WhyteRaven74: Kimpak: Fiber to the house is expensive

Actually not that expensive.

And then I'm sure google leases fiber from one of the major backhaulers,

A few years back there was word going around that Google was buying up tons of fiber that was laid down but not being used. If true they could have their own backbone or make one no problem. Keep in mind Google has enough cash on hand, to say nothing of their profits, to build their own backbone without thinking twice about the cost.

Not only does Google have their own fiber on the land and in the sea - they own a lot of peering points too. During the .bomb era telecommunications companies that had overbuilt fiber expecting long distance rates to stay up forever went bust and sold for fractions of a penny on the dollar of what it cost to lay. With innovations in technology that fiber has insanely more bandwidth now than Google can use for their own needs. The strategy for Google was to keep their costs low and avoid being locked out of the Internet, but they hit the jackpot.

They've been designing their own servers for a long time. It would not surprise if they were designing their switches and routers now too.

Experimentally a single fiber has been shown to be capable of passing over 100 terabits per second, but in practice 1-10 Tbps is more likely the limit. They have many, many parallel strands though so carrying the aggregate bandwidth of 200,000 KC metro area residents (10%) would not be a big deal. It might be a problem for Content Delivery Networks though, so they'll want to build some sort of peering point for Netflix and such to put their local caching boxes in.

Foxxinnia: So what on earth would be the point of connecting your neighborhood to the Google's Gigafark internet connection?

It's not so much about what you could do with it now, as it is what might come down the road. When the first cable and DSL internet connections went up in the late 90s, one could've asked what was the point? Of course because lots of people go those, it became possible to have Netflix, YouTube etc.

ryebread: There are 202 "fiberhoods" total.
8 have already reached their goals and will be getting service.
23 have nobody registered.

There are 45 days to go.

/Not really trying to make a point, I was just curious, and thought others might be as well.

Which eight? And where can I go to look up this information?

WhyteRaven74: Foxxinnia: So what on earth would be the point of connecting your neighborhood to the Google's Gigafark internet connection?

It's not so much about what you could do with it now, as it is what might come down the road. When the first cable and DSL internet connections went up in the late 90s, one could've asked what was the point? Of course because lots of people go those, it became possible to have Netflix, YouTube etc.

There's also the fact that it's UNLIMITED, as in, no bandwidth cap. Whether this will last is debatable, but Google isn't crazy or evil enough (yet) to even think about overage charges or UBB, and that alone is a massive step above what you can expect from the current major telcos.

On top of that, you have their very clear preference for network neutrality, though I wouldn't be surprised to see them making things a bit easier for YouTube and various Google services.

Foxxinnia: ...Sure, you'll be sending baby pictures to your neighbors at a billion chucklefarks a second, but the second you need to get some data from somewhere else your packets will have to get on the poor people internet behind everyone else's porn...

I've seen the word "chucklefark" before but that particular use of it made me giggle like a ninny and now all my coworkers are looking at me funny. Thanks.

King Something: ryebread: There are 202 "fiberhoods" total.
8 have already reached their goals and will be getting service.
23 have nobody registered.

There are 45 days to go.

/Not really trying to make a point, I was just curious, and thought others might be as well.

Which eight? And where can I go to look up this information?

There's this company called "Google" (that you can probably find out about if you search on Bing or Yahoo).

Anyway, they have a technology called 'looking up shiat' that you can use, for free. They're on the intertubes somewhere, I forget the site.

ryebread: There are 202 "fiberhoods" total.
8 have already reached their goals and will be getting service.
23 have nobody registered.

There are 45 days to go.

/Not really trying to make a point, I was just curious, and thought others might be as well.

Um, this is not true. And you should post the link when you say stuff like that. Of 74 currently eligible "fiberhoods", only two have managed to qualify on this first day. Seeing the small number of households needed to qualify it seems unlikely any of these will fail in the 45 remaining days. It will be neat to see if any get to 100% preregistered.

The fiberhoods are mostly pretty small.

Some of this will probably be tl'dr, oh well. I hope it at least answers the questions of the people I'm quoting.

