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.
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.
There's no reason to believe that Google's per-household costs are any less. These companies all likely outsource to the same local companies that put fiber in the ground. To the extent that Google has an advantage, it's with uptake rates. Verizon and Comcast have to wire whole cities, pursuant to build-out clauses in local franchises. Google refuses to accept such clauses, and only builds in neighborhoods with demonstrated interest. The economics of building fiber make this a huge advantage. Most of the cost of building the network is in passing by the house, which is a cost you pay whether or not the house subscribes. If your uptake rate is 40% versus 20%, your per-house capital cost drops dramatically.
How is that income figured exactly. I mean, doesn't every major movie seem to lose money even after raking in billions? I just don't trust any number from Comcast without a large volume of information on how those numbers were calculated.
And at that, that doesn't explain how Comcast even stayed in business till that point? Were they allowed to install their networks at a loss? Are there costs artificially high? Are they claiming TV programming costs in their figures?
Their revenues were $8.15 billion (just over $100 per customer, for the whole year). $5.35 billion in operating costs, and $1.85 billion in depreciation and amortization (the loss in value of the capital in the ground). $925 million in net income on that revenue (11%).
What's really shocking is that their revenue per customer relationship is under $130 per year. That's the result of something else pundits ignore: cable company franchise agreements require them to build out to neighborhoods where many subscribers just get basic cable, which is usually subject to a regulated rate of just $10-20 dollars/month.
Looking at just the ISP business makes the numbers look worse. $4 billion of the revenue is from video, while $2 billion of the costs are for programming (see page F-10). If you take out the video revenue, you're down to $4.15 billion in revenue, with about $5.15 billion in expenses (i.e. you're losing a billion dollars a year).
Ultimately, of course, after paying interest on debt Charter lost money for the year. The idea that cable companies are wildly profitable is an HN myth.
> Their revenues were $8.15 billion (just over $100 per customer, for the whole year). ... What's really shocking is that their revenue per customer relationship is under $130 per year.
You seem to be an order of magnitude off on your ARPU calculations. $8.15 billion in revenue (p. F-4) / 5.9 million customers (p. 1) = $1,381 ARPU
Either that, or you're mixing up monthly with annual. On p. 4, they calculate their monthly revenue per residential customer relationship at $108.
However, you are generally correct that the cable business is a tough business to be in. Lots of labor costs, lots of capex, lots of interest costs. On an ROA basis, they're not doing that much better than the regulated utilities.
These numbers should also say something to free market advocates that dream of multiple companies installing redundant infrastructure to compete for customers.
I think the "myth" comes from attributing almost all costs to the video side which results in conclusions like $4.15B Internet revenue with minimal costs == all profit.
Google say they are not planning to operate at a loss. Re Kansas: "Several Google executives at the event were very clear that delivering gigabit internet access over fiber for $70 a month (and even free 5 Mbps fiber) is a business that will not only help advance Google’s consumer goals, but also make it money."
I daresay it depends on what assumptions you make about future sign up rates, cost of capital and the like.
Operating margin is a bad measure here. Net margin is a much better method because the telecom business is geographically constrained, meaning many of the tricks that technology companies use to avoid taxes (and thus boost profits) don't work in this industry. The revenue is generated in the US using assets that physically exist in the US, so it's a lot harder to dodge the taxes the way you can with IP assets.
Comcast's net margin is closer to 12-14%. And I would say that it's a pretty bold assumption that Google would be able to operate more efficiently than that: Comcast is a mature company in a mature market. Comcast's RF broadcast technology has some limitations, but it also has benefits: relatively low operational costs being a big one of them. Both Verizon and AT&T tried an architectural approach that is quite similar Google's, and their deployments stalled because of platform scalability problems.z
You can't really generalize about per-installation costs. Digging fiber out to several houses is much more expensive than digging over to a 200-apartment complex, which lets you split the bill for laying fiber between 200 people.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, my apartment complex just got connected for 3800 DKK per apartment. And that's in a country with fairly high wages and 25% VAT. For similar apartment complexes (large ones, close to each other), in the US (where labor is cheaper and there isn't 25% VAT), I imagine Google can easily do less $500 per apartment, and possibly reach $300.
