8 ms·

Google Fiber Austin

221 points by tyroneschiff 12y ago

parktheredcar 12y ago
How is Google Fiber's customer service? I have heard lots of complaints about support for their free products, and most US users know the typical (Comcast, Verizon) ISP has terrible service, but I haven't heard anything about Fiber itself. Does anybody have first hand experience?
- e40 12y ago
  I can tell you that support for the Nexus devices is good. I would expect support for this to be on par with that.
- rbshadel 12y ago
  I have Google Fiber in Kansas City, and I've been incredibly happy with customer service. Especially after dealing with Time Warner for a couple years, I was extremely surprised and pleased with Google's support. I've had a couple of minor issues, and each time I've called in the people I've talked to have always been friendly, knowledgeable (about their product but also technically), and helpful. They've sent a tech out twice and ditto for each tech - they both showed up on time, listened to what I had to say, and solved the issue. 10/10
- NoNotTheDuo 12y ago
  Excellent, based on my interactions with them. I've had fiber in KC for just over a year and have had to get online with them a few times for various issues. Never called in, always just done the online chat option. And as a side note, their installers are top notch. I was scheduled to have mine installed at say 9am. They called at about 830am and tell me that the original installer may not be right on time, so they are sending over a 2nd group to start the process while we wait on the first group. Both groups show up 10 minutes early - hell, they beat me to my house. They always put on protective boot coverings when they are inside, make sure you understand what's going on, answer any questions, etc. Very professional and a lot more fun to deal with than TimeWarner.
oimaz 12y ago
It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber
- bdcravens 12y ago
  It's not something an area "adopts" - Google initiates that discussion, as far as I know: https://fiber.google.com/newcities/ https://fiber.google.com/newcities/
  - fizzbatter 12y ago
    I'm not sure who starts it, but they're very clearly (and openly) rolling it out based on not only logical locations, but willingness of cities. Some places are just hard to get into, like Seattle[0]. [0]: http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-broadband-internet/ http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-...
    - mtviewdave 12y ago
      From an email I got from the Google Fiber team last May: "We’ve been impressed by how enthusiastic the City of Mountain View has been as we’ve worked with them over the past few months — so let’s take a moment to thank them for everything they’ve done so far." The City is also working on the physical infrastructure Google needs: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go-ahead http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go... I can't speak for other cities in the area, but for Mountain View, the belief that Google Fiber expansion is being held up by government inaction or unwillingness, is unwarranted. (The one exception is San Francisco, which is a mess whenever anyone wants to build anything anywhere in the City, but SF's an outlier in that regard)
- therobot24 12y ago
  says that "Santa Clara, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto" are potentials
- cmsmith 12y ago
justaman 12y ago
I still think Google is at risk of forming a monopoly and are at risk of becoming Bell 2.0. Unfortunately due to the lack of quality ISP's, the first to offer residential fiber to the perimeter will rapidly absorb the market.
- bretthoerner 12y ago
  Maybe in some areas. Here in Austin AT&T, Time Warner and the local ISP Grande are all now offering cheap plans from 300Mbps to full gigabit because Google is coming to town and they need to compete. I pay something around $50 for 300Mbps (no cap) from Time Warner and it works great.
  - knodi123 12y ago
    yep, that's been my experience too. google fiber forced the entrenched providers to become competitive. now, they have become competitive, and I have no clear motivation to switch to google fiber. I may still switch, but I'm about a half mile away from the "sign up now" zones.
    - djloche 12y ago
      This is exactly what Google needs - in order for their vision of the future to happen people need to have far better connections on average than they do now. When Google Fiber enters a market, everyone wins - even if you don't switch to Google as your ISP.
  - eob 12y ago
    Wow. Just as another data point to show how monopolies stifle progress, in Cambridge MA I pay $50/mo for 6Mmbps. Comcast is the only Internet company available.
- reportingsjr 12y ago
  If they invent and implement as many things as Bell I'm almost ok with that. For what it is worth I have seen the effect of google fiber locally (Cincinnati) even though Google has no plans of expanding to here any time soon. Cincinnati Bell recently unveiled a 1Gbps residential plan for $70/mo. This was a response to the city council approaching Google to see what they would need to do to bring fiber here.
norcimo5 12y ago
Yet another reason why I love living in Austin. Yay! ;)
- Chronic29 12y ago
  That and getting underpaid (after COLA adjustment with the Bay Area).
- LandoCalrissian 12y ago
  Ya big jerk, can you send some of that fiber to your Minneapolis brothers in the north?
javajosh 12y ago
Does anyone know for certain whether Google data mine's their Fiber data?
- sysk 12y ago
  Why? They probably do as other ISPs.
- logn 12y ago
