Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

https://fiber.googleblog.com/2025/01/las-vegas-get-ready-for-your-close-up.html

by mfiguiere • 1 year ago

183 225 1 year ago

fiber.googleblog.com

sounds• 1 year ago

A common complaint I hear at defcon and other cons in vegas is that the hotel internet is terrible.

Hopefully good internet service comes as a result of this?

TheDudeMan• 1 year ago

I'm guessing that's mostly wifi congestion.

pxx• 1 year ago

it's probably just a skill issue. the wifi at the Chaos Communication Congress, on the other hand, is spectacular.

lazycouchpotato3• 1 year ago

A recent LTT video attributes it to hotels colluding so that one's Wi-Fi isn't too much better than the others.

https://youtu.be/sYXh0AdBw-I?t=879

kotaKat2• 1 year ago

I'm gonna need a source on that one beyond LTT just going "the hotels on the strip collude with each other".

Convention wireless is a pain in the ass as a whole, and I've seen it both from venue-hosted networks and privately-operated-on-site networks being deployed as an overlay.

michaelt2• 1 year ago

The largest hotels around, like Caesars Palace, might have 4000 rooms.

So if they had, for example, a 10 Gbps link for the building - that's only 2.5 Mbps per room if everyone wants to use it. Fine when 98% of guests don't want to use it, totally inadequate if all your guests want to use it.

And as I understand things, if someone's offering you a 10 gigabit link for $150 they're relying on you only using it a tiny % of the time. So if you put your 4000 room hotel on a Google Fiber link you'll probably run into the secret download limits after a day or two. And the price for a non-oversold 10-gigabit link seems to be "call our enterprise sales team for pricing"

cyberax2• 1 year ago

Amazon during re:Invent somehow manages to set up fast WiFi networks that service literally tens of thousands of attendees.

It's a skill issue from the hotel owners. They can't be bothered to fix their stuff.

LordDragonfang• 1 year ago

I mean, no one is expecting commercial-grade fiber at residential prices, but even taking that into account, these hotels (which are almost all owned by 3 companies) can afford to drop a few dozen grand a month on internet and not even notice the bill

variaga• 1 year ago

I can think of two reasons why it wouldn't

(benign) peak-to-average problem - I'll go ahead and just assume that defcon attendees use a lot more internet bandwidth than the average Vegas-goer, so during defcon the network is overwhelmed, but the rest of the year the capacity is adequate. Upgrading the links to satisfy the peak (defcon) traffic load costs the casinos significant money, but gives minuscule benefit since the rest of the year they only need to support the much lower average load.

(malign) the casinos don't actually want you to have good internet because they don't want you staying in your room internetting - they want you down on the floor gambling. Other non-gambling amenities (shows, restaurants, etc.) are mostly time limited - you only spend so much time eating, and shows are only a couple hours each - and can be a differentiator that draws people to a specific casino (because of specific food/entertainment preferences). Those people then spend the rest of the day gambling at that casino.

"Better" internet it's actually a negative differentiator - people who want to spend all their time infinite-scrolling will gamble less, so casinos don't want to attract them in the first place.

mjevans• 1 year ago

It's worse.

Event venues AND anyplace that might EVER have expense account holding business travelers just want to charge for it. Even if fiber literally rolled right up to the side of the building, it'd be resold by either the hotel or a 3rd party vendor with a focus on profit rather than just being good.

saagarjha7• 1 year ago

Ah, the memories of trying to get good internet for DEF CON CTF in some random hotel suite…

htrp• 1 year ago

I thought they killed this project years ago

zie• 1 year ago

It was basically dead for a while, apparently it's being resurrected.

ddlutz• 1 year ago

I'm surprised Google hasn't forgotten about Google fiber.

thrtythreeforty• 1 year ago

I'm forced to conclude that it's actually making money, else they would have killed it by now.

I have it - signed up the day it was available at my house. One of the few Google things I'm pretty sure will continue to exist.

benatkin• 1 year ago

I think it must be that it will have the net effect of making people less free. They throw out stuff that could make money when it's good for freedom like Google Reader.

somanyphotons• 1 year ago

Google is perfectly willing to shut down a profitable product

bagels• 1 year ago

They did kill it before. But it's back again.

hirvi742• 1 year ago

I have also had Google Fiber since near its inception. I imagine it is profitable for Google because instead of tracking my browsing data, Google can just track all my packets now.

LeafItAlone• 1 year ago

Or maybe leadership has, and that’s why it’s still alive.

wil421• 1 year ago

They did in my area 7 years ago almost as soon as it was announced. They wired new condos and apartments but nothing else. Luckily AT&T installed it on the pole by my house. I moved and lost fiber but have 1.2 down over coax but only 200 up.

JumpCrisscross• 1 year ago

Luckily AT&T installed it on the pole by my house

This seems to be Google Fiber's purpose. Spurring the telcos into investing to maintain share.

bb884• 1 year ago

They basically did at some point about a decade or so ago maybe. Wimax and LTE were taking off at that time. Then about 2 years ago, Google woke up and started pushing fiber again.