Provided Google doesn't have to pay a tonne in fees to get to lay fiber in the ground (which is probably why it's only available in select locations).
Labor is cheaper in the US? Can you provide some data on that, I understood labor was cheaper in Denmark. From what I've seen the median income in the US is about 20% higher than in Denmark.
There are really two costs for installing fiber. The cost to drag it past your house, which is expensive, probably over 1000. And the cost to bring it from your curb to your house. I've heard 500 for that, but it could around 300. Or google could just think of it as an advertising cost.
The $500 figure is probably correct - I'm guessing Google is assuming a conversion rate of some of those customers at $300 turning into paying customers, and thus they'll get back part of the subsidy. 5mbit internet blows, and most people will probably want to upgrade.
I would happily pay that cost up front in exchange for a guarantee of being charged just the service cost afterwards. If only that was an option on the gigabit side.
> That's like getting free internet for 6 and a half years from current providers after 6 months.
Is internet in Kansas really that bad? I'm paying $50/month for 30/21 (I'm paying for 25/25 but oh well) here in New Jersey [0]. I can't imagine doing much with that internet besides basic web browsing. Even low-res video is choppy at that speed.
Well, I'm in Overland Park, KS (KC suburb) and paying $120/month for 30/5 + static IP + phone. My provider (CCI) wired my area 10 years ago with hybrid fiber-coax, but within the last 5 years have used all fiber for up to 200/200. They'll never run run all fiber in my area unless pushed.
Both Google and AT&T are wiring Overland Park with 1000/1000, so that ought to put CCI and Time-Warner's underwear in a bind.
Yes - My parents in mid-mo basically can't get anything faster than 5 down at any price. I know people who live outside city limits who can't even get that.
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.
The main issue is finding a way to make use of 5mbit. You get what you pay for, I guess, and if you really can't afford anything better, 5mbit is probably better than anything else other ISPs offer for a similar price.
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. Austin is lucky to have actual competition among cable and ISP providers, unlike many other cities.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
> A lot of cities now have fiber to the home, I have 50/50 + tv for 50 euro
I have 50/25 or so plus TV for about the same price in southeastern US. It's not fiber, but I end up with about the same service as you. At the level of service you and I are getting, fiber isn't necessary.
> Google fiber doesn't seem so special to me.
Probably not if you only have 50/50 for 50 euro. That's not nearly as great a value as Google Fiber, in my opinion. For that same amount, you get symmetric 1000/1000 with Google Fiber. Blows the kind of service that you and I are getting away, bigtime.
70 USD plus taxes and fees is about 70 EUR. I don't know if that's really so much better value.
The utility of an internet connection doesn't scale linearly with speed. Once you're at the point where you can stream HD video, diminishing returns start kicking in pretty hard. How often are you waiting for a >100MB file transfer and can't work until it's completed?
> The utility of an internet connection doesn't scale linearly with speed.
Sure, up to a point. But when you've got a family of 4+ sharing an internet connection, 50Mb can be used easily.
A recent example:
* Younger kid running HD Netflix stream downstairs.
* Older kid listening to music and downloading a game in his room.
* I'm watching an HD Amazon stream movie rental.
* Wife is shuffling large PSDs to/from remote storage.
This definitely doesn't apply to everyone, but a family can put some hurting on an internet connection. Particularly during the winter when it gets dark by 5PM.
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.
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/), 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).
Multiple companies working in a much smaller area. (The Netherlands is smaller than 41 states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territo... but has a larger population than 45 states http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html) It costs an awful lot more to build the infrastructure needed. Because of this cost, many cities offer monopolies for a number of years so the city doesn't have to spend the money to build the infrastructure itself. In Austin, that is pretty much Time Warner Cable and ATT. Since the announcement ATT has been pushing to get Gigabit fiber out (I'm currently using it), that would have never happened if Google wasn't coming into town.
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?
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.
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
These are political problems and they have political solutions. It's not "sad" that Silicon Valley can't get faster Internet access; it's the nature of the way California's politics as a whole have developed. The number of veto players (http://www.amazon.com/Launching-Innovation-Renaissance-Bring...) and NIMBYs ensure the problems California is currently experiencing.