King Something: Which eight? And where can I go to look up this information?

You can see how each is doing by going to the "Cities" tab on the Google Fiber site, then clicking on Kansas City, KS or Kansas City, MO at the top. Here are the links to each: Kansas, Missouri.

Currently qualifying:
KS: Hannover Heights, North KU Med
MO: Western 49-63 South, Armour Hills, Roanoke, Coleman Highlands, Volker South, South Hyde Park

Foxxinnia: Last time I checked my speed on the broadband.gov website, which I assume is accurate, my internet connection speed was 6 MB/sec. I think. Let's just use that as an example. The thing is, I've never seen anything download that quickly. The fastest I've ever seen was 1.5 MB/sec.

There are two things that come to mind that may be issues for you here...

First, download speeds are listed differently than file sizes. Download speeds are often quoted in megabits per second, while file sizes are megabytes per second. It takes 8 bits to make up one byte. This means that if your ISP is giving you 6 megabits per second, that only comes out to 6/8 = 0.75 megabytes per second in file size. This is further confused by the fact that the abbreviations are very similar -- Mb for megabit, and MB for megabyte. Yeah, this is unnecessarily confusing for consumers, but that is just how it is done.

Secondly, ISPs do something called overselling... I could start a small ISP, get 10 customers, and sell "up to" 10Mb/s service to them. You would think this would mean I would have 100Mb/s worth of connection to sell... But no. I could just have 30Mb/s. If only 1-3 of my customers were using their network connection to the full extent, or if a handful more were using it to do things that didn't take much bandwidth, I would be fine. But if 6 of my 10 customers wanted to max out their connection at the same time I wouldn't be able to give them all the speeds they thought they would get. I would have to give them each half the connection they thought they were getting.

This is why you always see "up to" before the speeds listed in advertisements. Sure, you might be able to get lucky and get that speed if you're using your connection at 3 AM and nobody else in the area is online, but chances are you'll be lucky to ever get that. This has always been a problem, but as more and more people use bandwidth intensive things, it is only getting worse.

As more bandwidth gets used, it is no trivial matter for ISPs to improve their performance on the back end to meet those demands, and to reduce how oversold they are. But they could do it, and they would get by just fine. Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons, there are local monopolies in Internet service -- I only have one choice of Internet provider, for example, and only having 1-2 providers is quite common. There is very little competition, therefore very little reason to innovate and improve. With that in mind, ISPs have, by in large, chosen to focus on short-term profits rather than building up their infrastructure.

This is why Google Fiber (and FiOS, and municipal fiber-to-the-home, etc.) is viewed as such a good thing -- in order to succeed, they can't just offer what is already available. They have to offer something better, something that ISPs haven't bothered to do because of the anti-competitive nature of the industry. They can attempt to disrupt the status quo. And because they are hanging fiber and not trying to get in on existing cable/phone infrastructure (instead hanging their own lines, something too expensive for most newcomers to consider), the hope is that they can get around some of the monopolistic practices and local regulations that have kept others from trying something similar in the past.

symbolset:
Um, this is not true. And you should post the link when you say stuff like that. Of 74 currently eligible "fiberhoods", only two have managed to qualify on this first day.

I posted the links in a reply just a moment ago, but as it was buried in a sea of tl;dr: You're only looking at Kansas City, KS. Kansas City, MO has six that have qualified, out of a total of 128. I was giving the combined numbers for both cities. Link.

I live in the south Puget Sound area, and I'd kill for this kind of speed & access.

Wait ... they still haven't actually connected most of the homes to fiber?

FFS, Google.

FormlessOne: I live in the south Puget Sound area, and I'd kill for this kind of speed & access.

Shut your mouth! Bothell before you fume huffing mongoloids!

I can't see how anyone can slag off Google Fiber. It looks incredible and I'm jealous of the people in KC.

Anyone know if it'll include the ability to stream live content to tablets/phones?

MisterTweak: The equipment maker hadn't been aware of the issue, and I won't name them, but I'll say that the problem affected a fair percentage of the population at some point.

I bet you fly a lot, have insomnia, and a thing for Ikea furniture.

