People forget Google is a tech company. Google effectively forced their partners (ISP's) to upgrade their infrastructure for them. Since slow internet speeds was hurting google's brand.
@@nasis18 I would assume that is because we implemented that very early on, and later implementers had access to better tech? And replacing slow but working infrastructure is something that the US might be choosing not to do?
Considering how big America is, the fiber rollout for each state/major population took priority first before going for smaller areas. They offered better speeds and allowed monopolies over internet to be bypassed because google had been increasing their search for suitable places to connect.
Man I wish. By the time next year rolls around, charter will be charging me $75 for a fraction of that (300 Down/10 up) I experienced my first bump in price a few months ago to $65 from $50…… T-T
@Alucard oh my goodness. I had spectrum before and it was the same thing with price hikes and a harassment level of advertisements through the mail, phone calls, and texts. I think I even paid more for the pleasure than I currently do. Then when I tried to discontinue my service they ask why, I told them, and they said that was the industry standard. I was pissed. Never looked back.
This was actually a very smart move.... I couldn't imagine being stuck to 50-60Mbps even in today's state of the internet. Recently my ISP (Spectrum) Bumped my speeds up to 350Mbps from 200 free of charge. I have been seeing quite the uplift even here, in the middle of nowhere. But sadly, no fiber exists here
Well, I'm in Los Angeles, like a mile from Universal Studios... still no fiber on my area either. My speed has also increased with Spectrum as well (yay!) but maybe the ISPs need another kick in the pants to keep installing fiber.
Be glad you don't live in Germany. I live in a very rural area, we literally cannot get more then 100mbps. I have 60mbps and have to pay like 50€ per month. Internet is just awful here.
Eh, 350Mbps is more than most households need. However, the benefit of fiber is you generally get a matching upload to go with your download. I have Cox fiber and get 250/250 and it is pretty awesome.
What's funny is ISP stagnation was only a thing on the consumer side. However, on the datacenter side, speeds are going up and up and costs are dropping by roughly 20% year-on-year since bandwidth and internet speeds are a big cost center for businesses they are constantly trying to optimize and there are many players competing for their business. Consumer ISPs were just able to get away with shitty service because of a lack of competition.
It’s not because of lack of competition, it’s because all involved parties have decided to screw the consumer unanimously…. This has been a growing problem in many industries. The constant hatred and distain towards the “entitled consumer” is getting worse and worse. Same thing is happening in the work place too. Higher ups hate the employees below them and all… It’s terrible
There's monopoly in the "Tier 1 ISP" market too, BUT, yes, at the end, the Business having transit has very good cost. The negotiation that happens between providers too exist here, and they slash prices by a huge %age too if you find something similar from a different provider, and economies of scale applies here too so if your transit requirements are like many Tbit from many provider, you pay really cheap per Mbit. and not to mention, those big players have more direct ways of reaching their destination with stuff like "Peering, IXP", etc. They anyways try to avoid Transit as much as they can, but it's not purely possible.
The cost to an ISP for providing business internet is lower because the businesses provide the internal infrastucture to their users. Also one customer with one bill for a contract is easier than 100 customers with month to month service who create the same amount of network traffic.
Well, it's also at least in part because there are 10,000 customer wires to be run for every business wire to be run. If I want to connect two data centers, I can pay to have a bundle of fibers run between them for way less than a separate fiber for every house. That's exactly why phone lines and cable tv lines were the primary means of delivering internet. That last little bit from the corner of the block to each house on the block is (or was) very expensive.
I also feel like you left a really crucial detail, in that one of the other reasons why Google Fiber became a thing (even knowing that they won't be economically successful) is due to the whole net-neutrality scandals. The ISP's started targeting video streaming services such as Netflix & Hulu, and even TH-cam ended up getting caught under the crossfire of having to pay the ISP's massive amounts of "fees" for how much 'demand' they were placing on the ISPs. Google being the only tech company that had the power to create their own ISP to make a statement unlike the other companies who essentially never owned their own infrastructure and were all hosted on AWS, decided to do just that: Tell the ISPs that if they don't change their practices on how they treat the streaming services, Google will create their own ISP infrastructure and take out the middle man. Their success with Google Fiber, showed the ISP's that this wasn't just Google talking the talking, but that they could actually deliver on their threats.
Glad to see some explanation that makes sense to me, because the ones in the video didn't seem great. Am I the only one? maybe I'm slow lol. They didn't attempt stadia until several years after fiber was rolled out, but at the time I don't think they care about gamer ping or fast Steam downloads. Hangouts is a social media platform, do they really need 4K for that? Classroom doesn't seem intended to make money, though I can see how it might use a lot of bandwidth. I guess I'd like to know some specific stuff that uses bandwidth that's so high that it requires fiber, cuz it doesn't seem like the average home consumer needs it, and I'm not sure what Google planned on offering that definitely needed all these competitor-built fiber connections.
Google fiber is seriously the best thing to happen to my internet. I purposely moved to an area with it because I was sick of Xfinity, century link, etc. They are actually expanding quite rapidly in my area. Constantly seeing neighborhoods having them come through and install the infrastructure. If you have them as an option, DO IT.