This is more of a problem in medium density residential areas. In high density areas, big buildings often lease basement space to utilities. In low density areas, there's lots of room for infrastructure. It's the suburban areas where people obsess on lawn care where this is a problem.
Interesting. I have U-verse in Soma. Apparently my apartment building has a "deal" with AT&T so that no other TV/Internet providers can work there. And if you're curious, the U-verse Internet plans are awful.
They did. So now you are free to call Comast or whoever and receive a $250,000 invoice to run wire to and into your 500+ unit building with all the regulation, construction, union politics, city permits, bribes, etc it takes to get there.
These contracts aren't these evil things as much as they are there to recoup investment on the work AT&T put into that building. The neat part is that due to the cost of competitors walking in, the contracts don't even need to exist anymore. Its going to be a hard sell to get Comcast in there when AT&T already has the home field advantage.
I don't know the details, but apparently the deal had something to do with the wiring of the building when it was constructed in 2008. There have been resident meeting discussing the issue, and apparently the only way to support other ISPs is to pay for new separate wiring in the building, which I'm sure the building management will not do (given the housing demand situation in SF).
Pretty good chance we live in the same building. I've called our building rep a couple of times to try and pressure them into turning up the speeds, but no luck so far.
Yeah, at least for my building (which I'm heading up the internet committee for), the BPON that was installed by AT&T can do max 600 Mbps for about 30 customers on a loop, so that's 20 Mbps each. They should be able to burst higher than that when it's not saturated, but they haven't bothered to turn it on.
If you're in our building, you're in luck, though: the HOA is amenable to laying CAT5, so if things go well, we may have Webpass by the end of 2015.
I think it's less an issue of politics and more an issue of corporate inaction. SF has a tremendous amount of dark fiber already and the city is pushing hard for a proposal called 'Dig Once' that will make it a requirement to lay fiber on any utility/sewer/roadwork more than a few blocks:
Agreed. Whenever there's a comparison of our pathetic speeds with those in Korea/Japan, people claim "the US is a huge country", etc. However, San Francisco's density (6600/km^2) is higher than that of Tokyo (6000/km^2); why doesn't SF have FTTH?
Comparisons to Tokyo are not necessarily instructive, since Tōkyō-to includes a vast swathe of essentially uninhabited mountains. Population density in the central 23 wards, which is what people usually mean when they say "Tokyo", is 14,485/km2.
Where is the majority of Japanese internet traffic going? Where is the majority of San Fransiscan internet traffic going?
There's more than just population density to take into account. It makes a big difference when you don't need nearly as much long haul backbone capacity because almost all of the destinations for the traffic are close to the subscribers.
No, not really. The US has had a massive amount of backhaul fiber, huge amounts of it stayed dark for years. That in turn dropped transit prices to almost nothing. Bandwidth at data centers and other places near transit hubs is very cheap. The U.S. problem is a last mile problem.
In my experience (just shopping around for high-bandwidth hosting, including looking at regional pricing of CDNs), backhaul is way cheaper in the US than anywhere else, including Europe and Asia.
It is sad that with all the would-be entrepreneurs flocking to Silicon Valley and looking for startup ideas, they all shy away from 'hard' problems like disrupting the current ISP model.
There are many types of hard problems. Some are hard because the data just isn't there, and someone needs to connect the dots.
The ISP model is hard because it just requires fucking shit tons of money to solve, and there's no getting around the tragedy of the commons problem. With telecom infrastructure, you can either use wired (expensive and with a heavily fragmented regulatory environment) or wireless (expensive with extremely limited spectrum - see the $12+ billion spectrum auction happening now).
Disruption is well and good, but it requires new technology that delivers similar services for a fraction of the cost. Until someone figures out a way to bring the economics of delivering content to end users down by a factor of several hundred, we're stuck with the current ISP situation.
Even technologies like this face many of the same challenges as traditional wired or wireless solutions: operating at any sort of scale is tremendously expensive. I wouldn't call this "disruptive" as much as a local workaround to an ineffective local regulatory system.
I think that smart people in both business and technology are attracted to hard problems that are intellectually challenging. Dealing with the corruption and the entrenched bureaucracy of local, state, and federal governments doesn't qualify as an "interesting" problem for these types of people. It's why you don't see many scientists in elected office.