/sound like Ed Norton in Fight club

ryebread: This means that if your ISP is giving you 6 megabits per second, that only comes out to 6/8 = 0.75 megabytes per second in file size.

I find that it's typically 1/10. 3mb(whatever the providers label is, as you note, I can never remember) connection translates to an actual download rate of 300ks. Given that the source(s) are sending at your max. Someone torrenting a file only seeded at a couple peers, of course they'll likely not hit that max.

It seems to me that on some sites, it is throttled on their end. If it's detected that you don't have really good high speed, they'll relegate you to much less than your max. I see updates from MS come in entirely too slow on occasion, or youtube video's that will start but load really really slow.

I see this on my 3mb DSL at home, but in larger places as well with my laptop running wirelessly. May even test at the full 20mb on speedtest.net, but never never get those actual speeds. When able, I bypass the router and go hardline to the modem.(IE visiting family that have good internet but crap routers).

A lot of people don't realize those things can be a bottleneck if not configured well(or just too old)(can be good for netflix, but can make online gaming difficult), more so for wireless routers. Not to mention the age of some of this equipment, some of it is pretty stable years and years later....for the connection bandwith that it was initially used on, but is now obsolete.

omeganuepsilon: I find that it's typically 1/10. 3mb(whatever the providers label is, as you note, I can never remember) connection translates to an actual download rate of 300ks.

As far as I know, you're pretty much correct here. 1/8 is an oversimplification. In order to send data over the Internet, you can't just send the raw bytes from one machine to another. You have to include information on where that data is going, for example, so that everything between you and the server knows how to pass that info along. This is called overhead. Once you take that into account, 1/10 is a better estimate of speed.

/I work in IT, but my focus isn't anywhere near networking. If I got anything wrong here, go easy on me. This is just how I have understood it, I don't claim to be an authority.

madgonad: Unfortunately Google anchored themselves to KCK and KCMO within the beltway - aka - not the suburbs. So I wish them luck trying to sell $70 internet to people in the ghetto that have smartphones instead of home computers. 90% of the people in the metro area that WOULD spend $120 for gig+TV or $70 for gig-only don't live in the urban cores.

Because they are going to ignore the entire commercial sector right? Why in the hell is there a big blob over the stadiums and the Speedway? Nobody "lives" at either, I hope.

Kind of related.....

I know everyone talks about SpeedTest.net for testing internet speeds....but am I the only one who thinks it's numbers seem like crap?

I went to five different speed test sites and SpeedTest.net is the only one that manages to show the numbers my ISP advertises. Everyone else is slower.

Fark_Guy_Rob: Kind of related.....

I know everyone talks about SpeedTest.net for testing internet speeds....but am I the only one who thinks it's numbers seem like crap?

I went to five different speed test sites and SpeedTest.net is the only one that manages to show the numbers my ISP advertises. Everyone else is slower.

Where are you suggesting it gets its numbers? From your ISP since it's a giant conspiracy to make you think your internet is fast enough? I don't know what else you could be suggesting, since speedtest.net being the only one that seems to match up wouldn't be likely if it just randomly made up numbers. It doesn't know what your advertised speed is unless you tell it...

tomcatadam: WhyteRaven74: Foxxinnia: So what on earth would be the point of connecting your neighborhood to the Google's Gigafark internet connection?

It's not so much about what you could do with it now, as it is what might come down the road. When the first cable and DSL internet connections went up in the late 90s, one could've asked what was the point? Of course because lots of people go those, it became possible to have Netflix, YouTube etc.

There's also the fact that it's UNLIMITED, as in, no bandwidth cap. Whether this will last is debatable, but Google isn't crazy or evil enough (yet) to even think about overage charges or UBB, and that alone is a massive step above what you can expect from the current major telcos.

On top of that, you have their very clear preference for network neutrality, though I wouldn't be surprised to see them making things a bit easier for YouTube and various Google services.

On the West Coast and I suppose in most major US cities, I'm not aware of any residential broadband services that are capped. Here usually only wireless 3G/4G services get a cap, which can be very expensive if exceeded. So far, I've never had to deal with any caps for home Internet service, even in the dial-up days IIRC, but I have heard from friends overseas who were dealing with it - sounds terrible!

