google fiber? all over Atlanta metro or just selected areas? (town, limit)

[Thulsa]

Coincidentally there was one of those underground utility marking guys in my yard this very morning (Aug 31) spraying the marks on the grass. We asked him what's up, and he said he was marking off the underground utilities for the Google fiber that's coming up the street shortly. He didn't say exactly when it would be run, but generally they don't do the marking very far in advance. This is in the Decatur/Avondale area.

When they'll let us connect is another question.

[VirtualErik]

If Google fiber wants to corner the market, they will need to hurry up and expand to get more customer's to expand their market and income.

[flyonpa]

I think the "Fiber" part for Google is a Temporary StopGap for now, Google was in on the radio spectrum auctions the FCC ran in 2003, I know they dropped out after a few rounds of bidding on the a national radio spectrum frequency range, with some requirements that the winner sell at wholesale rates to do WiMax Data to Google (and others).

I had Clear WiMax for years for my internet for years, but they did not have a national network, and did not have enough marketing dollars behind it to educate and sell to a big enough audience to make it profitable, Sprint the owner of the frequency reclaimed it from them when they went bankrupt.

That being said, I think Google has the muscle behind it to be able to go Wireless (WiMax) for the last mile to get from the fiber cable to a network of neighborhood WiMax Nodes.

ie: You are willing to put a small WiMax transceiver on your roof that would be the connect point for your neighborhood for free or discounted service.

[VirtualErik]

Originally Posted by flyonpa

I think the "Fiber" part for Google is a Temporary StopGap for now, Google was in on the radio spectrum auctions the FCC ran in 2003, I know they dropped out after a few rounds of bidding on the a national radio spectrum frequency range, with some requirements that the winner sell at wholesale rates to do WiMax Data to Google (and others).

I had Clear WiMax for years for my internet for years, but they did not have a national network, and did not have enough marketing dollars behind it to educate and sell to a big enough audience to make it profitable, Sprint the owner of the frequency reclaimed it from them when they went bankrupt.

That being said, I think Google has the muscle behind it to be able to go Wireless (WiMax) for the last mile to get from the fiber cable to a network of neighborhood WiMax Nodes.

ie: You are willing to put a small WiMax transceiver on your roof that would be the connect point for your neighborhood for free or discounted service.

how reliable is that signal though? any issues with wireless interference? also what kind of speeds could you get over just a pure wireless signal?

[flyonpa]

ClearLine had its transceiver on cell towers, you did need to be somewhat in line of sight to it, to get the best signal, I bought a 15mbs package, but was getting 20-25mbs when i did speedtests down, and about 1mbs up.

When I signed up I had 3 different towers I could hit (I did put the modem/receiver on 2nd floor of my house, for better speed). After a few years Clearline shut down one tower (A medium strength one for me 4bars), I had access to a 5bar, and 2bar.
From what I understand about WiMax the speed is rated at 1gb/sec per node channel each tower would have many node channels per frequency and can have a number of frequencies it can use, with the modem/receiver negotiating with the transceiver to what channel & frequency & tower to use.

I read somewhere each tower could do 1tb/sec.

Never experience wireless interference that impacted me.

[bUU]

Originally Posted by VirtualErik

If Google fiber wants to corner the market, they will need to hurry up and expand to get more customer's to expand their market and income.

That's just it; these alternative service providers don't want to "corner the market" - that's a waste of capital - they want to exploit the market for optimum profit. Look at how both FIOS and Google fiber went up against the incumbents. Without the onerous regulations that the incumbents were forced to comply with, they crafted smart business plans, that pursued different approaches but both approaches deliberately aimed to carve out reliably profitable segments within the market.

Originally Posted by flyonpa

ie: You are willing to put a small WiMax transceiver on your roof that would be the connect point for your neighborhood for free or discounted service.

Originally Posted by flyonpa

I read somewhere each tower could do 1tb/sec.

So shared ten ways that's not that bad, but still not as good as 100% terrestrial service.

[flyonpa]

Originally Posted by bUU

So shared ten ways that's not that bad, but still not as good as 100% terrestrial service.

Most household users are not even close to being able to pull 1gb/sec in usage. So most of that available bandwidth sits "empty" most of the time.


For a 4K TV Steaming you need around 25mbs per Steam, So everyone in the house could be streaming 4K show and that would make only a small dent in a 1GigaBit/sec download speed.

[bUU]

Originally Posted by flyonpa

Most household users are not even close to being able to pull 1gb/sec in usage. So most of that available bandwidth sits "empty" most of the time.

Don't say that too loud, or they'll split the service twenty ways instead of ten. No matter how you slice it, it will always bee attractive to under-resource wireless as compared to wired service.

[AndyInAtlanta]

After dealing with Comcast and AT&T for the last decade, I very excited about the idea of dealing with Google instead.

[bUU]

So you can become equally disillusioned with yet another big company.