I remember when Google Fiber was first out, I was struggling with 2 MBps, which was the best they offered. I desperately wished for google fiber in my area and I hated how slow internet was across America, especially compared to other countries. Nowadays, I am routinely offered Gigabit, and even though they're still wiley with the "up to", I can typically rely on at least 40MBps, which is amazing compared to a decade ago. So if this really was intentional, I thank Google for managing to improve the broken ISPs
@@heloxiii8894 definitions of measurements don't change. The length of a meter hasn't changed in 20 years. Neither has the size of a bit, a byte a megabit or a megabyte.
I had dial-up way back in 94. Had a whopping 14 kbps. It would take several hours just to connect. Kids these days will never know what actual slow internet is.
This is similar to how Google buying Motorola was also a huge success story, they paid a low price to stop a lot of patent trolling which would have hurt Android massively. (And even in a very rural part of Denmark, I'm having 1 Gbit fiber internet)
@@tonycrabtree3416 good for you buddy. Glad you're enjoying your fisher price phone that you paid over a hundred Ben Franklins for. I'll stay in my lane and keep enjoying my 600 dollar android phone.
@@SeanGonzalezMDHEXT Google didn't update my RAZR MAXX HD after 1 year of ownership and basically forced me to buy another phone in 3 short years, so all my apps would work properly. How's that cheaper than owning a 700 dollar phone for years that works perfectly? Anyway, this isn't android v. iOS...it's google doing something shitty in regards to a phone brand. Motorola was the king of cell phones and now? Hot garbage. Anyway, stay triggered!
Part of the problem was government failure across several administrations. The government didn't want to build a fiber infrastructure. Instead, they allowed the telecoms companies to charge their customers to fund this rollout. Surprise: they didn't. The companies were caught pocketing the money. They then were allowed to charge customers yet again to fund the rollout. And guess what? Again they just pocketed the money. And as you correctly point out, Google understood the negative impact this would have on their business growth serving web based services.
why would the government build a fiber infrastructure for big corporation? I say that is not a failure, they just know they shouldn't. if they do, shame on them for doing it instead of spending the money for other important things, and if they don't? shame on them coz the corporation is now charging it to the people? . . . typical grumblers.
@@ChibiKeruchan Private corporations didn't build the nation's highways: the government funded that. You gonna complain about that too and ask why the government bothered to do it? Do you enjoy getting it up the ass by corporations? Do they pay you for that or do you just let them do it for free?
@@ChibiKeruchan the government set aside billions for fiber and gave it companies. That money just somehow disappeared no one has answers, I would do some research onto it if you have the time. Also the govt. is what made electrification across the country possible. Without govt. support that would not have happened. Govt. has subsidized what it deems necessary equipment in the past and it should also do so for the internet for rural America.
Google Fiber has been in Irvine CA for years, but AFAIK it's only available in certain large apartment and condo complexes. I guess it wasn't cost-effective for Google to run fiber to individual homes (or even to the curb).
This doesn't make sense to me as a cell site technician. We use a lot of fiber optics because it is A LOT cheaper than copper on runs over a few dozen feet. The expensive bits are the SFPs on either end of the fiber to connect to the switches and routers. I could see only running fiber to the road and copper to houses. Despite the cable being more expensive, terminating fiber is labor expensive and you don't want it where the customer could mess it up.
This has to do with how it came to Irvine. The Irvine Company made a deal with Google directly(2016) to bring Google Fiber to its properties, and not a deal with the City. I don't know if there is an exclusivity deal, but I imagine there is. Most of Irvine was built/upgraded with underground conduit making it a lot easier to deploy fiber if they want to. SCE is actually using the conduit to give business' 100gig fiber lines.
Something similar occurred in Nashville. Google Fiber basically only exists in a few highrises downtown. Comcast and AT&T blocked them from being able to access their phone poles to run fiber to other parts of the city. Which would have been more cost effective than digging and burying a bunch of fiber. So the rollout didn't get very far. But when AT&T Fiber rolled out they matched Google's price of $70 a month for two years and then extended that another year or two before raising the price. By that time Comcast started rolling out their gig speed offering. Hat tip to Google for finally spurring fiber expansion in this area. I enjoyed FIOS in Philly but was forced back into the slow lane when we moved back to TN 10 years ago. We were the first house in our neighborhood to have fiber run to it.
If that's the case then I'm surprised that they don't offer FTTC (Fibre-To-The-Cabinet) which is offered in the UK by Openreach whereby fibre-optic cables only run to a cabinet on the street with datastreams converted over to a pre-existing copper cable but I suppose Google doesn't already have that infrastructure in place and making deals with the likes of AT&T likely wouldn't help them...
I have it and LOVE IT 🤣 $70 1gig up/down. Was down once in 2 years....some kids messed with the main box down the road. It was fixed within 4 hours 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
Perfect strategy when you think about it the higher speeds people have the more internet they will use and in turn, a lot of google services will be used more.
I remember when they switched to fiber in my area. We went from 25mbps speeds to 200mbps for the same price. I used to wait entire days to download games that now take a few hours
I've had google fiber for the last year and it's easily the best internet I've had with very little hassle. Also the superior up time of the service is absolutely fantastic!
Google are actually pretty smart. They threatened the traditional ISPs forcing them to upgrade their stuff so they wouldnt become irrelevant. End result is now much faster internet is in many more homes. Which Google now benefits greatly from increased access to their services and of course the ability to show many more ads. All at what im sure is actually pretty minimal cost to Google
In a rural area where fiber isn't available, the best option has been Verizon's 4G cell network. 50 mb/s currently compared to the max 25 mb/s spectrum provided despite advertised 100 mb/s. They can advertise what ever but they never delivered. Plus the cost saving was huge. Anything for more competition I am in favor of.