Fark_Guy_Rob: Kind of related.....

I know everyone talks about SpeedTest.net for testing internet speeds....but am I the only one who thinks it's numbers seem like crap?

I went to five different speed test sites and SpeedTest.net is the only one that manages to show the numbers my ISP advertises. Everyone else is slower.

That's because data flow prioritized for speedtest.net to give it better numbers than it normally is.

moviemarketing: haemaker: Well no, the $10 down payment is for prioritization. It's who gets it first.

It's gigabit. Its symmetrical. It has no cap. It has no limits. You get TV too. It's $120/mo. It includes a 2TB, 8 tuner DVR. It includes 1TB Google Drive account. A Nexus 7 is your remote. The Nexus 7 is included. If you are a cheap bastard, you can pay $25/mo for one year and 5MB/1MB internet, then the price rises to $0/mo after that for at least 7 years.

I am considering a move to Kansas City.

There is a 5Mbps tier for this at $25 per month?

A lot of areas can already get 30Mbps for $20-30. I currently have 100Mbps for $70/month through Charter which is plenty fast enough, as I can download a 10GB file in about 10 minutes.

I suppose 1Gbps is probably only going to be useful for special applications, or in the future when movies, games or other content might be much larger in size? (or for people who need to upload large files a lot for clients, etc.)

Just another reason not to go back to the states. 100megabits/sec--$18month> Damn, I love fiber direct to the house.

Actually, the connection states 2gigabits per second. I'm just limited by the advanced age of my router and cables.

WhyteRaven74:
A few years back there was word going around that Google was buying up tons of fiber that was laid down but not being used.

One thing to remember is that there's a lot of "dark fiber" in the US. Back during the dotcom bubble, anyone who had a long right-of-way was either installing fiber or making arrangements to install it.

Oddly enough, a bunch of the long unused fiber runs are owned by natural gas companies.

There's even technology to install fiber through gas pipelines while they're still in use.

The result of all of this is that long-distance fiber optic runs are very cheap to acquire or install.

madgonad: Unfortunately Google anchored themselves to KCK and KCMO within the beltway - aka - not the suburbs. So I wish them luck trying to sell $70 internet to people in the ghetto that have smartphones instead of home computers. 90% of the people in the metro area that WOULD spend $120 for gig+TV or $70 for gig-only don't live in the urban cores.

The 1970s called and want their ignorance back. More poor people live in the suburbs than the cities¹. Also because of density, Google can reach more people with less infrastructure in a city than in the spawled out 'burbs. A single midrise condo building can have more units in it than the entire Deer Run Oak Grove Creek subdivision. And quite a few of those buildings are filled with people who make good money. Depending on the city, the average income may even be higher than the suburbs. Atlanta for example has an reputation of being filled with poor gangbangers, at least that's what the suburbanites believe. But the average income in the City of Atlanta is higher than that of the suburbs as a whole². Google knows exactly what they're doing and it has nothing to do with ignorant perceptions shaped by watching too many rap videos and old movies like 'Escape from New York'.

¹ http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/poverty-growing-fast-suburbs-18545 8382.html
² Median income specific suburbs might be higher than that of the city, but you can find neighborhoods in the city that also have higher than average incomes. Compare the city as a whole to the suburbs as a whole, the city is richer.

MrJesus: A lot of areas can already get 30Mbps for $20-30. I currently have 100Mbps for $70/month through Charter which is plenty fast enough, as I can download a 10GB file in about 10 minutes. I believe Verizon has rolled out 300Mbps service, which is around $200/month.

I suppose 1Gbps is probably only going to be useful for special applications, or in the future when movies, games or other content might be much larger in size? (or for people who need to upload large files a lot for clients, etc.)

No, it's $25/month for the first year or $300 up front. Then it is $0/year for 7 years. That is not a typo. Free. Gratis.