  All information we collect about the use of Google Fiber TV (including use of programs and applications available through Google Fiber TV) may be associated with the Google Account being used for Google Fiber TV. ... information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request. https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html They don't really mention what information not associated to a Google account is mined except that it follows the company-wide privacy policy. So they probably mine it. It's probably comparable to Google DNS: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy Request domain name, e.g. www.google.com Request type, e.g. A (which stands for IPv4 record), AAAA (IPv6 record), NS, MX, TXT, etc. Transport protocol on which the request arrived, i.e. TCP or UDP Client's AS (autonomous system or ISP), e.g. AS15169 User's geolocation information: i.e. geocode, region ID, city ID, and metro code Response code sent, e.g. SUCCESS, SERVFAIL, NXDOMAIN, etc. Whether the request hit our frontend cache Whether the request hit a cache elsewhere in the system (but not in the frontend) Absolute arrival time in seconds Total time taken to process the request end-to-end, in seconds Name of the Google machine that processed this request, e.g. machine101 Google target IP to which this request was addressed, e.g. one of our anycast IP addresses (no relation to the user's IP)
  - javajosh 12y ago
    will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber This phrase has rather a lot of qualifications which make it trivially easy to circumvent. For example, Google might associate the data with a different account, an internal "ghost" account that you specifically don't use for Google Fiber (but which is identical to it in every way). I for one would like to see ISPs make an effort to construct systems where even the owner of the ISP doesn't really store any information. For example, they may store differential information about traffic spikes, to help avert DOS attacks. But other than that, they only do what they get paid to do: shuttle bits back and forth across the last mile of internet.
bengotow 12y ago
Man—was really hoping they'd go for Nashville next!
- fjarlq 12y ago
  They haven't chosen their next city yet. Austin was selected on April 9, 2013, and Provo was selected a week later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Locations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Locations
shittyanalogy 12y ago
Damn, one time $300 fee for "Up to" 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. That's like getting free internet for 6 and a half years[1] from current providers after 6 months. And if you want to upgrade you've already got the hardware. I wonder what the minimum time of undercutting at a loss service they can offer is without it being considered anti-competitive. [1] They guarantee 7 years of free service https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/plans/#plan=free https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/plans/#plan=free
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Once you've paid for the equipment, I suspect that price isn't actually a loss for Google. The bandwidth would be dirt cheap compared to gigabit ($0.35/month scaled down linearly from the gigabit rate of $70/month), and I wouldn't find it at all surprising if they make that much on the average Internet user.
- josu 12y ago
  Is there any evidence that they are operating at a loss? For 2013 Comcast reported 13.5 billion operating income on 64.6 revenue [1]. This means that they could potentially lower their prices 20% without incurring in losses. If we assume that Google is able to operate more efficiently, which isn't such a bold assumption, they could potentially undercut prices even more. On top of that, we could also assume that in terms of infraestructure the cost of offering 10mbps is simillar to offering 1 gbps. So I'm not that sure that they are operating at a loss. [1] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CMCSA/3686143613x0xS1193125-14-47522/1166691/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CMCSA/3686143613x0xS1...
  - wmf 12y ago
    Everybody other than Google reports that installing fiber costs over $1,000 per home, but Google is selling it for $300 and saying "trust us".
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
NietTim 12y ago
Welcome to the 21st century, Austin!
- jamesblonde 12y ago
  Not really. In Stockholm, I have 250Mb down, 100Mb up. Costs 50 bucks/month.
  - sandstrom 12y ago
    I think these two graphs are interesting. Fiber and low prices for broadband seems to be correlated (Japan, Korea). Unfortunately there isn't more data points in the Economist graph. I think it helps if the fiber is owned by a party other than the access provider, e.g. the community or city, to avoid having a monopoly squeeze out all the consumer surplus. How will this work with Google Fiber? http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2014/03/blogs/schumpeter/20140301_wbc414.png http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac... http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/oecd-broadband-June-2013-border_0.jpg http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/oecd-broadba... Full html pages (where images were found): - http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/oecd-broadband-stats-show-nz-improving-still-could-do-better-internetnz-boss-ck-150641 http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/oecd-broadband-stats-show-nz-im... - http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/telecoms-mexico http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/telecoms-m...
