arstechnica Google Fiber’s 20-gig service is coming to these cities for $250 a month

[bonami2]

Quote

Google says, "We’re starting in Kansas City, North Carolina’s Triangle Region, Arizona, and Iowa." (Google tells me the "Triangle Region" means Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill). Google Fiber is built on Nokia's upgradable "Quillion" Fiber platform, and upgrading to the new 25G PON (passive optical network) technology allows it to push more data over existing fiber lines. Once it does more upgrades, Google says it can bring 20-gig service to more cities. Back in October, Google Fiber's head of product, Nick Saporito, told Fierce Telecom that the plan is to bring 20-gig service to "in most, if not all, of our markets."

Google Fiber’s 20-gig service is coming to these cities for $250 a month

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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Service starts in "Kansas City, North Carolina’s Triangle Region, Arizona, and Iowa."

 

[pio]

Still waiting for the initial promise of bringing fiber to every area in the US.  Still have a Spectrum monopoly here and its REALLY frustrating. -_-

[Snakecharmed]

It feels like this means very little to most residential customers. Most aren't going to have the equipment to put that bandwidth to use. In practical terms, anything above 2.5 is hard to scale up within the home as an affordable network, especially if PoE is involved like it will be for me.

 

The other day, Comcast tried to upsell me on going from 1 Gbps to 1.2. There is no reason for me to do that right now considering I can't get past 1 Gbps from behind my current wireless router, and even when I presumably get past that hurdle with a new home network that could allow me to upgrade everything except the PoE to 2.5, 1 to 1.2 isn't worth $10 per month when I haven't noticed any practical difference going from 400 Mbps to gigabit.

 

13 hours ago, pioneerisloud said:

Still have a Spectrum monopoly here and its REALLY frustrating. -_-

 

Likewise here with Comcast. AT&T's 25/2 (or whatever poverty bandwidth it is, I forgot) is not viable.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Snakecharmed

[pio]

1 minute ago, Snakecharmed said:

It feels like this means very little to most residential customers. Most aren't going to have the equipment to put that bandwidth to use. In practical terms, anything above 2.5 is hard to scale up within the home as an affordable network, especially if PoE is involved like it will be for me.

 

The other day, Comcast tried to upsell me on going from 1 Gbps to 1.2. There is no reason for me to do that right now considering I can't get past 1 Gbps from behind my current wireless router, and even when I presumably get past that hurdle with a new home network that could allow me to upgrade everything except the PoE to 2.5, 1 to 1.2 isn't worth $10 per month when I haven't noticed any practical difference going from 400 Mbps to gigabit.

 

 

Likewise here with Comcast. AT&T's 25/2 (or whatever poverty bandwidth it is) is not viable.

I actually recently went through a similar thing when ISP shopping.  I was on the 350 down speed before hand.  Settled on the 100Mbps plan this go around.  Other than my game downloads, I see absolutely zero practical difference.  With the discount plan I'm on, my 100Mbps line is free.  The 350 plan is $20.  Gig would be $50.  I know, I'm one of the outcasts in this instance, but I just can't justify spending $50 / month for a gig line, when it gets me to the same exact places the free line does.  Also, the upload speed is unchanged with those plans.  I get 10 Mbps up on the 100 and 350 lines.  I think the gig line gets a boost to 25 Mbps upload, I think.  That's where I need faster speeds at is my uploads, and Spectrum doesn't have any plans that would suite my needs there.

[Snakecharmed]

Wow, so that's what not getting gouged on Internet looks like. Not to say Spectrum is great, but I'd gladly just sit on the 350 for $20. Can't argue with 100 for free either. I'm paying $65 for a theoretical 1000/20 coming from 400/10 for $55. I can't downgrade plans and save any money unless I get the bottom-of-the-barrel plan below 100 Mbps which still works out to about $40.

 

Comcast is supposed to upgrade the upload speeds from 20 Mbps to 100 for the gigabit plan I'm on now. It's already been rolled out in some areas. At the moment though, I'm getting a comically disproportionate 947/24 on Speedtest. Any competition would be welcome, but AT&T and Google are basically just ignoring us at this point. I can't remotely get excited about 20 Gbps when Google has such a solid track record of abandonware.