It's clear now that high speed fiber is the future. Cable companies aren't upgrading their networks anymore. It's unclear if the wireless companies will be able to support 10gig service. And the single mode fiber laid into the ground a decade or more ago has only increased in value.

adgjlsfhk13• 1 year ago

is there any desire for residential 10g service? it's pretty hard to image how 90% of families would use up 200meg

UncleOxidant• 1 year ago

That's the problem. I'd be afraid that if I signed up for it they'd just cancel it a year or two later.

scottyah• 1 year ago

It does align pretty closely to their mission statement "to organize the world's information and make it accessible and useful for everyone", so it might be easier to make a case for its continued existence.

It also is another branch of Alphabet so not directly in the Google mgmt chain.

Though it looks like Alphabet is looking to sell it off, according to a reuters article Feb 5th, 2024.

saagarjha7• 1 year ago

Maybe the AI people convinced them that downloading models would require faster internet.

rconti5• 1 year ago

GFiber service will be available in parts of the metro area later this year. Nevada residents and business owners will be able to choose between Google Fiber’s plans with prices that haven’t changed since 2012 and speeds up to 8 gig.

The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing.

From the linked price page:

1gig: $70/mo

2gig: $100/mo

5gig: $125/mo

8 gig: $150/mo

There was a time I would have been insanely jealous of any fiber option at all here in the Bay Area, and I know how hard it is to find fiber anywhere in the US, even still here in many parts of the Bay.

But when the fiber actually arrives, it becomes clear how cheap it is to provide.

When AT&T finally rolled fiber to my house in ~2019 it was $80/mo for 1gig symmetrical.

And you know AT&T's shareholders are still making money hand over fist at that price, because today, I pay Sonic $50 per month for 10gig symmetrical.

homefree• 1 year ago

It's still pretty hard to find fiber in the bay for decent prices. I have 1gb symmetric in SF, but that's pretty uncommon. The 10gb sonic is only in some neighborhoods. I lived in Palo Alto for a long time and the options there were awful. 1gb down 35mbps up Comcast was the best option and it was well over $100/mo - there may have been a 2gb option for $300/mo and a 2yr commitment.

rconti5• 1 year ago

Yep, my in-laws in Menlo Park had insanely slow SBC DSL with high packet loss. SBC actually just discontinued the service rather than do anything useful.

I once paid that ridiculous $149/mo for the 1gig Comcast service until I got tired of the bill that I was really only paying for bragging rights, and went back to 250Mbps.

sunshowers• 1 year ago

Sonic covers large parts of Oakland too. Been really happy with their 10Gbps service, I have an Intel X520 SFP+ NIC in my PC and I get 7-8Gbps symmetrical if upstream isn't bandwidth-limited.

pkaye2• 1 year ago

I'm in Fremont and I recently noticed they now have 2gbps for $105 in my area. Also they boosted the upload speed to 200-350mbps. I did have to upgrade my cable modem to get my faster upload speed but still I need a faster Wi-Fi router before I consider going to 2gbps.

sureshv• 1 year ago

Palo Alto has had AT&T fiber since 2019 depending on your location (but still not 100% coverage). I was lucky enough to be in an early coverage area but the price for 1GB symmetric has risen from $75/month to $115.

ErrantX3• 1 year ago

Just for a global comparison. Fibre is pretty ubiquitous in the UK but very little over 1G, and not usually symmetrical.

Most top end packages are 1G and go for between $45-70 depending on the reseller. But you can get it pretty much anywhere that qualifies as a decent sized town.

(We do have close-to a monopoly on the backbone, which is good for coverage but bad for speeds, looks like they are finally starting to role out full 1G/1G this year https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/08/openreach-reve... )

zipy124• 1 year ago

I can't even get it in zone 2 in London :(

martinald• 1 year ago

Not true re Openreach monopoly - openreach ftth is approx 51% premises covered, altnets cover 40% of the country (https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/uk), so not much in it at the moment.

On top of that, Virgin Media is upgrading their existing 18m home DOCSIS network to FTTH plus their nexfibre build will take them to probably 25m+ homes.

So by the end of the decade the average UK household is going to have access to at least 3 separate FTTH networks.

Only OR FTTH is not symmetrical btw. Everyone else offers symmetrical and YouFibre offers 8/8gig.

jonathantf2• 1 year ago

Even if OR roll out symmetrical I doubt that many retail ISPs will sell it because that's one of the main selling points for Ethernet/"leased line" circuits for businesses

znkynz• 1 year ago

Fibre in NZ - 1Gbps $55USD 2Gbps $74USD 4Gbps $82USD

kalleboo• 1 year ago

Another global comparison point - in Japan, 1 Gbps fiber is available pretty much nationwide (I just checked the address of my in-laws' rural ancestral home in the middle of the rice fields)

10 Gbps is available in increasingly smaller cities (e.g. it was recently made available in a city of 100,000 near me).

Both priced at about $30/mo

arebop2• 1 year ago

A lot of people lately are complaining about a lack of price stability, it seems like a good angle.