I live in an area where fibre is not available and recently got starlink and regularly get 100mb/s download and a decent amount of the time I get over 100mb/s and the upload speeds are between 10-20 mb/s some up to 30
@@cmdr1911 yes the down side of starlink is it expensive to get into and it is more expensive per month them most other ISPs Where I live we could only get 25 download and 0.5-1 up and for me it only $20 more so it was definitely worth it for me I wander now with starlink If ISPs will expand fibre to at least some of the rural communities
@@dogcat823 Unless subsidized under the 2022 infrastructure law, I don’t see fiber optic connections being expanded to rural areas. I also think that 5G connections will make it unnecessary. I live in NYC and switched to a 5G provider and for $50 a month I am getting gigabit up and down (practically like with all gig services lower when it goes through Wi-Fi to my devices). In my building, I can get gigabit FIOS, and two cable companies with down load speeds in the gig range but I chose and love this simple 5G solution.
When QWest had a monopoly in the area I live in, it cost $120 (once you include all the fees) for 20 mbps and that was the fastest you could get. Then a competitor showed up and prices dropped while speeds soared. That’s why I find the consolidation of so many of these corporations concerning. It’s gives them disproportionate power over the market, which ultimately screws over consumers.
Use to work at a major ISP and this is so true. One of our former CEOs went on record saying "...customers don't want faster internet speeds." It was also widely spread info that gigabit speeds were impossible on a cable network. Present day, that same cable network supports gigabit speeds and customers have been taking advantage of it.
They know they're lieing out their asses, they just don't want to spend the money to upgrade their network. They can say whatever the hell they want when they're the only ones with the power to collect the money.
In India, I started my internet journey in Cyber Cafes having Dial-Up connections. Later DSL based broadband was introduced in early 2000s with speeds over 256 Kbps and upto 2 Mbps. Later on in mid 2010s DSL was getting speeds around 40 Mbps. In past 5 years Fiber internet has spread like anything with speeds upto 1 Gbps in less than $50.
A lot of what stalled google was construction due to securing and rewriting easements and permits for either aerial installs or using directional drilling that was expensive, disruptive, time consuming and caused a lot of damage. Once they switched to microtunneling it’s solved a lot of their issues. When the power lines were buried here, it took just over a year start to finish mostly due to planning and legal, with the bulk of the construction lasting about six invasive and disruptive months tearing up both my front and back yards. Google microtunneled at the same time and had the whole neighborhood finished and my home switched over in just a couple weeks, with just one noisy day for construction on the street only. ATT only offered 40/5mbps and spectrum was 400/20mbps, or 900/50 for $200+/m with a $600 install fee. Now at 1000/1000mbps for $70/m, no install fee, they’ve been easy to deal with, good support, reliable and had been waiting years to ditch spectrum.
Indeed, Google refused to do things the way they had been proven to work for decades. They don't know how to do 90% of the stupid things they try to do. Being an ISP is just one more on the list. Microtrenching doesn't work. Literally everyone in the industry knows this, yet Google had to be different. When all their fiber popped out of the street, they simply wrote it off and walked away. (that's KY, btw.) One Touch Make Ready(tm)? Universally bad idea. In the few places where they got their way, they screamed bloody murder when other ISPs used the rule, and touched Google's infrastructure. Here, AT&T's installation took *a day!* They didn't make a mess. They didn't break anything. If you didn't see them working that Friday, you'd never know they had ever been here. Google, on the other hand, took a dozen contractors *6 days* to do the same work. They were loud and disruptive. They cut holes in the pavement. They made a mess of the grass. They left massive mud holes. AND they cut the cable hard line, outside their permitted and marked area. There's no way anyone could miss Google Fiber being installed.
I have Google Fiber in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina and it's been great. It may have pushed AT&T and Spectrum to up their game, but unlike AT&T I have nearly 100% uptime, and consistently high speeds both ways (something Spectrum couldn't match). So at least it works here.
I’m in Kansas City, and google actually offers 5 gig for $125/month. Right now I don’t need those types of speed and am getting by with 1 gig for $70, but a 5x speed increase for a 56% price increase is damn good for the money if I ever had the need
I work for GF doing installs in Utah and we've expanded here a ton in the past 2 years. My company is also building out Des Moines Iowa and Mesa Arizona right now, so it's not dead by any means.
Google was always upfront about their concept with Google Fiber. The notion was always to be the halo product offering to prove the viability of 1 gbps fiber at that time. now, here in Canada anyway, Bell Canada is offering 8 Gbps for a bit over $100 USD and things keep getting faster all the time.. Google really invigorated the speed race in connectivity.
The few large cable/DSL providers had a government granted monopoly and used it to deliver crappy performance at ever increasing prices. This is counter to technology, which either provides magnitudes more at the same price, or reduces the price over time. Cable and DSL providers were going to sit still forever and rake in the money. This is why other countries, such as South Korea or Japan, can boast better internet than we can.
Don't know about Google fiber, but remember the Google airplane that wants to send wireless internet to everyone, don't know what happened to this project?
I live in the K.C. area, Google wont even cover all of K.C.. Big suburbs like independence, and blue springs can't get the service, and this was their flagship market. Even though some areas are less than 3 miles away from fiber enabled areas. Google has no plans to finish their rollout. How do I know? I worked for them on the fiber project.
