Google taking orders for Kansas City gigabit fiber network Google is ready to flip the switch on its new gigabit residential fiber network in Kansas City – that is, provided the locals can rally enough of their neighbors to pre-register to justify wiring up the houses. The Chocolate Factory has been hanging fiber optic cables on Kansas City utility poles since March, in a project that …
Unfortunately, Overland Park, Olathe, and Lenexa, three suburbs of KCK, are not included.
Why does this matter? That's where many of the high-tech employers in the area are, including.....
https://mysprint.sprint.com/mysprint/jsp/landingPage/contactus.jsp
(I personally think it would hilarious for Google to run high speed in Sprint's back yard.)
Eight neighborhoods qualified on the first day of the 45 day competition period. It seems unlikely any of the neighborhoods will fail to qualify even at the 25% level. Some questions remain. How long before all are qualified? Which one will be first to 100% subcription and get their fiber first? How fast Google can hang fiber? How fast they can scale fiber hangers? How do the rest of us persuade them to come to our city?
Screaming win for Google. And KC of course.
Yes, they realize Kansas is in Tornado Alley. They also realize that despite what the media would have you believe, winds high enough to knock the poles down are not as common as you might think (so long as people properly trim their trees so as not to overhang the lines), and that even if you hang lines on the poles, and they are blown down, and you hang them again, and they are blown down again, and you hang them again, you still haven't spent as much money as digging the trenches to bury them.
But they can't. (Comcast and AT&T) Too many years scratching each others back and over charging the customer and over paying the CEO's and doing the minimum they could get by with on upgrading their systems.
They've had the fiber in the ground a block from where I live, for almost a month now.
Google's free 5meg Internet access is the same speed as I used to pay $65 a month for, from a cable provider.
And Now $70 a month for 1 gigabit. I really hope Google hurts them financially for their greediness all these years.
Signed up and chomping at the bit...
So I will presume that the people who are most enthusiastic about Google-as-ISP are people who have no problems with Google monitoring and keeping records of their internet use, and then sharing that information with whatever third-parties Google decides will be appropriate (understanding that an "appropriate party" will almost always mean "any party willing to pay the extremely low fee that Google will demand".)
Well good for them - because for some people there is nothing in life that's better than a bargain! Absolutely nothing at all...
I'd love to be able to get cable TV and my current 20/5 Internet access for only $120 a month! Right now I pay about $140/month total for 20/5 DSL and extended basic cable - no movie channels, no premium "digital" tier with another 60 or 70 channels I'll never watch, but HD on almost all the channels I do have.
However, before I signed up, I'd want to know what data Google would be collecting on my Internet and TV watching habits, how long they'd keep it, and what they'd plan to do with it. "Do no evil" became just a useless motto about two data collection scandals ago. Yes, I imagine my telco and cable company are likely collecting data too, but unlike Google, they don't have the resources to collect nearly as much or do much of anything with it, either useful or evil.
I've read rumors that someone is creating an ISP that collects and stores as little information as possible, encrypts email so even they can't read it, will only give out information when it's legally unavoidable and is willing to use its lawyers to combat frivolous information requests.
What I haven't read about is them actually opening for business, let alne offering services in my area.
Yeah Google sucks at privacy, but where's a better alternative?
As mentioned Kansas is in the middle of Tornado Alley, thus wouldn't it make more sense to create the network somewhere that is a bit more stable?
Can't have the northern US due to snow and ice storms, the middle has tornadoes / earthquakes / or they shoot the engineers in Florida and further south they likely think the Internet is the work of satin, so there's only one place that this should be trialled - the UK.
Anyone at Google listening...? :)
Sorry, your logic is based upon a false premise:
" the most tornado-prone region of the world (outside North America), as measured by number of reported tornadoes per unit area, is the Netherlands, followed by the United Kingdom (especially England[...])"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_climatology#Tornadoes_outside_North_America
So piss off and stop trying to queer our deal.
It's only day 4 and 32 fiberhoods have qualified, many others are quite close. In one fiberhood 20% of homes - one in five - has signed up already. That is amazing. 42 days, 8 hours left to go!
The bigger the success this is the faster Google will roll it out to the rest of us, so let's cheer them on. Go KC!
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