Also as an SF resident with no realistic alternative to Comcast cable, I'd appreciate a provider who didn't try to sneak price increases onto my bill a couple of times a year.

In a healthy market I wouldn't expect big margins for sellers, but honestly if someone's making insane profits by selling me a product or service that's excellent and better than my non-empty set of alternatives I'm not going to complain.

advarkcal2• 1 year ago

Have you considered Monkeybrains? For the price the service is fantastic, and with some of their new upgrades speeds are pretty good for most of SF.

Caveat: I work from home so I keep my comcast subscription as a backup and have a router with automatic failover. I would say this is not worth it for most people and just Monkeybrains is sufficent.

treesciencebot• 1 year ago

at a relatively new high-rise in rincon hill, AT&T still charges 80-90$ for 1 gig symmetrical (same with webpass/xfinity).

MostlyStable• 1 year ago

Meanwhile, I'm paying 120/month for 150MB down, 75 up to my rural telco-op, and compared to the satellite internet I had before, I'm happy to be paying it.

algo_trader• 1 year ago

I have this wacky idea of community fiber kiosks where you stop to fast-download large files/torrents/data dumps

Any opinions on this from a user experience point of view?

ehsankia• 1 year ago

That's rural life. I'm downtown in one a big Canadian city, and the best I can get is 400 down and 10 up for ~100$/month. You're getting better up than me, and I'm literally at the core of a major city.

BobaFloutist• 1 year ago

I mean my "symmetrical 10G fiber" is actually 150MB up/down once it come through my router to my laptop, so while expensive, your speed is perfectly respectable.

AngryData2• 1 year ago

They are probably still making bank on that I bet, my rural area got co-op fiber 2 years ago and its $85 for 250 mbps, which I actually get closer to 350 mbps from, and $125 for full gig symmetrical. And it is rural enough to not even have DSL before now. They have made enough money that they have covered a large chunk of this part of my state which is mostly all rural and have only sped up their area and roll-out of more service.

smitelli• 1 year ago

In RTP NC, GFiber's $70 pricing beats equivalent speed plans from the other two symmetric fiber providers in the area, AT&T and Spectrum (if you live on the right streets). It's not _dirt_ cheap, but it's the cheapest we can get.

(Oh, also if you request a /48 IPv6 prefix, you'll get it. Never had that work on AT&T's $90.75-after-fees plan.)

natebc• 1 year ago

If only it covered all of RTP. I've lived in TWO places in Durham where there was Google Fiber across the street from me but I couldn't get it at my address. Where I live currently the people across the street can get Google Fiber or AT&T Fiber and I can only get Spectrum Cable.

rconti5• 1 year ago

Yeah, my gripe with my snide comment is more about how bandwidth costs should be falling over time in a competitive market, not that 1gig for $70 isn't actually still a good deal for the US.

The real advantage in having Google Fiber move into Vegas (or anywhere else) is they they're creating competition. It's silly how fast broadband prices plummeted here with the 1-2 punch of 2 fiber providers coming in in relatively short order. All of a sudden, whoops, the major providers can profitably provide service at a fraction of the price! Who knew?

yegle• 1 year ago

Huh I was able to get a /60 ipv6 prefix from my ATT fiber just fine, and it has been available since circa 2016.

anonymousiam6• 1 year ago

I've got a /48 IPv6 subnet with CenturyLink 1G/1G. It's a 6rd tunnel, but it's provided by the same ISP. Hopefully they'll go native soon, but it may not matter if I switch to Google Fiber.

My 1G/1G CenturyLink plan is $65/mo, which beats Google's $70 plan for the same thing in the same market, but I've had this plan for 5 years and it is no longer available.

js2• 1 year ago

I've had AT&T 1 Gbps in RTP NC at $70/mo since Jan 2017, with Max thrown into that price for free a few years back. I keep waiting for AT&T to raise my price but apparently it's permanent unless I change or cancel service.

My neighborhood was one of the first in Wake county that AT&T lit up, probably because it's one of the neighborhoods that re-used Bellsouth fiber[1]. It's been reliable service. No trouble with IPv6. I could've done without the AT&T privacy breach though.

Meanwhile Google didn't finally have fiber to my address till last year, many years after I got the free T-shirt[2] from them.

[1] https://hack-gpon.org/ont-nokia-g-010g-a/

[2] https://www.itbinsider.com/fall-fashion-fiber-shirts-are-her...

lhamil64• 1 year ago

And then there's my parents, who live in a rural area and have a tiny fiber ISP charging $70/mo for 50mbps. That's not missing a zero...

zdragnar• 1 year ago

If it's anything like where I am, they paid little or nothing to actually get the fiber to their house.

As with all rural infrastructure, low population density means high costs, especially if not everyone is a customer but you still have to run a cable past their house.

My rate is a little better than that- I think $120 for 150 or 200 symmetric- but it's still simultaneously more expensive than what I'd pay in the city and a far better deal than what we had before. Eventually they'll maybe make some money back on what I'm sure was a not inexpensive outlay just getting it to my house in the first place.

erulabs• 1 year ago

For what it’s worth it’s not even remotely a factor of price/bandwidth. The capex of laying the fiber and doing the last-mile construction is huge and highly variable depending on existing fiber, construction costs, regulatory requirements, etc. What bandwidth they can provide is also due to these requirements, and if they’re profitable as well.