It's funny how the US is sooo behind Europe when it comes to the internet. 500MB, 700MB and 1GB are very common now. Here In Romania, where I live now, the minimum is 500MB with some exceptions of only 100MB in case of an outdated infrastructure that is getting updated. I'm paying 7 USD per month and just got updated for free from 300 to 500MB with an upload of 250. My provider does not offer the slower 300 anymore. And there is no data limit. I did download sometimes up to 2TB a month next to my streaming and that's totally okay. And we didn't need a Google to come and disrupt the market.
Att just upped their offering of max 1 Gbps to 5Gbps just because a start up fiber provider in central Florida sent mail out to a bunch of people saying they'd offer 10Gbps. So att had it in them the whole time but never cared to offer.
True, even in Austin they're offering 10gbps residential fiber, but AT&T has data caps while Google Fiber is truly unlimited Edit: they don't have data caps for fiber plans. Might try them lol
COVID and all the shift to WFH ironically showed that there is plenty of capacity to handle all that traffic that was no longer internal to the office, meaning ISPs really were holding back and seeking rent off of retail customers.
@@LogicallyAnswered Yeah, but it seems like that's 'their plan all along' when they get all ambitious about changing the world in some way that is usually something nobody wants and is disconnected with reality. Like really, who's gonna adopt a new google 'game changer' at this point, the people who got suckered by Bitconnect back in the day and are now all salty at Logan Paul? It'd take that level of stupid to believe a thing Google says. And yeah, i'm still part of the 25% of Americans stuck at 1mbps on a good day, but usually more like 500kbps for our only service. One day i got 2mbps down from the arch repo, i think the data had a tailwind that day. Today the wind is blasting and videos are buffering at 360p.
I think I figured this out before the ISPs did. I used to sell fiber optic service and there were areas where it was installed already for years but we couldn't sell it yet because of dealing with municipalities and all the cable companies. I thought there's no way Google is gonna go through the pain and expense of making this a real thing. But they sure scared the industry for a second.
This video didn't mention the elephant in the room. That governments blocked the roll out of Google fiber as they were favoring the established companies. It's so tough to go thru the city, state, etc regulations and authorities and the bureaucracies just to establish home internet. Plus some apartments are not allowing Google to install fiber as they have exclusivity contracts with the established companies.
Meanwhile, in Greece we have 3 isp (which in reality is only one but alas) that make bold statements like "fiber to all houses by 2027" or "average speeds of 100mbps or more" yet they never upgrade their infrastructure, they just started giving out fiber and gbit connections and if you're in an area that is "taken" by the other 2 isps you are screwed cause they have no money to create a fiber network, yet they still took the area with the promise that they will. I'm in 2023, with an adsl connection in the middle of the capital with 16mbps(thank god its not 8) and 1mbps upload. Most sites straight up cancel uploads cause they take so long. My internet connection gets disconnected every 30 mins. I wish I knew things would be like this cause I could probably build my own isp with the amount of money ive wasted leaving my pc open to download games
In the words of a one of my favourite tech tubers “competition is good”. Even if Google was only doing it as a bluff, they forced the companies in that space to step up.
my dad runs a small business internet company and spectrum and the like are such predatory companies, my dad has been able to thrive because so much of ohio has yet to put ground cables down in rural areas, so theyre able to give internet to those areas the big businesses basically ignore. It's insane the hoops the put in place though, I had hoped america was supposed to support competition not big businesses being bullies
I just got NEW Google Fiber in San Antonio. They are expanding - laid the optics about 4 months ago, got it connected last week. It is $20 cheaper than Spectrum cable Internet (also gigabit, but not synchronous and 20 to 30 times the latency) and so I switched. I’m going to be on a few vacations soon and still need my home infrastructure switched to 2.5GbE but eventually, I’ll have 2Gbit/s from Google for $100/month.
I live in Louisville Kentucky and everyone was anticipating the new fiber product from Google One of the problems was the contractors they hired to install the fiber there was five or coming up out of the trench es they installed they didn't dig deep enough so when winter hit all the sealant would start coming up in the streets degregating the service.. but you're right about AT&t they started rolling out fiber everywhere but as soon as Google fiber pulled out of Louisville all the expansion stopped lol so we still effectively only have two genuine ISPs in a city the size of about 750,000
I had google fiber for a while. It was very inconvenient. It was only available where local municipalities had a fiber network set up (mine did then the city canceled the project). You were locked into multi year contracts. If you needed help you were put on a month long wait list. It was about $100 a month for just internet, no phone or cable tv. The internet speed was fast tho, my ping in CSGO was 5ms.
I remember when Google Fiber was first announced. My immediate thought was "Finally, someone is pushing crappy ISPs to upgrade their services." Glad to see my hopes panned out!
I was lucky enough to live in one of the first neighborhoods in the 2nd city that actually got google fiber rolled out (and before their micortrenching debacle). But even in the cities that "have" google fiber, only a small percentage of the city can actually get it.