bspecht 12y ago
You're welcome. From, Kansas City
pretz 12y ago
While I'm excited to see Google Fiber push into Austin, I've been very happy with my 110 mbps down / 11 mbps up from local company Grande: http://mygrande.com/internet/compare http://mygrande.com/internet/compare. Austin is lucky to have actual competition among cable and ISP providers, unlike many other cities.
- jobu 12y ago
  It's surprising and unfortunate that they chose Austin then. There are so many other large cities out there with limited choices for fast internet.
  - GigabyteCoin 12y ago
    That's probably the reason they chose Austin, surprisingly. It's a lot less legwork to setup shop in a city that doesn't already have red-tape in place.
    - Dirlewanger 12y ago
      Yup, which is precisely why Google won't ever touch anything north of the Mason Dixon line. Heads would certainly roll if they encroached on Comcast's home turf.
  - lziz 12y ago
    From Google Fiber's FAQ on "Why have you chosen this list of cities?" > These cities are led by people who have been working hard to bring faster Internet speeds and the latest technologies to their residents. We believe these are communities who will do amazing things with a gig. And they are diverse -- not just geographically, but in the ways they’ll give us opportunities to learn about the wide range of challenges and obstacles that communities might face in trying to build a new fiber network. So it sounds like a combo of local government initiative & geographic diversity. But yeah - unfortunate in the respect you said
  - driverdan 12y ago
    Actually it's fortunate for Austin. It has pushed the other companies to offer much more bandwidth. Before Fiber was announced the max you could get was 50Mb down.
wcchandler 12y ago
Why don't we see more startups in the fiber-to-the-premises realm? Is cost really that high and difficult to obtain? HN has led me to believe that a good idea with motivated founders will get funded, no matter what. And I can't think of a better time to enter this market.
- bluedino 12y ago
  People are probably more likely to fun a startup with a few million in hopes of cashing out later for 50-100x the initial investment. Not spend $84 million to build out a city like Kansas City, and then who knows how much income they get back from subscribers or how much it costs to support.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Because FTTP involves massive upfront costs with no hope of 10x or 100x returns. Say you sell fiber at $70/month. The operating profit margin of a company like Charter, which doesn't have a media-arm to rely on, is like 10-15%. So per year, each subscriber is worth $80-126. Over 10 years, discounted, that's under a grand. And to wire them up, you have to spend about that much if not more, up-front.
  - adventured 12y ago
    And that's when companies like Charter aren't busy going bankrupt.
Someone1234 12y ago
The business account is $30 more, which is normal (presumably goes to better support, no word on improved upload/ratios?). But I will say it is a little odd that it doesn't ship with at least one static IP. Plus $30 per IP is kind of crazy. Most host providers, even REALLY inexpensive ones, charge $3-5/month/IP. So I consider $20-30 a massive markup for something pretty useful for a business account.
- mey 12y ago
  I was just quoted $20/mo for 5 static ip's from Frontier, 4 years ago it was $10/mo from Comcast. At this point I think it's the lack of IPv4 addresses hitting home. Hilariously neither vendor can speak to their IPv6 roll-out.
jmsduran 12y ago
I have been living in Austin for roughly 4 years, but after checking the map it looks like my area may not get fiber for some years to come, as well as much of the greater Austin city limits, based off the progress I see from Google's initial Kansas rollout. The one thing I hope that comes out of this, and the one thing I believe will benefit all Austin residents, would be the ability to negotiate for a lower monthly rate when their Internet/Cable contract renews sometime next year. I hope that by April 2015 I have the leverage to call TWC and say: "Hey, Google fiber is offering Gigabit + TV for $130 a month, why can't my $155 monthly bill be lowered considering I pay for Internet + TV that is only 1/4 as fast?"
- exelius 12y ago
  In April 2015, you won't be calling TWC, you'll be calling Comcast. Pretty sure they don't give a fuck about the price of a product you don't have access to - if you can't cancel your service, they don't care.
  - wmf 12y ago
    Fortunately TWC already upgraded everyone in Austin by 5x.
gojomo 12y ago
Hypothetical for advocates of federal net neutrality regulations: Google is offering a "free" (after one-time installation) tier: "up to 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed". Suppose on that tier, they also offered a temporary "turbo" option, 1Gbps+ for the next hour, or next 5GB, or for the duration of a session with a particular site, whatever. And this "turbo" was available on reasonable, non-discriminatory terms to either the customer, or to remote sites serving data to the customer. And of course, Google itself would usually enable the "turbo" for bulk and profit-maximizing interactions with its own sites, like HD media purchases, HD teleconferencing, or big software downloads. Is this an unconscionable and punishable violation of the ideal of network neutrality, or just a boon to all involved: great baseline service for free, and spot acceleration available to everyone at non-discriminatory prices? What if other upstarts could also offer such a "free" tier in other regions on similar terms – but only by assuming the extra occasional sales of "turbo" to both residential customers and bandwidth-heavy internet services?