Once they actually get the service in place the final price-per-gbps is more a factor of physics than of corporate greed.

xzjis• 1 year ago

Wait, an optical fiber is that expensive in the USA?

In France, the price for a symetrical 8 Gbit/s optical fiber is 50€/month (about $52) at the two fastest and most expensive companies! It's also 50€/month for professionals.

dgfitz2• 1 year ago

Doesn’t France have a lot of installation incentives and a large govt push towards 100% fiber?

Amazing what an administration with a goal can achieve…

fooker• 1 year ago

Yes, you earn 3x and pay 2x.

Works out pretty well.

cornstalks• 1 year ago

The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing.

You say that like it (edit to clarify: "it" = "unchanged broadband pricing") is a bad thing, though. Sure, it'd be nice if we had 1 Gb internet for <$30 like Denmark or wherever. But I will gladly sing praises to GFiber's speeds and stable prices given the hellhole of Comcast and CenturyLink I was previously living with.

cletus2• 1 year ago

Sorry but this is just incorrect on many fronts. I can speak to this issue as a former engineer on Google Fiber so I got to see just how the sausage was made.

Existing national ISPs just have inbuilt advantages that a newcomer cannot replicate or can't replicate cheaply. This is the result of decades of lobbying state and local governments.

Take something as simple as where you run cables in the streets. You basically have two choices: you dig trenches or you string up cables on a pole. There is no best answer here as it depends on a lot of factors like weather and climate, local soil conditions, natural disaster risks (eg wildfires, earthquakes), distances involved and existing infrastructure and legislation.

So imagine in a given area trenching is uneconomical. This could be just because there's a lot of limestone rock in the soil so it's difficult, slow and expensive to actually dig the trenches and this may be complicated by local noise ordinances, permitting, surveying, existing trenches and so on. So you end up stringing up cables on poles.

Who owns those poles? Is it the city? Is it AT&T? You may have rights to string up cables on those poles but the devil really is in the details. You might have to apply for a permit for each and every pole separately. They might be approved by the city but then how does the work happen? Can you do it? Maybe. But you might need AT&T (or whoever) to do something first like move their own cables. Maybe several other companies have to move cables first. Maybe each company has 90 days to do that work and this can add up so it can take over a year just to be able to put a cable up on a pole. And you can't really do any work until all the poles are available. That's just how fiber works.

And where do you run the fiber too? Do you run it back possibly several miles to a POP? There are advantages in that but obvious disadvantages like cost and just overall cable size and weight. Or do you use local substations? If so, what kind of building is that? Is it a large building that residents find "ugly" and object to on aesthetic grounds or maybe even environmental grounds that means more delays? How much does that cost? Is AT&T grandfathered in with their substations and nodes?

And then after you've done all that and you have your last mile fiber, how many customers do you get? Roughly 30-40% of houses get fiber by how many companies are you splitting that pool with? You have to amortize your entire network build over your projected customer base and it makes a massive difference if it's 10% of dwellings or 15% or 30% or 40%.

In industry parlance this is called an "overbuild" and is inherently economically inefficient. It'll actually raise the cost of every ISP because each will get a lower overall take up rate.

That's why the best solution is municipal broadband that either provides service or acts as a wholesaler to virtual ISPs.

The cost of running a fiber cable from a POP to a house has only gone up over th eyears and it's the majority of your cost. That's really why Internet costs haven't come down. And also why the best Internet in the US is municipal broadband and it isn't even close.

scarface_742• 1 year ago

And let’s not overlook the shit show of “shallow trenching” in Louisville, KY.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/googl...

sedatk• 1 year ago

I can't get Sonic because apparently they don't have permits to operate in the underground conduits in my neighborhood. For some reason, AT&T has that. It's frustrating to say the least.

ipdashc• 1 year ago

I feel silly asking, but what do you use 10gig for? That speed sounds insane; I get maybe 800mbps and I've basically never felt like the speed is too slow. Most consumer devices are still on gigabit Ethernet at the fastest, no - or am I just badly out of date?

Heck, anywhere above a few gigs, I feel like you'd start getting bottlenecked by whatever's on the other end of the connection.

Still, pretty cool to hear that the option exists!

andersa• 1 year ago

There are many use cases:

  - Download games from Steam  
  - Download or upload AI models and datasets from Huggingface and similar  
  - Any kind of remote work where you are regularly working with multi GB files

A little server I just put inside my apartment has dual 10Gb/s ethernet ports.

climb_stealth• 1 year ago

It's always interesting to read these discussions from a misdeveloped country like Australia.

Where symmetric broadband is a pipe dream. And the lived reality in the city is 100Mps down and something like 17Mbps up. I mean it still works for everything. But in comparison other people are living in some kind of techno utopia.