Just got Google Fiber at my house a few months ago. Whole neighborhood switched to Google Fiber with exceptions of a few old people that need cable subscriptions
If I remember correctly some of this was common carrier issues and threats of charging tech companies for traffic on networks. Google Netflix and others were battling a the telcos even though most of the backbones were paid for by tax payers. They were calling telcos bluff
well, it gets quite pricey on the bandwindths going on between likes of google and ISPs :) where fridge size equipment is only one of the connections in between and serves only that connection
The city I lived in paid for all houses to have it, been enjoying it for a few years now. I pay for 100mbps but they mistakenly left 1 port at 1000, I hooked that one to my computer, not complaining......
sadly, ISPs seem to mostly be investing in new construction. there's still a massive amount of already existing homes and businesses that are still stuck with 100 mbps or less DSL
There’s a similar situation happening on the small island where I live, the dominant phone company ISP just offered DSL with maximum 25mbps and would have probably left it like that but a local startup was using multi-point uplink mesh wireless technology up near the tops of trees to provide competitive service (with MUCH higher upstream) without all the initial costs of prewiring for everyone. The telco ISP now offers 50mbps + unlimited which they did not before, and now the local ISP got a grant to do a fiber rollout and suddenly the phone company is promising fiber soon too... but in this case the big phone co will likely be leasing bandwidth from the small ISP’s physical optical uplink connection to the mainland they got the grant for since they cannot get the same kind of subsidy to run their own optical cable... which is not actually good for the redundancy factor, but at least there will be faster wired service. The limiting factor of rolling out the wireless network turned out to be having enough qualified tree climbing installation technicians to satisfy the demand - fiber rollouts are slightly more demanding as far as tech skills and crew numbers needed for baseline infrastructure but also more manageable since it’s standardized and fairly predictable.
I wish they would expand in the cities they're already in. Here in Atlanta, two streets down they have Google Fiber while on my street it's either 600mbps or 1gbps Xfinity or 5mbps AT&T....yes that's right, FIVE mbps.
Google Fiber came to Louisville and I was thinking of moving to where it was available. Then their lines popped out of where they were “buried” in the street by the tar. So they cancelled the whole thing here…..
I have a question: to what degree of a threat would ISPs deem it if their customers became their own gatekeeper to the internet, still reliant upon ISPs for long-haul transit of data but each customer was their own network operator, effectively decoupling the service area from the ISP and having it managed by the users. PS: users would contract out operations of everything to third parties to manage it for them, the users have the ability to replace the contractors at-will. PPS: if users made this thing a cloud as well, they could even have "free" internet service as their network could pay for itself --within reason. PPPS: users could even attempt to make a reasonable expectation of privacy situation if done correctly & with enough distrust of others baked into every fiber of the network's operations.
I’ve gotten so many google fiber ads recently. Not only just on TH-cam and the internet but through mail and even door to door sails people. It’s great that you covered this because I never did any real digging, but was curious. Great vid!
I’m getting 42 Mbps on a test I just did right now. My plan for Spectrum says *up to* 500 mbps but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it go past 50. I’m more sick of their bs technicians coming to my house to do the same basic steps that basically amount to turning it off and on again. All I can do is put up with
If they want fiber to be successful they need to get it in more cities, thats the whole reason I haven’t gotten it, literally just because it’s not available where I live
Success or not, Google's name is soon becoming synonymous with abandoned projects. Its like how Netflix cancels their show after one season. They really should think more about their reputation.
Love your videos but just a suggestion, when showing screenshots articles, the date is not visible for long or sometimes at all. I know the title is key point but the date would also give a good indication of how relavant the data is and persons can better source the article used.
I've had Google fiber in Kansas City for at least 8 years. During that time I've had almost no downtime except for one time when somebody broke a utility pole off and Google had to wait for a new pole and for the power company to do its work before they would allow anyone else to put their equipment back up. Their service is second to none. My 1 GB service is always in the 900-950 megabytes per second, range. The price has never changed. They now offer up to 8 GB per second in packages of one, two, five or eight gigs per second. In my home I have no use for anything over one gigabyte... My music streamers, 4K TVs, smart devices all work at optimum speed. Last summer after a storm I noticed that my fiber line was hanging a bit lower than it should... Almost head height. I forgot the call them about it until I was driving home from work that afternoon. When I got home the crew had just finished correcting the cable issue. In contrast to Time Warner Cable that I had before that, where our internet and cable TV would be down for a few hours to two or three days at least five times a year.
I may have the option of a gigabit cable internet package through Spectrum (Charter) but that is NOT equivalent to fiber gigabit internet. What is TRULY game changing about a real-deal symmetric fiber internet connection is having access to gigabit upload speeds. Being able to download AND upload at such speeds from home is what is truly groundbreaking. The ability to communicate with other machines/services over the internet as if they were connected to your home LAN enables practices that were previously unthinkable. However, for most of us, that ability still remains an unattainable dream that will likely go unfulfilled for a very long time to come.
Idk from what I can tell, anyone who has accessibility to Google Fiber prefers it over any other ISP. You pay $70 every month, that's it, no hidden fees or payment increases. Can't say the same for other ISPs. I love my google fiber (gigabit up and down).
