cable/DSL bullshit of 15 Mb down 1.2 up, which is what we're getting today. I'd be plenty happy with a 50/50Mbit symmetrical connection. Gigabit is like having a 1000 hp car. Sure it's fun to brag about, but there's almost nowhere you can actually use it I'm pretty excited about getting rid of Time Warner's garbage DVR boxes though.

I think the point Google is trying to make is that broadband in this country is a joke, and much, much higher speeds can be provided with a reasonable capital expenditure. We're held back by regional monopolies and duopolies that have virtually zero incentive to innovate and upgrade.

Time Warner's answer to this is 2x1 internet for $14.99/mo. They're pitching it as an 'upgrade' from DSL. Please...

[Boost4VR4]

Nice. I am getting 40MB fiber run to the new house soon...

[anyonebutme]

STL needs this. Our only options are dish, ATT in some areas, and Charter. Charter lobbied for some kind of lockout in STL, so they are the only cable company allowed here. Means they can charge whatever they want and good luck getting real service. TV and internet is like $140 a month and price increases yearly unless you keep switching.

[green-lantern]

STL needs this. Our only options are dish, ATT in some areas, and Charter. Charter lobbied for some kind of lockout in STL, so they are the only cable company allowed here. Means they can charge whatever they want and good luck getting real service. TV and internet is like $140 a month and price increases yearly unless you keep switching.

exactly, can't wait till the market catches up.

[IPD]

must be nice. damn legal monopolies. all i really want is 50/50/50. 50M up. 50M down. $50/month. and i don't give a flying fuck about tv.

[NickS VR4]

must be nice. damn legal monopolies. all i really want is 50/50/50. 50M up. 50M down. $50/month. and i don't give a flying fuck about tv.

For what it's worth... I have FIOS with TV (most channels, including HBO and Showtime, a DVR that works for the whole house, and a second box), 75/35 (Really get 80down/40up), and home phone line with unlimited calls anywhere in the US for $145/mo (thats with taxes and everything included). I don't think FIOS is that bad of a deal. Also just ran a ping on google.com, getting consistent results of 3.7-3.9ms from my Chromebook, on Wifi.

Kinda curious, as I don't know. I'm in NJ, wonder if when I ping google if it goes to CA, or if they have servers closer to NJ.

[Jeff V.]

You can run a traceroute and get a general idea of where the packets are going. I just did one from my Time Warner connection at home and it looks like it routes out to California. But if I do the same thing from my connection at work, it goes to Chicago. I'd guess Google has some content distribution nodes in various major cities around the country. I'm surprised TW in Kansas City doesn't route to Chicago or Dallas though.

Speaking of FIOS, Verizon has said they're not going to roll that out any further. They're going to focus on mobile options Gee, could that be because it's easier to gouge mobile users on tiered/capped data plans? It's ridiculous.

AT&T is also making trouble for Google down in Austin, due to some legal BS definitions of a "telecommunications provider". AT&T owns ~20% of the utility poles in Austin. They're legally obligated to allow any telecom provider to attach to those poles at fair market rates. They're trying to say Google isn't a telecom. I guess because Google doesn't offer phone service or some shit. The Austin city government is introducing a proposal to change that definition though. Good for them

[HilbillyHomeboy]

Seems Google could counter that argument with their "voice" offering.

Jeremy

[Jeff V.]

I haven't read the legal wording behind AT&Ts complaint, but I suspect it has something to do with being able to provide traditional voice service rather than software based voice-over-IP like Google does. If Google got into that game, they'd have all sorts of new regulatory hassles, as well as needing to provide things like reliable 911 access and systems to connect old POTS phones to the network. I don't blame them for not wanting to go down that road.

[Boost4VR4]

Google has some massive class B networks which span the entire country. They have some load balancing and clustering setup as well as region based label switching on MPLS backbones.