- wmf 12y ago
  Hypothetically it hurts the "two guys in a garage" who have to hire a third guy (or pay a middleman Turbo Distribution Network) just to handle dozens of ISP turbo contracts.
  - gojomo 12y ago
    How does it hurt them compared to the baseline where it's not even an option - the standard 5Mbps is all the customers have, and if garage-guys-service benefits from bursts of more speed, neither the customer nor the service can easily pay the few dimes it might cost? Or the baseline where, because there's no revenue from 'turbo', a freemium broadband tier isn't offered at all, leaving customers without even the free 5Mbps, or (having paid for broadband instead) with less budget for garage-guys services? (Also, if such a upsell were available, from Google or others, it'd not necessarily require bilateral contracts. It could and should be an automated service, discoverable in a standard way.)
teekert 12y ago
Here in the Netherlands we also have this but from more companies. A lot of cities now have fiber to the home, I have 50/50 + tv for 50 euro (100/100 would be 55). Some cities also have Gigabit, for about 100 euros/month (http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht.html http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht.html) Google fiber doesn't seem so special to me. Maybe I should read into how the money from the fiber network is made here. I think there are some government loans involved in getting the infrastructure in place, even though there already was a cable network that is currently advertising up to 200 mbit/sec.
- shittyanalogy 12y ago
  Our internet in the US costs about the same for less bandwidth. Also our internet companies are among the most loathed companies in the country and consistently rank among the lowest large companies in customer satisfaction. They also build networks on government subsidy but generally have little if any competition. They also almost force you to bundle in phone and TV with a pricing scheme that makes no sense. They are also allowed to gobble each other up in a race to the bottom.
  - icantthinkofone 12y ago
    To the contrary, I'm paying $55/month for 100Mb service with Charter and am quite happy with them.
- runeks 12y ago
  I just got connected to my 200/200 mbit connection in my apartment in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm paying 200 DKK for it per month ($35 / €27). There are at least four companies with fiber in the ground here in Copenhagen. I chose a fairly cheap company (http://andels.net/ http://andels.net/), with fiber in only the eastern and northern part of Copenhagen. They hooked up the apartment complex I live in (200 apartments) for 3800 DKK per apartment, which we pay off over 2 years, while everyone gets a 50/50 mbit connection for free in that period. You can upgrade to 200/200 mbit, which I did. For the people who just use the 50/50 mbit connection, the investment will pay itself back in less than two years (because they save at least 100 DKK per month on Internet, while having a much faster connection than ADSL).
ausjke 12y ago
I live at Austin and my Time Warner cable modem worked for me fine and the speed suffices for my typical needs, however it's $64/month, I would switch to Google-Fiber anytime soon as long as it opens in my community, though I don't know how I am going to use that 1Gbps bandwidth. If 1Gbps becomes a reality, then each house can become a small data-center, which was limited by upstream speed (less than 2Mbps) in the past.
- shittyanalogy 12y ago
  Imagining what you would do with 1Gbps is difficult because bandwidth of that speed is not common. If such bandwidth were common, products specifically leveraging it would also be. Better streaming, easier remote backup, more devices connected, smoother remote computing, etc
- adventured 12y ago
  You'll have to wait a number of years, but the killer app for 1gbps is virtual reality with the data mostly stored in the cloud. It's going to require extraordinarily fast broadband to reach its potential. The things people think of today for home broadband uses (video, gaming), will be considered a joke in ten years when it comes to using bandwidth.
crymer11 12y ago
Surprised they want a 1 year commitment and are charging a construction fee. EPB here in Chattanooga offers $69.99 month to month pricing for 1Gbps (and no construction fee).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
blueskin_ 12y ago
Anyone with or otherwise knowledgeable about google fibre: I've heard their normal router is terrible, but that you can put your own in if you configure the VLANs and QoS on it - but as for the TV, my understanding is that the TV boxes go onto your LAN - will they play nicely with a better router, or do they force use of the google one? They also double as wireless APs - can that functionality be disabled in favour of a customer's own APs? Edit: Did some research, seems it needs IGMP proxying, which should be doable on a decent router. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterGuide.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterG... was a very useful link.
shekhar101 12y ago
Here in a major IT city of India(Hyderabad), I pay around $40 for 50 Mbps/10Mbps(up/down) and it's unlimited. I guess it'a pretty good deal. We have good number of companies offering services. I say it's a good deal, but of course not as good as this.