MrJesus: Yes its a $300 construction fee for running the fiber line to your house. The 5Mb/s is free. They will break the $300 into 12 payments of $25 (thats zero interest, no fees). Or if you get their $70 (1Gb internet) or $120 (TV and 1Gb internet) per month packages the $300 fee is waived.

cman: HOLY farkING shiat

I wish I lived in a big city to get something like this. No one gives two shiats bout us Mainers

I know TWC sucks and all but way back when when cable modems were new TWC used Portland as a test area. At least we had that!

/Can't wait for Google fiber so I can kick TWC out the door.

Bhruic: FTA: Google wants to get into the business of providing a better, faster internet

Seriously? So very wrong right out of the gate? Google has said repeatedly they don't want to become an ISP, they want to do some experimentation with what people would do if bandwidth limitations were (virtually) non-existent. It's not like they've been keeping that to themselves, so how "Greg Tito" could have missed it is beyond me.

Thank you - all these people spooging over this don't realize that maybe 1% will ever see it. Legal monopolies lock Google out of almost all of the domestic market - the telcos and cable companies own their territories by law, most places.
Many Americans make the error of thinking that we live in a "capitalist" country, where "free markets" rule.
We don't.
We live in a pro-business/rich people country, under the Golden Rule: Them that has the gold, makes the rules.

Cable outages here yesterday. Call our wonderful Cox people who suggest that maybe my connections are somehow loose. Yeah, really, cable connections that haven't been touched in 4 years are causing a problem that boots me offline at exactly the top of the hour, for exactly 2 minutes, every hour for 6 hours. Ok.

And then they end the call with "thank you for choosing Cox". Yeah, if by "choosing" you mean "resigning myself to the fact that Cox has a government-mandated monopoly".

Fiber can't get here fast enough. I am hoping Apple and the gubmint (yes, you read that right) will get together and make the whole farking planet some kind of phone-tetherable-wifi-hotspot-something-or-other so I can shiatcan everything in the world that has "Cox" printed on it.

way south: You live on an island in the Caribbean.

You will never have uncapped high speed internet.

Dat feel

WTF Google? Is manhattan TOO big and rich and densely populated for you?? I'd happily pay $200 a month for this! COME TO NY GOOGLE PLEASE WE LOVE YOU I PROMISE!

MindStalker: MrJesus: A lot of areas can already get 30Mbps for $20-30. I currently have 100Mbps for $70/month through Charter which is plenty fast enough, as I can download a 10GB file in about 10 minutes. I believe Verizon has rolled out 300Mbps service, which is around $200/month.

I suppose 1Gbps is probably only going to be useful for special applications, or in the future when movies, games or other content might be much larger in size? (or for people who need to upload large files a lot for clients, etc.)

No, it's $25/month for the first year or $300 up front. Then it is $0/year for 7 years. That is not a typo. Free. Gratis.

MrJesus: Yes its a $300 construction fee for running the fiber line to your house. The 5Mb/s is free. They will break the $300 into 12 payments of $25 (thats zero interest, no fees). Or if you get their $70 (1Gb internet) or $120 (TV and 1Gb internet) per month packages the $300 fee is waived.

So you just agreed with me?

So that's nice.

MrJesus: So you just agreed with me?

So that's nice.

Does everything on the internet have to be a disagreement, it just sounded like you needed the full information. Though I certainly think someone would signup for a 5Mb connection for $25/m with Google over a 5Mb connection for $20 a month with someone else simply due to the fact that they know their price will go down to $0 after a year as opposed to up after a year. This is almost a real estate investment at that point. This may be pointless for a temporary renter, but I can imagine a landlord putting this up then offering internet as part of the package (probably charging extra for it, I don't know how Google would view such an agreement)

Grither: WTF Google? Is manhattan TOO big and rich and densely populated for you?? I'd happily pay $200 a month for this! COME TO NY GOOGLE PLEASE WE LOVE YOU I PROMISE!

There's no such thing as too rich, but the densely populated bit is probably true. Kansas City has a decently-sized population but it's pretty spread out.

Actually, I think one part of it was just how cables were spaced on telephone poles. Apparently KCPL uses a spacing Google really likes.