I used to feel the same way, except that this really boxes "intellectually challenging" into a fascinatingly narrow set of problems.
The meme that dealing with problems of physics and mathematics is somehow harder or more noble than dealing with problems of people should probably be considered harmful.
I don't think my definition is narrow or restrictive at all. You're forgetting all the other fields of human interest, like the humanities, healthcare, transportation, engineering, the arts, etc. That's a pretty wide swath and only a small subset of the "interesting" problems in those fields are dependent on getting your hands dirty with politics.
I don't think you can claim that it's "solving" the problem if you can throw money at it. That's the business-world equivalent of "brute forcing"... and what we've learned from technology is that you're required to throw ever-larger amounts of resources at the problem until it eventually overwhelms any real-world capacity to "solve" it.
The problem is that ISPs don't need disruption- local politics does. As hard as starting a new bank or writing a new OS is, who wants to sign up for disrupting every local and state government in the country and incur the cost of laying all that fiber? This is why only Google is doing it. They have the money to burn and the clout to get municipalities to cooperate through all or nothing deals.
It's not too surprising. Look at the crap companies like Uber and AirBnb get, even on HN, for disrupting government rackets. I would shy away from that as well, even though there's obviously big opportunities there.
But I agree with your premise, that hard problems with large rewards require a different sort of VC pitch and may take longer to see a payoff. And are completely worth pursuing!
MonkeyBrains is currently offering Gigabit wireless in SF[1] on Indiegogo, $2500 setup fees and $30 monthly. estimated delivery date is early February next year.
Monkeybrains has been a WISP at least four years. [0]
They also sell service in a Carrier Hotel. I read an article a long while back where they mentioned that:
1) The $250 installation fee, plus the $35/month monthly fee more than covers the costs for each residential customer.
2) The revenue from the stuff in the Hotel would also cover the cost for the residential customers, if the residential customers stopped paying their bills or something.
Ha, that is an old service map! We have close to 5000 antennas up now. Also, Business WISP is the new revenue hog for us... Colocation is stable, but not growing. Residential WISP is also growing (and has outstripped colocation). - Rudy
Yikes! I should have re-read my comment. My prose doesn't make it at all clear that I was pointing to a four year old map. (Sorry about that! :( ) An up-to-date coverage map can be found under the "Coverage Map" section here [0].
It's neat to hear how your new revenue sources have changed over the years. Hope you guys keep growing the business and -one day- push Comcast and ATT out of The City!
MonkeyBrains is not quite what we call "WiFi"; it's in the 80GHz spectrum. (I thought it was 60GHz, which is becoming a WiFi spectrum, but their page says 80. So I don't fully understand what they're up to.)
Beamforming and directional antennas works really quite interestingly on the higher frequencies. I think their stuff could work. It's not obviously doomed to failure, like most 2.4GHz-based WiFi setups are, in my opinion anyway :)
What we are up to is building a high speed 24Ghz/60GHz/80GHz point to point meshed network. MonkeyBrains will continue to pull fiber to our endpoints and continue with more affordable 5GHz antennas for residential users.
Check out Siklu, SAF, AthenaWave, AirFiber, etc to see some of the antennas that talk outside of (normally) consumer grade frequencies.
And yes, we do have an FCC filing in place to deploy 80GHz gear.
I'm in SoMa right now. No Comcast / cable, AT&T DSL maxes out at 6Mb / 0.8Mb. My Clear hotspot outperforms DSL. The city is so backwards, I don't understand why people clamber to live here.
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].
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:
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)
Not really. Spread the benefits - Silicon Valley already has the advantage of having a huge amount of investment money swilling around. Give Austin and Kansas better internet connections to see if they can attract larger startup industries of their own.
"Free" access to right-of-way and waived fees for permits are a small price to pay.
Better yet, cities should eliminate them entirely to encourage even more competition. All those rules do is create barriers to entry that prop up the existing players.
I doubt you'll ever really see Google Fiber much outside the neighborhoods in downtown Austin (and maybe some up north). This fits the engagement model they've used in other cities where they wire up the dense / wealthy areas and never get around to the rest of the city. Which is also what Verizon, AT&T and Comcast do. The neighborhoods in Austin getting Google Fiber already have U-Verse and TimeWarner Cable.