221 points by tyroneschiff 12y ago

How is Google Fiber's customer service? I have heard lots of complaints about support for their free products, and most US users know the typical (Comcast, Verizon) ISP has terrible service, but I haven't heard anything about Fiber itself. Does anybody have first hand experience?

e40 12y ago
I can tell you that support for the Nexus devices is good. I would expect support for this to be on par with that.
rbshadel 12y ago
I have Google Fiber in Kansas City, and I've been incredibly happy with customer service. Especially after dealing with Time Warner for a couple years, I was extremely surprised and pleased with Google's support. I've had a couple of minor issues, and each time I've called in the people I've talked to have always been friendly, knowledgeable (about their product but also technically), and helpful. They've sent a tech out twice and ditto for each tech - they both showed up on time, listened to what I had to say, and solved the issue. 10/10
NoNotTheDuo 12y ago
Excellent, based on my interactions with them. I've had fiber in KC for just over a year and have had to get online with them a few times for various issues. Never called in, always just done the online chat option. And as a side note, their installers are top notch. I was scheduled to have mine installed at say 9am. They called at about 830am and tell me that the original installer may not be right on time, so they are sending over a 2nd group to start the process while we wait on the first group. Both groups show up 10 minutes early - hell, they beat me to my house. They always put on protective boot coverings when they are inside, make sure you understand what's going on, answer any questions, etc. Very professional and a lot more fun to deal with than TimeWarner.

oimaz 12y ago

It is sad that silicon valley has been so slow to adopt google fiber

bdcravens 12y ago
It's not something an area "adopts" - Google initiates that discussion, as far as I know: https://fiber.google.com/newcities/ https://fiber.google.com/newcities/
- fizzbatter 12y ago
  I'm not sure who starts it, but they're very clearly (and openly) rolling it out based on not only logical locations, but willingness of cities. Some places are just hard to get into, like Seattle[0]. [0]: http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-broadband-internet/ http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04/business/118993/google-fiber-...
  - mtviewdave 12y ago
    From an email I got from the Google Fiber team last May: "We’ve been impressed by how enthusiastic the City of Mountain View has been as we’ve worked with them over the past few months — so let’s take a moment to thank them for everything they’ve done so far." The City is also working on the physical infrastructure Google needs: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go-ahead http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2014/09/26/google-fiber-gets-go... I can't speak for other cities in the area, but for Mountain View, the belief that Google Fiber expansion is being held up by government inaction or unwillingness, is unwarranted. (The one exception is San Francisco, which is a mess whenever anyone wants to build anything anywhere in the City, but SF's an outlier in that regard)
therobot24 12y ago
says that "Santa Clara, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto" are potentials
cmsmith 12y ago

justaman 12y ago

I still think Google is at risk of forming a monopoly and are at risk of becoming Bell 2.0. Unfortunately due to the lack of quality ISP's, the first to offer residential fiber to the perimeter will rapidly absorb the market.

bretthoerner 12y ago
Maybe in some areas. Here in Austin AT&T, Time Warner and the local ISP Grande are all now offering cheap plans from 300Mbps to full gigabit because Google is coming to town and they need to compete. I pay something around $50 for 300Mbps (no cap) from Time Warner and it works great.
- knodi123 12y ago
  yep, that's been my experience too. google fiber forced the entrenched providers to become competitive. now, they have become competitive, and I have no clear motivation to switch to google fiber. I may still switch, but I'm about a half mile away from the "sign up now" zones.
  - djloche 12y ago
    This is exactly what Google needs - in order for their vision of the future to happen people need to have far better connections on average than they do now. When Google Fiber enters a market, everyone wins - even if you don't switch to Google as your ISP.
- eob 12y ago
  Wow. Just as another data point to show how monopolies stifle progress, in Cambridge MA I pay $50/mo for 6Mmbps. Comcast is the only Internet company available.
reportingsjr 12y ago
If they invent and implement as many things as Bell I'm almost ok with that. For what it is worth I have seen the effect of google fiber locally (Cincinnati) even though Google has no plans of expanding to here any time soon. Cincinnati Bell recently unveiled a 1Gbps residential plan for $70/mo. This was a response to the city council approaching Google to see what they would need to do to bring fiber here.

norcimo5 12y ago

Yet another reason why I love living in Austin. Yay! ;)

Chronic29 12y ago
That and getting underpaid (after COLA adjustment with the Bay Area).
LandoCalrissian 12y ago
Ya big jerk, can you send some of that fiber to your Minneapolis brothers in the north?

javajosh 12y ago

Does anyone know for certain whether Google data mine's their Fiber data?