MindStalker: MrJesus: So you just agreed with me?

So that's nice.

Does everything on the internet have to be a disagreement, it just sounded like you needed the full information. Though I certainly think someone would signup for a 5Mb connection for $25/m with Google over a 5Mb connection for $20 a month with someone else simply due to the fact that they know their price will go down to $0 after a year as opposed to up after a year. This is almost a real estate investment at that point. This may be pointless for a temporary renter, but I can imagine a landlord putting this up then offering internet as part of the package (probably charging extra for it, I don't know how Google would view such an agreement)

I was pointing out that you weren't providing any new information :)

The only part I left out for the guy was the $300 / $25/mo for Y1 covered the construction cost.

Bhruic: FTA: Google wants to get into the business of providing a better, faster internet

Seriously? So very wrong right out of the gate? Google has said repeatedly they don't want to become an ISP, they want to do some experimentation with what people would do if bandwidth limitations were (virtually) non-existent. It's not like they've been keeping that to themselves, so how "Greg Tito" could have missed it is beyond me.



On the other hand, their original statement also said they weren't getting into a TV service, so maybe they're changing their minds.

/ even if they do, probably won't see it in my area until 2050...

Foxxinnia: Okay I'm going to come straight out as a bit ignorant on the subject, but I need to understand how this internet speed shiat work. Last time I checked my speed on the broadband.gov website, which I assume is accurate, my internet connection speed was 6 MB/sec. I think. Let's just use that as an example. The thing is, I've never seen anything download that quickly. The fastest I've ever seen was 1.5 MB/sec. Steam, torrents, Microsoft websites, anything. No matter how fast my internet is, it doesn't mean jack shiat if people aren't uploading shiat to me that fast. Correct? So what on earth would be the point of connecting your neighborhood to the Google's Gigafark internet connection? Unless Google directly connects your Octomom vag of an internet tube to every server for every website on the internet it's pointless. Sure, you'll be sending baby pictures to your neighbors at a billion chucklefarks a second, but the second you need to get some data from somewhere else your packets will have to get on the poor people internet behind everyone else's porn.

Am I just misunderstanding something? Please I really want to know.

As others have pointed out, their main goal is to spur innovation for the next generation of internet speeds. However, in the meantime, it'll allow you to multitask 100x more. And it's needed for the HDTV service as well. An HDTV stream is about 20mbps or up to 40mbps for Blu-Ray quality (please please please, Google. Cable/Satellite HDTV macro compression artifacts are terribad).

If you max out the DVR and record 8 streams at once, that's already 160-320mbps. Then, while single servers/peers might not get anywhere close to maxing out your connection, if you're using a service that relies on multiple sources like Bittorrent, you could be using 100 mbps for every 100 peers if they're each giving you just 1mbps. Your whole family could be downloading their favorite Linux ISOs and watching cat videos on youtube, with no noticeable drop in speed.

Foxxinnia: Okay I'm going to come straight out as a bit ignorant on the subject, but I need to understand how this internet speed shiat work. Last time I checked my speed on the broadband.gov website, which I assume is accurate, my internet connection speed was 6 MB/sec. I think. Let's just use that as an example. The thing is, I've never seen anything download that quickly. The fastest I've ever seen was 1.5 MB/sec. Steam, torrents, Microsoft websites, anything. No matter how fast my internet is, it doesn't mean jack shiat if people aren't uploading shiat to me that fast. Correct? So what on earth would be the point of connecting your neighborhood to the Google's Gigafark internet connection? Unless Google directly connects your Octomom vag of an internet tube to every server for every website on the internet it's pointless. Sure, you'll be sending baby pictures to your neighbors at a billion chucklefarks a second, but the second you need to get some data from somewhere else your packets will have to get on the poor people internet behind everyone else's porn.

Am I just misunderstanding something? Please I really want to know.