I was always jealous of the USA for having 1gbps speeds! However we got fibre in 2009 connected to our home and it was 100/100, now we have 1gbps as well, so in a way I had glass fibre since day 1 basically but didnt get the major speed till years later
lol dude. The USA lags way behind most other developed countries when it comes to internet speed. I can personally guarantee you that the vast majority of the USA does not have access to fiber internet for x y z reason. There are areas with really great internet and you can go a few streets down and have absolutely atrocious internet speeds. There's a neighborhood not too far from my old high school where they (the school) has a 10 Gbps fiber circuit through AT&T. That nearby neighborhood can get an incomprehensibly fast 0.7 Mbps down and 0.5 Mbps up with AT&T with a 1 year contract. Here in the US, everything is about money. Money talks. Internet providers will do whatever legal or illegal thing they can do to maintain their infrastructure the least amount as possible and to expand or upgrade their foot print the least amount as possible all while providing terrible customer service support. There are exceptions of course, but in general, the largest telecommunications companies: AT&T, Comcast, Charter/Spectrum, Frontier, etc are considered to be absolutely terrible in various forms. In a lot of places, the incumbent internet provider bribes, I mean lobbies, local politicians so that they (ISP) are the only provider in town and/or make it extremely difficult for other providers to attempt to come into town.
@@JJFlores197 tell me about it. A local fiber optic ISP just laid lines up the street and stopped at the edge of my court. My area was in a buildable area and then they changed it last minute, such bs.
@Javier Flores oh I didnt know that haha, we've had fibers since 2009 in my town. However they are still connecting other cities in my country, but most places here have fiber.
Its going to be intresting in my Area. Google Fiber has the Green light to come here and they are promising 10 gig speeds in my market. So it will be interesting to see what Cox communications will try to pull to compete with the speeds.
I still hope that the fiber revolution will still grow. and maybe Google fiber can still become a greater success? I want to see the whole internet reinforced to be stronger for all. More highways and such.
They're expanding now.. AT&T has been fighting them on zoning and now they got access to few more areas. But AT&T offers 5 and 10gbps plans while Google only has 1 and 2gbps. Still better plan and peace of mind and truly unlimited data.
Since we we finaly got basic Google Fiber; we are enjoying over 200 Mps up and download speeds, with few hick-ups abd connected devices! The installation was was fast, smooth, really professional and painless! !(:THANKS GOOGLE;)!
Sadly, the upload bandwidth hasn't improved alongside the download bandwidth. AT&T certainly has, but companies like Charter fiber doesn't. I tried to get Fiber in my area to host a server. Charter was the only option. They advertised 1 gigabit speeds and when I asked if this included upload they said yes, but that was a lie. After getting it installed I learned that while the download speed was around 600 megabits per second (just over half what they promised) the upload speed was just under 1 Megabit! My cell phone had a better upload rate than that! So it appears that most of these companies just invested in the download infrastructure and put no effort into upload except for those who were directly challenging Google like AT&T. The worst part is that because of the monopolies in place there's no way for anyone to compete. What if, instead of giving the telephone lines to a single company in a given area, the cities maintained them and all companies who wanted to use the lines could do so and had to share in the cost of maintenance. Then you wouldn't have to bury fiber because you could use the telephone polls and anyone could start their own ISP like used to be the case in the 90's. We'd see healthy competition pushing prices down and features up.
I had a 300/300 fiber connection just outside of downtown Vancouver through Telus who installed fiber into our 1994 artist studio condo a few years ago and it had true upstream bandwidth but the dirty bastards block port 80 and 443 on the domestic connections so you can’t serve standard web services without paying for the commercial service, unlike the cable co with their 15mbps upstream (300 down) which they left wide open. I could have gotten 1gbps down but the upstream was still physically maxed at about 300mbps due to the type of fiber used within our unit (more durable but not as high bandwidth) so I felt like paying more wouldn’t be worth it just for a bit more potential downstream speed, which I really didn’t need since I had no 4K TVs at all.
@@SchwaAlien You could potentially get around that by using an encrypted VPN connection. At least in that case, since they couldn't inspect the traffic, they'd have no excuse to throttle you.
@@Elliandr presumably most VPNs won’t let you forward port 80 and 443 into your server without quite a bit of money. The one I was using allowed one port that was assigned randomly to be forwarded, so not terribly useful even though it was a paid service.
@@SchwaAlien Depends on the VPN service. I use ProtonVPN. I paid ahead for 3 years and no such restriction appears to exist, but then my upload bandwidth isn't high enough to test your use case. You could ask them ahead of time of course. For servers I'll likely pay a friend to leave it plugged in at his house a short drive away. Seems to me that there should be businesses whose sole model is to have a place to plug a box into the internet that the customers fully owns and manages.
I’m skeptical of the claim that Google fiber was the catalyst behind the speed upgrades by Att and comcast etc. in most of the US there is no choice of internet provider. Only in a few select areas you can have a choice of one cable company or one single fiber optic company, not multiples. In many municipalities it is not allowed to have more than one of each. It’s basically protected monopolies. The biggest pressure on cable companies to upgrade speeds was the threat of high speed internet over wireless hotspots with LTE access nationwide and the advent of people cutting cable tv. Verizon even ditched their fiber optic business ( now called Frontier ) and invested all their money on buying the frequency spectrum for their 5g networks. That’s where the smart money is.
I agree. Verizon brought fiber to my house in 2009 before Google fiber existed. DSL was already way slower than cable. The copper networks were antiquated and it was time to upgrade them.