sysk 12y ago
Why? They probably do as other ISPs.
logn 12y ago
All information we collect about the use of Google Fiber TV (including use of programs and applications available through Google Fiber TV) may be associated with the Google Account being used for Google Fiber TV. ... information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request. https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html https://fiber.google.com/legal/privacy.html They don't really mention what information not associated to a Google account is mined except that it follows the company-wide privacy policy. So they probably mine it. It's probably comparable to Google DNS: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy Request domain name, e.g. www.google.com Request type, e.g. A (which stands for IPv4 record), AAAA (IPv6 record), NS, MX, TXT, etc. Transport protocol on which the request arrived, i.e. TCP or UDP Client's AS (autonomous system or ISP), e.g. AS15169 User's geolocation information: i.e. geocode, region ID, city ID, and metro code Response code sent, e.g. SUCCESS, SERVFAIL, NXDOMAIN, etc. Whether the request hit our frontend cache Whether the request hit a cache elsewhere in the system (but not in the frontend) Absolute arrival time in seconds Total time taken to process the request end-to-end, in seconds Name of the Google machine that processed this request, e.g. machine101 Google target IP to which this request was addressed, e.g. one of our anycast IP addresses (no relation to the user's IP)
- javajosh 12y ago
  will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber This phrase has rather a lot of qualifications which make it trivially easy to circumvent. For example, Google might associate the data with a different account, an internal "ghost" account that you specifically don't use for Google Fiber (but which is identical to it in every way). I for one would like to see ISPs make an effort to construct systems where even the owner of the ISP doesn't really store any information. For example, they may store differential information about traffic spikes, to help avert DOS attacks. But other than that, they only do what they get paid to do: shuttle bits back and forth across the last mile of internet.

bengotow 12y ago

Man—was really hoping they'd go for Nashville next!

fjarlq 12y ago
They haven't chosen their next city yet. Austin was selected on April 9, 2013, and Provo was selected a week later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Locations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Locations

shittyanalogy 12y ago

Damn, one time $300 fee for "Up to" 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. That's like getting free internet for 6 and a half years[1] from current providers after 6 months. And if you want to upgrade you've already got the hardware. I wonder what the minimum time of undercutting at a loss service they can offer is without it being considered anti-competitive. [1] They guarantee 7 years of free service https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/plans/#plan=free https://fiber.google.com/cities/austin/plans/#plan=free

JoshTriplett 12y ago
Once you've paid for the equipment, I suspect that price isn't actually a loss for Google. The bandwidth would be dirt cheap compared to gigabit ($0.35/month scaled down linearly from the gigabit rate of $70/month), and I wouldn't find it at all surprising if they make that much on the average Internet user.
josu 12y ago
Is there any evidence that they are operating at a loss? For 2013 Comcast reported 13.5 billion operating income on 64.6 revenue [1]. This means that they could potentially lower their prices 20% without incurring in losses. If we assume that Google is able to operate more efficiently, which isn't such a bold assumption, they could potentially undercut prices even more. On top of that, we could also assume that in terms of infraestructure the cost of offering 10mbps is simillar to offering 1 gbps. So I'm not that sure that they are operating at a loss. [1] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CMCSA/3686143613x0xS1193125-14-47522/1166691/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CMCSA/3686143613x0xS1...
- wmf 12y ago
  Everybody other than Google reports that installing fiber costs over $1,000 per home, but Google is selling it for $300 and saying "trust us".
  - deleted 12y ago
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NietTim 12y ago

Welcome to the 21st century, Austin!

jamesblonde 12y ago
Not really. In Stockholm, I have 250Mb down, 100Mb up. Costs 50 bucks/month.
- sandstrom 12y ago
  I think these two graphs are interesting. Fiber and low prices for broadband seems to be correlated (Japan, Korea). Unfortunately there isn't more data points in the Economist graph. I think it helps if the fiber is owned by a party other than the access provider, e.g. the community or city, to avoid having a monopoly squeeze out all the consumer surplus. How will this work with Google Fiber? http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2014/03/blogs/schumpeter/20140301_wbc414.png http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac... http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/oecd-broadband-June-2013-border_0.jpg http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/oecd-broadba... Full html pages (where images were found): - http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/oecd-broadband-stats-show-nz-improving-still-could-do-better-internetnz-boss-ck-150641 http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/oecd-broadband-stats-show-nz-im... - http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/telecoms-mexico http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/03/telecoms-m...

bspecht 12y ago

You're welcome. From, Kansas City

pretz 12y ago

While I'm excited to see Google Fiber push into Austin, I've been very happy with my 110 mbps down / 11 mbps up from local company Grande: http://mygrande.com/internet/compare http://mygrande.com/internet/compare. Austin is lucky to have actual competition among cable and ISP providers, unlike many other cities.