At least our banking system is modern so we can pay for our shitty internet without having to fax cheques /s

zamadatix• 1 year ago

Anything which is front ended by a CDN tends to end up faster than your connection for even the fastest connections. That leaves most of the web, updates (Microsoft/Apple/Google), content services like Steam or cloud storage/backup providers, and centralized piracy like Usenet (decentralized like torrents obviously vary per the seeds for each torrent).

It's certainly convenient my games, AI models, cloud backups, and large file downloads tend to go many times faster than when I had gigabit but I'd by no means be crying on the sides of the road about how long things take to upload/download if I had to go back.

The biggest thing you'll run into is algorithms designed to increase performance for limited connections don't scale infinitely. E.g. updating games on the Epic Games Store tends to be core limited (even on an overclocked 9800X3D) rather than bandwidth limited because it puts so much effort into the encryption and differential updating with the assumption "it'll be fast enough to not worry about". Even in those cases... it's nice to max them out without even having contention on everything else you're doing.

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

I get up to 90 megabytes/s download over wifi at my current place, and decent upload. I don't use it much, I just appreciate that I can do it quickly

for the last year I've been downloading Large Language Models through LM Studio's Huggingface browser, and I'm glad I can do that quickly

and pirating movies and tv shows again

other things that rely on some data don't get disrupted either

I'd like to run some service from my place, but I probably won't.

macshome• 1 year ago

For a lot of people the benefits show up because they have more devices sharing that connection. Before our kids moved to school we had 5 people on our home connection. Each with multiple devices, all trying to work or play games or stream content at the same time.

For one person with one computer it’s probably delightful overkill. For a modern family unit it can make everyone happy.

rayiner3• 1 year ago

I’ve got 10 gig with 5 millisecond ping to Ashburn (Comcast’s gigabit x10, so it’s a full 10 gig port to the head end, not PON) and web surfing still sucks because JavaScript.

manquer• 1 year ago

So many resources are large , the last deepseek model was 700Gb, games can easily run into hundreds of gbs these days. Just updating Xcode can be 10Gb

High speed internet opens up new use cases open up , for example, if I had a 10 gig symmetrical connection I could run my own self hosted CI runner for free* with my old hardware lying about and recoup my investment.

Any sort of spatial computing will need lot more speed and/or local assets to be useful - with today’s speed all we can reliably get is what Facebook is doing with metaverse .

csomar• 1 year ago

Not 10 gig but I am on an apartment with 1gig down. It made a difference when I downloaded deepseek the other day. It took a few minutes instead of hours/days. I think if you have a family with a couple kids it can come in handy when everyone tries to connect online. Kids can be downloading games/streaming, you working and partner video-calling on high res.

It is not a necessity but a nicety.

rconti5• 1 year ago

what do you use 10gig for?

Nothing, really! It's cheaper than 1gig, and my ISP doesn't even give me the option of paying for less. I could save about $10 a month to downgrade to AT&T 300Mbps fiber though (which would have data caps, bad privacy policy).

I'd be happy down to say 250/250. Gigabit feels like "all I could ever need" (for now), and 10gig is fantasyland.

Dylan168075• 1 year ago

The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing.

It kind of is.

In a reasonably competitive ISP market, I'd expect the plans to slowly increase in price over time and significantly increase in speed over time. Keeping the basic tier at $70 is a good thing, even without a speed change. Gigabit is fast enough to still be solid in another 13 years.

doublepg23• 1 year ago

I’m paying $59.95 for symmetric 1Gbps in Pittsburgh and my only complaint is the lack of IPv6. It’s absolutely rock solid.

DontchaKnowit2• 1 year ago

Google fiber is also full of shit when they say their prices havent changed because I was paying like 25 a month for 1g fiber in 2019 ain kansas city and now I pay 70 a month for the same service

kxrm• 1 year ago

AFAIK, GFiber has always been $70/month for 1gig.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20131218122258/https://fiber.goo...

rayiner3• 1 year ago

You can look this up! https://investors.att.com/~/media/Files/A/ATT-IR-V2/financia.... Page 2. Consumer wireline operating margin was 4.8%.

throwaway2037• 1 year ago

Nice post. Thank you to share.

    > And you know AT&T's shareholders are still making money hand over fist at that price

I believe you, but why is Google Fiber so slow to expand?

deepsun• 1 year ago

What is "gig"?

I'm familiar with Gbps and GB/s, one is 8x of another. But what is "gig"?

saagarjha7• 1 year ago

1 Gbps.

Youden• 1 year ago

Holy... Here in Switzerland we have an ISP, Init7, that offers two price options ("G" = "Gbps" and "M" = "Mbps" but shorter for clarity):

- Regular dynamic IPv4 + static IPv6 /48, 1G/1G, 10G/10G or 25G/25G (speed is your choice): $71.56/month - CG-NAT IPv4 + static IPv6 /56, 500M/100M if you don't have fiber available or 1G/1G if you do: $48.63/month

The higher speeds have higher setup and equipment costs but the monthly costs are all the same.

I have the 25Gbps service and can actually get those speeds outside my ISP's network: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/84db310f-2caa-4564-b5ff-b...