[pio]

5 minutes ago, Snakecharmed said:

Wow, so that's what not getting gouged on Internet looks like. Not to say Spectrum is great, but I'd gladly just sit on the 350 for $20. Can't argue with 100 for free either. I'm paying $65 for a theoretical 1000/20 coming from 400/10 for $55. I can't downgrade plans and save any money unless I get the bottom-of-the-barrel plan below 100 Mbps which still works out to about $40.

 

Comcast is supposed to upgrade the upload speeds from 20 Mbps to 100 for the gigabit plan I'm on now. It's already been rolled out in some areas. At the moment though, I'm getting a comically disproportionate 947/24 on Speedtest. Any competition would be welcome, but AT&T and Google are basically just ignoring us at this point. I can't remotely get excited about 20 Gbps when Google has such a solid track record of abandonware.

I only get those rates because of a $30 / month discount for being on assistance programs. -_-  
 

But yeah, overall their pricing isn't HORRIBLE at Spectrum.  Seems like Comcast has the same problem as Spectrum with their upload speeds.  For me, trying to host servers for EHW and gaming and what not, this 10 Mbps upload is pathetic.  And even jumping to a business plan wouldn't solve it, its the same plans just with a static IP.

[Fluxmaven]

While this is neat, getting fiber to more areas seems like a better investment than making it way faster for a few people. 

 

The real crime in most residential internet is the abysmal upload speeds. Even the lowest tier from my fiber provider is 400/400. I'd take that over 1000/20.

 

I have a symmetrical gigabit connection at home and don't have any need for anything else. We could go up to 2gig but it was nearly double the cost last we checked. My entire home network is 2.5Gb but that's just so all the machines can talk to the NAS faster. I don't really need to talk to the outside world any faster. 

 

If I were to upgrade the network further, I'd get a separate line from a different ISP to do dual WAN. The UDM Pro can support failover and they recently added load balancing as well. 

 

[ozlay]

Faster speeds are always welcome. So long as it lowers the price of the other options.

[ENTERPRISE]

On 15/12/2023 at 19:47, Fluxmaven said:

While this is neat, getting fiber to more areas seems like a better investment than making it way faster for a few people. 

 

The real crime in most residential internet is the abysmal upload speeds. Even the lowest tier from my fiber provider is 400/400. I'd take that over 1000/20.

 

I have a symmetrical gigabit connection at home and don't have any need for anything else. We could go up to 2gig but it was nearly double the cost last we checked. My entire home network is 2.5Gb but that's just so all the machines can talk to the NAS faster. I don't really need to talk to the outside world any faster. 

 

If I were to upgrade the network further, I'd get a separate line from a different ISP to do dual WAN. The UDM Pro can support failover and they recently added load balancing as well. 

 

 

Agree. The UK is not too bad, the government does heavily invest in getting full fibre out to remote areas, I think it could do better but it is happening. It is a little embarrassing as with the UK being as small as it is, we should in theory have some of the best internet penetration in the world, assuming that was a focus. 

 

I am switching over to a 1GB Symmetrical line very soon (hopefully) which I got on a black Friday deal for 99p for 6 months and then £30 thereafter which is one of the cheapest prices I have come across.

 

1GB connection is more than enough for me. While the important chunk of my network is on 10Gbe , that was setup for faster data transfers from my NAS and other devices, that being said I am upgrading my firewall with 10Gbe to allow for future ISP updates. You may ask why 10Gbe, simple fact is that the Intel X540 NIC's are super cheap.

[rares495]

How do people feel about having a megacorp as their ISP? I'm not sure it's such a good idea. 

[ENTERPRISE]

47 minutes ago, rares495 said:

How do people feel about having a megacorp as their ISP? I'm not sure it's such a good idea. 

 

Big or small, they are still tracking you. So in that regards, it makes no difference. In all honesty the only thing customers can use as deciding factors are: 

 

1. Price

2. Customer Service Reviews 

3. Added Extras (Static IP ETC)

 

Anything beyond that, ISP's are almost identical in their practices.