jobu 12y ago
It's surprising and unfortunate that they chose Austin then. There are so many other large cities out there with limited choices for fast internet.
- GigabyteCoin 12y ago
  That's probably the reason they chose Austin, surprisingly. It's a lot less legwork to setup shop in a city that doesn't already have red-tape in place.
  - Dirlewanger 12y ago
    Yup, which is precisely why Google won't ever touch anything north of the Mason Dixon line. Heads would certainly roll if they encroached on Comcast's home turf.
- lziz 12y ago
  From Google Fiber's FAQ on "Why have you chosen this list of cities?" > These cities are led by people who have been working hard to bring faster Internet speeds and the latest technologies to their residents. We believe these are communities who will do amazing things with a gig. And they are diverse -- not just geographically, but in the ways they’ll give us opportunities to learn about the wide range of challenges and obstacles that communities might face in trying to build a new fiber network. So it sounds like a combo of local government initiative & geographic diversity. But yeah - unfortunate in the respect you said
- driverdan 12y ago
  Actually it's fortunate for Austin. It has pushed the other companies to offer much more bandwidth. Before Fiber was announced the max you could get was 50Mb down.

wcchandler 12y ago

Why don't we see more startups in the fiber-to-the-premises realm? Is cost really that high and difficult to obtain? HN has led me to believe that a good idea with motivated founders will get funded, no matter what. And I can't think of a better time to enter this market.

bluedino 12y ago
People are probably more likely to fun a startup with a few million in hopes of cashing out later for 50-100x the initial investment. Not spend $84 million to build out a city like Kansas City, and then who knows how much income they get back from subscribers or how much it costs to support.
rayiner 12y ago
Because FTTP involves massive upfront costs with no hope of 10x or 100x returns. Say you sell fiber at $70/month. The operating profit margin of a company like Charter, which doesn't have a media-arm to rely on, is like 10-15%. So per year, each subscriber is worth $80-126. Over 10 years, discounted, that's under a grand. And to wire them up, you have to spend about that much if not more, up-front.
- adventured 12y ago
  And that's when companies like Charter aren't busy going bankrupt.

Someone1234 12y ago

The business account is $30 more, which is normal (presumably goes to better support, no word on improved upload/ratios?). But I will say it is a little odd that it doesn't ship with at least one static IP. Plus $30 per IP is kind of crazy. Most host providers, even REALLY inexpensive ones, charge $3-5/month/IP. So I consider $20-30 a massive markup for something pretty useful for a business account.

mey 12y ago
I was just quoted $20/mo for 5 static ip's from Frontier, 4 years ago it was $10/mo from Comcast. At this point I think it's the lack of IPv4 addresses hitting home. Hilariously neither vendor can speak to their IPv6 roll-out.

jmsduran 12y ago

I have been living in Austin for roughly 4 years, but after checking the map it looks like my area may not get fiber for some years to come, as well as much of the greater Austin city limits, based off the progress I see from Google's initial Kansas rollout. The one thing I hope that comes out of this, and the one thing I believe will benefit all Austin residents, would be the ability to negotiate for a lower monthly rate when their Internet/Cable contract renews sometime next year. I hope that by April 2015 I have the leverage to call TWC and say: "Hey, Google fiber is offering Gigabit + TV for $130 a month, why can't my $155 monthly bill be lowered considering I pay for Internet + TV that is only 1/4 as fast?"

exelius 12y ago
In April 2015, you won't be calling TWC, you'll be calling Comcast. Pretty sure they don't give a fuck about the price of a product you don't have access to - if you can't cancel your service, they don't care.
- wmf 12y ago
  Fortunately TWC already upgraded everyone in Austin by 5x.

gojomo 12y ago

Hypothetical for advocates of federal net neutrality regulations: Google is offering a "free" (after one-time installation) tier: "up to 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed". Suppose on that tier, they also offered a temporary "turbo" option, 1Gbps+ for the next hour, or next 5GB, or for the duration of a session with a particular site, whatever. And this "turbo" was available on reasonable, non-discriminatory terms to either the customer, or to remote sites serving data to the customer. And of course, Google itself would usually enable the "turbo" for bulk and profit-maximizing interactions with its own sites, like HD media purchases, HD teleconferencing, or big software downloads. Is this an unconscionable and punishable violation of the ideal of network neutrality, or just a boon to all involved: great baseline service for free, and spot acceleration available to everyone at non-discriminatory prices? What if other upstarts could also offer such a "free" tier in other regions on similar terms – but only by assuming the extra occasional sales of "turbo" to both residential customers and bandwidth-heavy internet services?