Also fun: they can offer you a BGP session so you can use your own IP space with your home internet connection: https://lists.init7.net/hyperkitty/list/swinog@lists.swinog....

For anyone wondering how this is possible/economical when the US is so expensive:

- The last-mile connectivity is treated as a monopoly and providers who install the infrastructure are obligated to offer fair (not free) access to their competitors - this ensures price competition.

- Init7 successfully argued in federal court that P2MP topologies are anti-competitive, so can't be the sole implementation in new infrastructure deployments - this enabled them to install their own hardware on the other end of a customer's fiber, so they can simply swap a 1G SFP for a 10G SFP or a 25G SFP and offer higher speeds.

bonestamp2• 1 year ago

Since Google made a big donation, maybe Trump will clear the way for google to plow through the red tape to create more high-speed internet competition, which should lower the price for many Americans. I doubt it will happen, but one can dream.

cheshire137• 1 year ago

Is it really? Still waiting for it to be available everywhere in Nashville after they started here nearly a decade ago.

warmedcookie• 1 year ago

Got fiber here in Memphis last year (CSpire), don't lose hope!

silisili• 1 year ago

Do y'all have fiber at all? Most if not all of remote middle TN from Cookeville to Winchester has cheap FTTH. I live in unincorporated acreage, and was surprised they just came out this year to run a fiber line to my house. 57/mo for symmetrical gig. Goes up to 8, but that's a couple hundred.

cwalv4• 1 year ago

That's how it is in Vegas presently: CenturyLink has fiber service but it's scattered around unpredictability, and in areas where it's not available it may never be. Hopefully Google fiber (un)availability doesn't overlap too much, but I expect that it will.

amelius• 1 year ago

Let me guess ...

Download speed: 10Gbps

Upload speed: 10Mbps

frankchn• 1 year ago

It is symmetrical.

bb884• 1 year ago

Google Fiber is symmetrical.

bitpush• 1 year ago

Isnt fiber symmetrical?

monocasa• 1 year ago

It doesn't have to be, but Google fiber is.

lazycouchpotato3• 1 year ago

Xfinity hasn't gotten that notice apparently.

They offer 1 Gbps download in my area with 20 Mbps upload. And it comes with a 1.2 TB limit.

EDIT: I'm wrong. The Xfinity in my area is on cable.

fiberoptimist• 1 year ago

Although this still happens in the UK, this hasn't been the case for years in the US.

jakebasile• 1 year ago

Google Fiber was announced for Austin in 2013, and 12 years later it's still not available at my Austin address. I have used AT&T Fiber for as many years and it works great (currently at 2G symmetrical for $105/m).

trashcan• 1 year ago

Same. My neighbors have it and apparently I am never getting it.

aizk• 1 year ago

I forgot google fiber existed, but more shocked that google hasn't cancelled it.

idontwantthis3• 1 year ago

There are three different fiber ISPs all “coming soon” in Vegas. I hope they come sooner.

alostpuppy• 1 year ago

What are the other ones?

idontwantthis3• 1 year ago

ATT and Quantum. Those both have fiber in some neighborhoods but don’t seem to be expanding quickly.

newsclues• 1 year ago

Still sad more cities don't roll out their own fiber and own the utility for the local community.

nashashmi• 1 year ago

They should rename the company to reflect their pivot to wireless broadband

randmeerkat2• 1 year ago

It’s Google, it’ll be shut down a week after the fiber goes live.

kernal2• 1 year ago

It started in 2010. How much longer should we wait for your prediction to come true?

randmeerkat2• 1 year ago

It started in 2010. How much longer should we wait for your prediction to come true?

Google has already actively started soliciting outside investors to spin off Google Fiber. Don't hold your breath. Nothing escapes the Google Graveyard, its gravitational mass is simply too large.

"GFiber has already hired an investment bank to start the process of selling equity in the company, according to a source close to Alphabet's efforts. The future goal is for GFiber to be independent from Alphabet, the source said on condition of anonymity."

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/alphabet-is-s...

wzyoi• 1 year ago

Back when I lived in Ukraine in 2021, I got our family a 1Gbps fiber connection.

We lived on the edge of the city, and it was insanely hard to find a provider.

I knew internet was super cheap in Ukraine and was going to leave Ukraine in the following years, so getting a 1Gbps fiber as an all-time-at-home person was a great idea.

I ended up finding 2 providers that had fiber, and 1 of them had 1Gbps.

I was super happy to have symmetrical 1Gbps for $15 a month for the time I could spend there.

Here, in Vancouver, I am happy to have 250Mbps/15Mbps for $40 per month.

tills13• 1 year ago

$15 for 1gpbs is insane. That was costing me $120+ over on Vancouver Island. If you want a good deal wait for BF / CM / Boxing Week. I upgraded to 3gbps fibre for $75/mo from Telus over boxing week. Almost as good a deal as your Internet in Ukraine.

griomnib2• 1 year ago

So the FCC is going to let them spy on the last mile with no restrictions. Nice of Sundar to come back from DC with a gift.

Cipater• 1 year ago

Google Fiber has been in existence since 2012.

griomnib2• 1 year ago

Yes and it’s not profitable enough to be worthwhile - unrestricted spying changes that.