I think your getting your bits and bytes mixed up, MB vs. Mb

Maybe someone with more tech knowledge can explain this to me, but why isn't google going with some sort of wireless set up where they cover an area of a big city with cheap or free wifi. I mean it seems like adding all this fibre, and dealing with getting access to service poles would be a lot more hassle and a lot more infrastructure to maintain than whatever equipment would be needed to do it wirelessly. Then again I don't know a lot about this technology. Although at the same time my boss has spent some time in mountain view california, and he told me that the whole town has free wireless, compliments of google.

physt: cman: HOLY farkING shiat

I wish I lived in a big city to get something like this. No one gives two shiats bout us Mainers

I know TWC sucks and all but way back when when cable modems were new TWC used Portland as a test area. At least we had that!

/Can't wait for Google fiber so I can kick TWC out the door.

Same. I'm in PA and its the only option here. If Google fiber comes to us I will.personally help them dig the lines and build the shiat.

EngineerAU: madgonad: Unfortunately Google anchored themselves to KCK and KCMO within the beltway - aka - not the suburbs. So I wish them luck trying to sell $70 internet to people in the ghetto that have smartphones instead of home computers. 90% of the people in the metro area that WOULD spend $120 for gig+TV or $70 for gig-only don't live in the urban cores.

The 1970s called and want their ignorance back. More poor people live in the suburbs than the cities1. Also because of density, Google can reach more people with less infrastructure in a city than in the spawled out 'burbs. A single midrise condo building can have more units in it than the entire Deer Run Oak Grove Creek subdivision. And quite a few of those buildings are filled with people who make good money. Depending on the city, the average income may even be higher than the suburbs. Atlanta for example has an reputation of being filled with poor gangbangers, at least that's what the suburbanites believe. But the average income in the City of Atlanta is higher than that of the suburbs as a whole2. Google knows exactly what they're doing and it has nothing to do with ignorant perceptions shaped by watching too many rap videos and old movies like 'Escape from New York'.

1 http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/poverty-growing-fast-suburbs-18545 8382.html
2 Median income specific suburbs might be higher than that of the city, but you can find neighborhoods in the city that also have higher than average incomes. Compare the city as a whole to the suburbs as a whole, the city is richer.

Citations on Fark? What is this I don't even...

If you live in a smaller city, there is always this: Link

EngineerAU: madgonad: Unfortunately Google anchored themselves to KCK and KCMO within the beltway - aka - not the suburbs. So I wish them luck trying to sell $70 internet to people in the ghetto that have smartphones instead of home computers. 90% of the people in the metro area that WOULD spend $120 for gig+TV or $70 for gig-only don't live in the urban cores.

The 1970s called and want their ignorance back. More poor people live in the suburbs than the cities1. Also because of density, Google can reach more people with less infrastructure in a city than in the spawled out 'burbs. A single midrise condo building can have more units in it than the entire Deer Run Oak Grove Creek subdivision. And quite a few of those buildings are filled with people who make good money. Depending on the city, the average income may even be higher than the suburbs. Atlanta for example has an reputation of being filled with poor gangbangers, at least that's what the suburbanites believe. But the average income in the City of Atlanta is higher than that of the suburbs as a whole2. Google knows exactly what they're doing and it has nothing to do with ignorant perceptions shaped by watching too many rap videos and old movies like 'Escape from New York'.

1 http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/poverty-growing-fast-suburbs-18545 8382.html
2 Median income specific suburbs might be higher than that of the city, but you can find neighborhoods in the city that also have higher than average incomes. Compare the city as a whole to the suburbs as a whole, the city is richer.

That may be true of other cities, but it is certainly not true of Kansas City, Kansas. Just check out this chart of incomes by Zip Code. Shawnee Mission is the USPS's designation for any suburb in Johnson County, Kansas. You have to get through 21 Shawnee Mission zip codes (and one Olathe zip code) before you get to a single Kansas City zip code. Of the 30 wealthiest zip codes in the Kansas City, KS area, 29 are in the suburbs and only one is in the city proper.

KCMO is a litle different, but only because there really aren't any suburbs, the entire city is considered Kansas City. The good thing about using Kansas City as their test city is that they'll get a wide swath of neighborhoods. Some rich, some poor. Some urban, some suburban.

Foxxinnia:
Am I just misunderstanding something? Please I really want to know.