wmf 12y ago
Hypothetically it hurts the "two guys in a garage" who have to hire a third guy (or pay a middleman Turbo Distribution Network) just to handle dozens of ISP turbo contracts.
- gojomo 12y ago
  How does it hurt them compared to the baseline where it's not even an option - the standard 5Mbps is all the customers have, and if garage-guys-service benefits from bursts of more speed, neither the customer nor the service can easily pay the few dimes it might cost? Or the baseline where, because there's no revenue from 'turbo', a freemium broadband tier isn't offered at all, leaving customers without even the free 5Mbps, or (having paid for broadband instead) with less budget for garage-guys services? (Also, if such a upsell were available, from Google or others, it'd not necessarily require bilateral contracts. It could and should be an automated service, discoverable in a standard way.)

teekert 12y ago

Here in the Netherlands we also have this but from more companies. A lot of cities now have fiber to the home, I have 50/50 + tv for 50 euro (100/100 would be 55). Some cities also have Gigabit, for about 100 euros/month (http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht.html http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht.html) Google fiber doesn't seem so special to me. Maybe I should read into how the money from the fiber network is made here. I think there are some government loans involved in getting the infrastructure in place, even though there already was a cable network that is currently advertising up to 200 mbit/sec.

shittyanalogy 12y ago
Our internet in the US costs about the same for less bandwidth. Also our internet companies are among the most loathed companies in the country and consistently rank among the lowest large companies in customer satisfaction. They also build networks on government subsidy but generally have little if any competition. They also almost force you to bundle in phone and TV with a pricing scheme that makes no sense. They are also allowed to gobble each other up in a race to the bottom.
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  To the contrary, I'm paying $55/month for 100Mb service with Charter and am quite happy with them.
runeks 12y ago
I just got connected to my 200/200 mbit connection in my apartment in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'm paying 200 DKK for it per month ($35 / €27). There are at least four companies with fiber in the ground here in Copenhagen. I chose a fairly cheap company (http://andels.net/ http://andels.net/), with fiber in only the eastern and northern part of Copenhagen. They hooked up the apartment complex I live in (200 apartments) for 3800 DKK per apartment, which we pay off over 2 years, while everyone gets a 50/50 mbit connection for free in that period. You can upgrade to 200/200 mbit, which I did. For the people who just use the 50/50 mbit connection, the investment will pay itself back in less than two years (because they save at least 100 DKK per month on Internet, while having a much faster connection than ADSL).

ausjke 12y ago

I live at Austin and my Time Warner cable modem worked for me fine and the speed suffices for my typical needs, however it's $64/month, I would switch to Google-Fiber anytime soon as long as it opens in my community, though I don't know how I am going to use that 1Gbps bandwidth. If 1Gbps becomes a reality, then each house can become a small data-center, which was limited by upstream speed (less than 2Mbps) in the past.

shittyanalogy 12y ago
Imagining what you would do with 1Gbps is difficult because bandwidth of that speed is not common. If such bandwidth were common, products specifically leveraging it would also be. Better streaming, easier remote backup, more devices connected, smoother remote computing, etc
adventured 12y ago
You'll have to wait a number of years, but the killer app for 1gbps is virtual reality with the data mostly stored in the cloud. It's going to require extraordinarily fast broadband to reach its potential. The things people think of today for home broadband uses (video, gaming), will be considered a joke in ten years when it comes to using bandwidth.

crymer11 12y ago

Surprised they want a 1 year commitment and are charging a construction fee. EPB here in Chattanooga offers $69.99 month to month pricing for 1Gbps (and no construction fee).

deleted 12y ago
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blueskin_ 12y ago

Anyone with or otherwise knowledgeable about google fibre: I've heard their normal router is terrible, but that you can put your own in if you configure the VLANs and QoS on it - but as for the TV, my understanding is that the TV boxes go onto your LAN - will they play nicely with a better router, or do they force use of the google one? They also double as wireless APs - can that functionality be disabled in favour of a customer's own APs? Edit: Did some research, seems it needs IGMP proxying, which should be doable on a decent router. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterGuide.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj6guphe4bc8k4t/GoogleFiberRouterG... was a very useful link.

shekhar101 12y ago

Here in a major IT city of India(Hyderabad), I pay around $40 for 50 Mbps/10Mbps(up/down) and it's unlimited. I guess it'a pretty good deal. We have good number of companies offering services. I say it's a good deal, but of course not as good as this.