Glyptodon• 1 year ago

I have 2gig symmetrical from a non-Google provider that works fine in an (at least) second tier city for $100/mo.

It seemed really trivial to install, I don't think there's an excuse to not have it everywhere than can have a telephone line.

roflmaostc• 1 year ago

On another note, I'm living in Switzerland and have 10Gbit/s symmetric up and download. For CHF 50/month ($55/month).

kernal2• 1 year ago

I was told by the pundits on here that it would be shutting down. Is there a new estimate?

naushniki• 1 year ago

I remember reading about Google Fiber in the news 10+ years ago. At that time the idea of having a multi-gigabit internet connection at home felt very exciting and futuristic. Today, fiber at home is almost a given in many countries. I mean, it is good that LA residents will have access to fast internet. But this is commodity now. I don't get it why is this in the news.

saagarjha7• 1 year ago

Las Vegas, not Los Angeles.

hirvi742• 1 year ago

I've had Google Fiber for almost a decade now. It's fine enough. I've had weird issues in the past though and it's been rather unfriendly when it comes to setting up things like a VPN on a router -- though this was many years ago. Perhaps things have changed?

I also had an issue 6 or so years ago where Google Fiber would block sites that did not have both an IPv6 and IPv4 address.

Nonetheless, service has been fine otherwise. I'd say Google Fiber has probably been the second best ISP I have used despite my ever slowly growing hatred of all things Google.

cletus2• 1 year ago

Speaking as a former Google Fiber software engineer, I'm honestly surprised this is still around.

In 2017, basically all the Google Fiber software teams went on hiatus (mine included). I can't speak to the timing or rationale but my theory is that the Google leadership couldn't decide if the future of Internet was wired or wireless and a huge investment in wired may be invalidated if the future Internet was wired so rather than guessing wrong, the leadership simply decided to definitely lose by mothballing the whole thing.

At that time, several proposed cities were put on hiatus, some of which had already hired local people. In 2019, Google Fiber exited Louisville, KY, paying penalties for doing so [1]. That really seemed like the end.

I also speculated that Google had tried or was trying to sell the whole thing. I do wonder if the resurrection it seems to have undergone is simply a result of the inability to find a buyer. I have no information to suggest that one way or the other.

There were missteps along the way. A big example was the TV software that was originally an acquisition, SageTV [2]. Somebody decided it would be a good idea to completely rewrite this Java app into Web technologies on an embedded Chrome instance on a memory-limited embedded CPU in a set-top box. Originally planned to take 6 months, it took (IIRC) 3.5+ years.

But that didn't actually matter at all in the grand scheme of things because the biggest problem and the biggest cost was physical network infrastructure. It is incredibly expensive and most of the issues are hyperlocal (eg soil conditions, city ordinances) as well as decades of lobbying by ISPs of state and local governments to create barriers against competition.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/googl...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/06/googl...

throwaway3141552• 1 year ago

In 2017, basically all the Google Fiber software teams went on hiatus (mine included).

What does a hiatus entail in this case? Did these teams all just stop working on Fiber stuff and sit around all day hoping they would be given something to do?

dtaht2• 1 year ago

They laid us all off. They had huge plans - millions of users! Then they intersected reality in KC where all people wanted was 5Mbit service and free TV... There were many, many people working to perfect the settop box for example. We got fq_codel running on the wifi, we never got anywhere on the shaper, the plan was to move 1+m units of that (horrible integrated chip the comcerto C2000 - it didn´t have coherent cache in some cases), I think they barely cracked 100k before pulling the plug on it all....

and still that box was better than what most fiber folk have delivered to date.

At least some good science was done about how ISPs really work... and published.

https://netdevconf.org/1.1/talk-measuring-wifi-performance-a...

dhosek• 1 year ago

I was thinking the same thing, not to mention that when Google Fiber was first announced, I was happy to be all in on Google for services but now, I’d be hesitant to use them for anything more than I’m already tied to.

emmanueloga_• 1 year ago

There were missteps along the way. A big example was the TV software that was originally an acquisition, SageTV [2]. Somebody decided it would be a good idea to completely rewrite this Java app into Web technologies on an embedded Chrome instance on a memory-limited embedded CPU in a set-top box. Originally planned to take 6 months, it took (IIRC) 3.5+ years.

I worked on the "misstep" with a small team, and it’s wild to see Fiber still around and even expanding to new cities. As far as I can tell, the set-top box software had nothing to do with why Fiber was scaled down. Also, usability surveys showed people really liked the GUI!

The client supported on-demand streaming, live TV, and DVR on hardware with... let’s call them challenging specs. Still, it turned out to be a pretty slick app. We worked hard to keep the UI snappy (min 30 FPS), often ditching DOM for canvas or WebGL to squeeze out the needed performance. A migration to Cobalt [1], a much lighter browser than embedded Chromium, was on the table, but the project ended before that could happen.

Personally, it was a great experience working with the Web Platform (always a solid bet) on less-traditional hardware.