I thought consumer ISPs were crap here but I must confess the US takes the cake..It is just crazy seeing youtubers doing nice full network setups with great hardware..that end pluggin a DSL line 😵💫 WTF. Here consumer ISPs have been on a speed race for decades recently reaching up to 10gbps. (No I am not buying beyond gigabit yet because there isn't a domestic usecase yet)
Google Fiber bought Webpass in 2015 (I think). I wish they would have went full in with Webpass technology once the ISP's and local municipalities got in their way in particular states/cities
The rollout of fiber has stagnated here over the last years, since Google doesn't pose a threat anymore. AT&T fiber just serves some gated communities around here, cares less about the rest of the city. They probably only serve these gated communities in order to beat a local broadband provider, which is specialized in offering fiber only to privately owned communities. Our cable provider, who serves the rest of the city, has increased the download speed to an acceptable level, but the upload speed is still not comparable with fiber Prices are high and the customer treatment is very bad, also. The root of the problem is that the cable providers just sliced-up the map and serve different areas. So, they can practically do whatever they want. 5G home internet seems to be available in some parts of the city, but there are probably major speed and reliability issues, when the festival is in town. As far as I know, 5G home customers have to yield for the carriers mobile customers. It's a big mess, which can only be solved with real competition or government involvement. There is no Google kicking the ISPs butts around here.
Fiber Rollout in my area (Northern Indiana) is massively kicking up. From less then 10% coverage to 85% of the county covered by fiber, from 100Mb to 2Gig with 5gig coming next summer. With three different providers AT&T, a local telecom company, and the local REMC, with Rumors of more competition in the coming year. Covid drove the need home and the Local telecoms here at least are working hard to meet the demand before someone else undercuts them and steals the customer.
People forget Google is a tech company. Google effectively forced their partners (ISP's) to upgrade their infrastructure for them. Since slow internet speeds was hurting google's brand.
Yep exactly
Makes sense. The USA has some of the slowest broadband speeds in the world.
Literally every person in the world forgets Google's a tech company, damn so true.
@@nasis18 I would assume that is because we implemented that very early on, and later implementers had access to better tech? And replacing slow but working infrastructure is something that the US might be choosing not to do?
Considering how big America is, the fiber rollout for each state/major population took priority first before going for smaller areas. They offered better speeds and allowed monopolies over internet to be bypassed because google had been increasing their search for suitable places to connect.
I love my Google fiber. I pay $70 a month and the price hasn't budged in the few years I've had it. No games like the other providers.
Man I wish. By the time next year rolls around, charter will be charging me $75 for a fraction of that (300 Down/10 up) I experienced my first bump in price a few months ago to $65 from $50…… T-T
What speeds are you getting for $70 a month?
@@lorddoma6637 gigabit
@@gent2205 wow that's good I'm paying $25 with Verizon but only getting 300 mbps.
@Alucard oh my goodness. I had spectrum before and it was the same thing with price hikes and a harassment level of advertisements through the mail, phone calls, and texts. I think I even paid more for the pleasure than I currently do. Then when I tried to discontinue my service they ask why, I told them, and they said that was the industry standard. I was pissed. Never looked back.
This was actually a very smart move.... I couldn't imagine being stuck to 50-60Mbps even in today's state of the internet. Recently my ISP (Spectrum) Bumped my speeds up to 350Mbps from 200 free of charge. I have been seeing quite the uplift even here, in the middle of nowhere. But sadly, no fiber exists here
I get fucking 35…. lol
i get 3 mbps lol
Well, I'm in Los Angeles, like a mile from Universal Studios... still no fiber on my area either. My speed has also increased with Spectrum as well (yay!) but maybe the ISPs need another kick in the pants to keep installing fiber.
Be glad you don't live in Germany. I live in a very rural area, we literally cannot get more then 100mbps. I have 60mbps and have to pay like 50€ per month.
Internet is just awful here.
Eh, 350Mbps is more than most households need. However, the benefit of fiber is you generally get a matching upload to go with your download. I have Cox fiber and get 250/250 and it is pretty awesome.
What's funny is ISP stagnation was only a thing on the consumer side. However, on the datacenter side, speeds are going up and up and costs are dropping by roughly 20% year-on-year since bandwidth and internet speeds are a big cost center for businesses they are constantly trying to optimize and there are many players competing for their business. Consumer ISPs were just able to get away with shitty service because of a lack of competition.
It’s not because of lack of competition, it’s because all involved parties have decided to screw the consumer unanimously…. This has been a growing problem in many industries. The constant hatred and distain towards the “entitled consumer” is getting worse and worse. Same thing is happening in the work place too. Higher ups hate the employees below them and all… It’s terrible
There's monopoly in the "Tier 1 ISP" market too, BUT, yes, at the end, the Business having transit has very good cost. The negotiation that happens between providers too exist here, and they slash prices by a huge %age too if you find something similar from a different provider, and economies of scale applies here too so if your transit requirements are like many Tbit from many provider, you pay really cheap per Mbit. and not to mention, those big players have more direct ways of reaching their destination with stuff like "Peering, IXP", etc. They anyways try to avoid Transit as much as they can, but it's not purely possible.
The cost to an ISP for providing business internet is lower because the businesses provide the internal infrastucture to their users. Also one customer with one bill for a contract is easier than 100 customers with month to month service who create the same amount of network traffic.
The problem intel has
Well, it's also at least in part because there are 10,000 customer wires to be run for every business wire to be run. If I want to connect two data centers, I can pay to have a bundle of fibers run between them for way less than a separate fiber for every house. That's exactly why phone lines and cable tv lines were the primary means of delivering internet. That last little bit from the corner of the block to each house on the block is (or was) very expensive.