I ave a 20Mbit/1Mbit connection, which means a maximum download speed of 2.2MB/s (give or take). Sounds plenty, but then I start using iPlayer (or another streaming service), someone else in the house starts watching a cat video on YouTube, downloads an OS update or worse starts trying to upload something and that 2.2MB/s download vanishes in a puff of smoke only to reappear as something more like ISDN speeds.

This is only going to get worse, games are getting larger, OS patches are getting larger and the content put up for streaming is getting larger (1080p + 5.1 audio vs 720p + 2ch) and of course more services themselves are opening their doors for people to use.

4 Adults, 2 of whom are only moderate users of the Internet can make a 20Mbit/s connection struggle with only what is currently available (and this is only factoring in legit traffic), we could go to 50Mbit/s and that would most certainly buy us sometime before we run in to the exact same problem or we could just go with this Google Fibre thing (in theory naturally, I'm on the wrong continent let alone State or indeed City to get it) and it's fixed. Forever. Converting $ to £ and this Google service isn't a great deal more than what we'd be paying for 50Mbit + TV from people like Virgin Media.

And of course, all of the above is reliant on my "up to 20Mbit/s" connection actually delivering it, which depending on how busy my street is it often isn't.

Foxxinnia: So what on earth would be the point of connecting your neighborhood to the Google's Gigafark internet connection? Unless Google directly connects your Octomom vag of an internet tube to every server for every website on the internet it's pointless. Sure, you'll be sending baby pictures to your neighbors at a billion chucklefarks a second, but the second you need to get some data from somewhere else your packets will have to get on the poor people internet behind everyone else's porn.

My farking dog is staring at me like I am a crazy person. I'm crying.

Not available in my area yet ... I'm too far south. Only option we have if TW for $50/mo for 6meg. So Google hurry up and head my direction.

rugman11: EngineerAU: madgonad: Unfortunately Google anchored themselves to KCK and KCMO within the beltway - aka - not the suburbs. So I wish them luck trying to sell $70 internet to people in the ghetto that have smartphones instead of home computers. 90% of the people in the metro area that WOULD spend $120 for gig+TV or $70 for gig-only don't live in the urban cores.

The 1970s called and want their ignorance back. More poor people live in the suburbs than the cities1. Also because of density, Google can reach more people with less infrastructure in a city than in the spawled out 'burbs. A single midrise condo building can have more units in it than the entire Deer Run Oak Grove Creek subdivision. And quite a few of those buildings are filled with people who make good money. Depending on the city, the average income may even be higher than the suburbs. Atlanta for example has an reputation of being filled with poor gangbangers, at least that's what the suburbanites believe. But the average income in the City of Atlanta is higher than that of the suburbs as a whole2. Google knows exactly what they're doing and it has nothing to do with ignorant perceptions shaped by watching too many rap videos and old movies like 'Escape from New York'.

1 http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/poverty-growing-fast-suburbs-18545 8382.html
2 Median income specific suburbs might be higher than that of the city, but you can find neighborhoods in the city that also have higher than average incomes. Compare the city as a whole to the suburbs as a whole, the city is richer.

That may be true of other cities, but it is certainly not true of Kansas City, Kansas. Just check out this chart of incomes by Zip Code. Shawnee Mission is the USPS's designation for any suburb in Johnson County, Kansas. You have to get through 21 Shawnee Mission zip codes (and one Olathe zip code) before you get to a single Kansas City zip code. Of the 30 wealthiest zip codes in the Kansas City, KS area, 29 are in the sub ...


Plus one of the reasons I heard they chose us is state border. Kansas and Missouri have different ways of doing things and different methods of utilities so they get to cover a broader swath by being in KC.

My neighborhood has already met our goal and we're currently 22 on the list. I had a hard time just loading the pre-registration page this morning because it was swamped. When I finally got through I was pleasantly surprised, and relieved, to find that my hippie neighbors had jumped all over it because I was planning to plaster every telephone pole and storefront window in the area with fliers.



I'll gladly pay the $300 "construction fee" in $25 installments and have free internet for seven years. Buh-bye Time Warner!