1: https://developers.google.com/youtube/cobalt

shadowfu• 1 year ago

+1 to what was said above; the UI didn't take 3.5 years to make - we launched it fairly quickly and then continued to improve on it. Later there was large UX refresh, so maybe that's where OP is getting confused? Either way, that software continued to work for years after the team was moved on to other projects. SageTV was good, but the UI wasn't java - it was a custom xml-like layout.

WorldMaker• 1 year ago

In 2019, Google Fiber exited Louisville, KY, paying penalties for doing so

Those mistakes in Louisville were huge. Literally street destroying mistakes that city Civil Engineers predicted and fought from happening in the first place, but Google Fiber did them anyway. Left a huge bill to the city taxpayers. It wasn't bigger news and a bigger upset because of NDAs and other contract protection things involved, but as an outsider to those NDAs/contracts, I can say it was an incredibly bad job on too many fronts, and should have left Google Fiber with a much more tarnished reputation than it did.

anonymousiam6• 1 year ago

I've got a place in Vegas that's presently served by CenturyLink. It has 1G/1G symmetrical fiber at a guaranteed fixed price of $65/mo. 8G is appealing. So far I haven't seen a map or a timeline of where/when. I signed up for status emails from Google over a year ago.

jhloa2• 1 year ago

They just raised the price on my fixed for life deal from Century Link. If you look back, there's nothing in the documentation/terms that actually claimed it was for life. Super shady on their end and I'm going to switch to Google Fiber once they're finished installing it in my neighborhood (they're currently in the installation process)

cwalv4• 1 year ago

Same here ($65 -> $75); I think it's an "equipment fee." I don't even use the router. My employer covers the cost so I haven't called to complain, but I suspect if you do you can return the router and lose the fee.

anonymousiam6• 1 year ago

The only way they could have raised the price was if you opted into their new "Quantum Fiber" plan. I got the snail-mail postcards offering me the "upgrade", but I did not see any benefit. They offered exactly the same service I already have. I assumed (correctly) that they were just trying to get out of the $65/mo "lifetime" deal they promised.

I still have the deal.

Edit: I just checked, and Quantum Fiber now offers 2G/1G (two down, one up) fiber in my Vegas neighborhood for $95/mo. They are claiming it's a "lifetime" price guarantee.

I'll keep waiting for Google's 10G fiber.

more_corn• 1 year ago

Woah. gFiber still exists?

vyrotek• 1 year ago

The comments here are interesting.

Mesa AZ signed a deal with Google in 2022 and I got fiber installed last summer. It was all new fiber in the streets in my neighborhood too. And I still see lots of constructions signs for it around. Definitely seem to still be growing. Two other new competitors are also in the area.

b8• 1 year ago

Well that's good, but they haven't even installed GFiber in cities they're in right now such as Omaha and Chicago etc. It's surprising how many places still don't have Fiber, and you can check your area with FCC's website: https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home

sneak• 1 year ago

Can’t come soon enough. I pay over $200/mo for Cox here in LV (including a surcharge for “unlimited data”) and still get 20% of advertised speeds at 7pm and nastygrams when I upload a 2TB photography backup.

Cox and CenturyLink are monopolistic criminals and should receive corporate death penalties for their misconduct.

kylehotchkiss• 1 year ago

Meanwhile; in the world capital of tech, I’m paying Cox for lousy coaxial over nearly 30 year old cable because nobody will pay to lay a fiber on my street (not even neighborhood… street)

qwertox• 1 year ago

I love the photo of the information sign "GFiber - Work being performed by ... Permit # ... Phone numbers:"

All the relevant information on one sign.

sakopov• 1 year ago

My parents have had Google Fiber since 2011 or 2012. It's been a joy. The uptime has been great and the price has pretty much remained the same for 1Gig. In Los Angeles I pay $90/mo for 100mbps Spectrum connection which drops once a week and has gone up from $40 to $90/mo in just under 2 years. Worst of all is Spectrum has complete monopoly and I have nowhere else to go.

getpost• 1 year ago

Check again? https://frontier.com/shop/internet/fiber-internet

We used to have Spectrum, but switched to Frontier Fiber as soon as it was available, a couple years ago now. Apart from a few hiccups during the first few weeks of service, it's been very reliable.

yalogin• 1 year ago

Wait, google fiber is not shutdown?

kjellsbells• 1 year ago

I cant shake a feeling that above 50pM/1gig, it doesnt matter how fast residential Internet is. Back when WFH really meant FTPing a whole file down, working on it, and then FTPing it back up, sure. But gdrive and OneDrive and so on all seem quite happy to only send you the blocks you are working on, Teams/Zoom uses remarkably little bandwidth, and games distribution seems to use a combination of CDN and JIT downloads, at least after the initial 80G download for the first user. I know this is n=1 sampling, but my house of 5 was merrily WFH-ing on 100M for ages with nary a whimper. Does it really matter, in 2025?

What does seem to matter is variability: latency and jitter, and the stability of the network inside the house (eg wifi contention). The pipe is the least of one's worries, it would seem.

Google Fiber is coming to Las Vegas

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