"Sign-ups are beginning today in South and Southeast Austin. We’re starting with these neighborhoods, and will be opening new areas on an on-going basis."
Also, I'm pretty sure that TWC is available pretty much everywhere in Austin.
TWC is, but U-Verse isn't. Most places in Austin (specifically apartment buildings) your only option is TWC (or Grande, if you're in a Grande area).
If you look at other cities (Kansas City) only a fraction of the city (the denser, wealthy area) actually has the service 2 years later. Other large areas have been carved out entirely. Construction is "ongoing" in a number of areas but service remains unavailable. Half of the city hasn't even opened sign-ups yet - nearly 4 years after the initial announcement. A large part of KC that does have service was because Google purchased an existing fiber to the home network that already served that area.
By and large, Google Fiber is a big promise that's proving pretty tough to deliver quickly. Just google for the myriad of delays the project is facing in the cities it's "launching" in. By the time they're done launching in most of these cities by the end of the decade, the cable/telco companies will have gigabit service available in most of their markets.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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.
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
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)
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.
systems where even the owner of the ISP doesn't really store any information
This is basically the default on routers if you don't enable NetFlow. Likewise DHCP and DNS daemons can trivially disable logging. It doesn't cost an ISP money to remove default surveillance; it costs them to add it but the value of the data is worth it.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Unfortunately due to the lack of quality ISP's, the first to offer residential fiber to the perimeter will rapidly absorb the market.
Is there a historical precedent that suggests that this will happen?
The major telcos continue to grow their profits year over year while decreasing their capital spending. I think the much more likely response to any success on google's part will be
- cities growing impatient for their turn and building their own networks (well underway[1])
- more and more attempts by existing ISPs at regulatory blocking of competition (well underway[2])
- finally, ISPs actually increase spending to match speeds (still in the lip service stage[3])
ISPs like their market strangleholds. They aren't going to just roll over. Meanwhile building infrastructure is fundamentally a lot of work, so no "Bell 2.0" is going to be born overnight if they're trying to actually build out a physical network (major ISPs merging[4] as a road to Ma Bell is a different story, though).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think this is as big a threat to the incumbents as a Nexus phone is to Samsung. Go look at the cities where Google is threatening to launch. Pretty soon the other players start touting fibre coming soon. Happened here in Raleigh/Durham. Google wants faster/better X and enters the market to scare crappy incumbents to up their game.
It really seems like Google is more breaking up the existing monopoly. By wanting more people online, viewing more ads, to fund their main revenue source, they're willing to cut connection costs down to the minimum, forcing the existing monopoly/duopoly in many places to also cut down their prices and improve service.
In short, come to Atlanta, Google; I'm sick to death of paying $75 a month for a 300 gig cap.
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.
> If they invent and implement as many things as Bell I'm almost ok with that.
Maybe, but I wouldn't compare Google with Bell Labs directly.
Remember that the only reason we had access to so much of what Bell Labs invented (e.g. Unix) is due to a 1958 antitrust lawsuit which resulted in AT&T being prohibited from profiting off of the computer business entirely[0]. As a result, Bell Labs had to license all technologies (except for telephone-related services) freely.
It wasn't until 1984 when AT&T sold off Bell Labs - almost three decades later. If AT&T had been allowed to profit off of Bell Labs, we might remember Bell Labs's legacy very differently.
If Google were subject to an analogous requirement that would be one thing, but absent that legal restriction, the two situations are very different.
You are very correct. It is still a valuable thing to have a research company where researchers and designers do not have to worry nearly as much about money.
AT&T/Bell Labs was a government regulated monopoly so it is definitely a different situation. AT&T watched very closely what they profited off of and made sure it stayed within the realm of telecommunications for fear of antitrust lawsuits.
Regardless even if no one else can access it for the first decade or two many innovations would still make their way out into other places.
It's only 70/month for the first year and then 80/month after that. Also, they only have 20% coverage of the city so for most of us we're still stuck with the usual slow speeds. And finally their customer service is just as bad (maybe even worse, if that's possible) than Time Warner. I wish they hadn't offered gigabit speeds as I fear that'll slow the arrival of Google fiber which would be so much nicer.
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).
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.
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