I also feel like you left a really crucial detail, in that one of the other reasons why Google Fiber became a thing (even knowing that they won't be economically successful) is due to the whole net-neutrality scandals. The ISP's started targeting video streaming services such as Netflix & Hulu, and even TH-cam ended up getting caught under the crossfire of having to pay the ISP's massive amounts of "fees" for how much 'demand' they were placing on the ISPs. Google being the only tech company that had the power to create their own ISP to make a statement unlike the other companies who essentially never owned their own infrastructure and were all hosted on AWS, decided to do just that: Tell the ISPs that if they don't change their practices on how they treat the streaming services, Google will create their own ISP infrastructure and take out the middle man. Their success with Google Fiber, showed the ISP's that this wasn't just Google talking the talking, but that they could actually deliver on their threats.
I think other streaming platforms should thank Google for it lol.
Glad to see some explanation that makes sense to me, because the ones in the video didn't seem great. Am I the only one? maybe I'm slow lol. They didn't attempt stadia until several years after fiber was rolled out, but at the time I don't think they care about gamer ping or fast Steam downloads. Hangouts is a social media platform, do they really need 4K for that? Classroom doesn't seem intended to make money, though I can see how it might use a lot of bandwidth. I guess I'd like to know some specific stuff that uses bandwidth that's so high that it requires fiber, cuz it doesn't seem like the average home consumer needs it, and I'm not sure what Google planned on offering that definitely needed all these competitor-built fiber connections.
Google fiber is seriously the best thing to happen to my internet. I purposely moved to an area with it because I was sick of Xfinity, century link, etc. They are actually expanding quite rapidly in my area. Constantly seeing neighborhoods having them come through and install the infrastructure. If you have them as an option, DO IT.
CenturyLink are thieves.
Only 2% of public has the option.
I remember when Google Fiber was first out, I was struggling with 2 MBps, which was the best they offered. I desperately wished for google fiber in my area and I hated how slow internet was across America, especially compared to other countries. Nowadays, I am routinely offered Gigabit, and even though they're still wiley with the "up to", I can typically rely on at least 40MBps, which is amazing compared to a decade ago. So if this really was intentional, I thank Google for managing to improve the broken ISPs
But Comcast is still being a piece of shit
40mps ? Lol ADSL was about 10 times slower but it was 20 years ago.
@@heloxiii8894 40 "MBps" son not Mbps
@@tikz.-3738 yeah maybe so, i was very young 20 years ago, i know I didn't understand the difference then
@@heloxiii8894 definitions of measurements don't change. The length of a meter hasn't changed in 20 years. Neither has the size of a bit, a byte a megabit or a megabyte.
I had dial-up way back in 94. Had a whopping 14 kbps. It would take several hours just to connect. Kids these days will never know what actual slow internet is.
😂
Would take 1 week for you to watch this video
And you had to walk in snow, uphill both ways, to get to and from your internet terminal! :)
@@jmtradbr No joke, it probably would have.
@@jmtradbr more than that, unless it was at 144 kbps
This is similar to how Google buying Motorola was also a huge success story, they paid a low price to stop a lot of patent trolling which would have hurt Android massively.
(And even in a very rural part of Denmark, I'm having 1 Gbit fiber internet)
You are using patent troll wrong.
AT&T FIBER
5 GIG speed
$180/mo.
Google buying motorola forced me to Apple and I’ve never been happier with a smartphone.
@@tonycrabtree3416 good for you buddy. Glad you're enjoying your fisher price phone that you paid over a hundred Ben Franklins for. I'll stay in my lane and keep enjoying my 600 dollar android phone.
@@SeanGonzalezMDHEXT Google didn't update my RAZR MAXX HD after 1 year of ownership and basically forced me to buy another phone in 3 short years, so all my apps would work properly. How's that cheaper than owning a 700 dollar phone for years that works perfectly? Anyway, this isn't android v. iOS...it's google doing something shitty in regards to a phone brand. Motorola was the king of cell phones and now? Hot garbage. Anyway, stay triggered!
Part of the problem was government failure across several administrations. The government didn't want to build a fiber infrastructure. Instead, they allowed the telecoms companies to charge their customers to fund this rollout. Surprise: they didn't. The companies were caught pocketing the money. They then were allowed to charge customers yet again to fund the rollout. And guess what? Again they just pocketed the money.
And as you correctly point out, Google understood the negative impact this would have on their business growth serving web based services.
why would the government build a fiber infrastructure for big corporation? I say that is not a failure, they just know they shouldn't.
if they do, shame on them for doing it instead of spending the money for other important things, and if they don't? shame on them coz the corporation is now charging it to the people? . . . typical grumblers.
@@ChibiKeruchan Private corporations didn't build the nation's highways: the government funded that. You gonna complain about that too and ask why the government bothered to do it? Do you enjoy getting it up the ass by corporations? Do they pay you for that or do you just let them do it for free?
@@ChibiKeruchan There are many state own services in Europe. Shocking to an American, I know.
@@ChibiKeruchan the government set aside billions for fiber and gave it companies. That money just somehow disappeared no one has answers, I would do some research onto it if you have the time. Also the govt. is what made electrification across the country possible. Without govt. support that would not have happened. Govt. has subsidized what it deems necessary equipment in the past and it should also do so for the internet for rural America.
Yea I don’t get how you are paid billions and just lose it, like no accountability whatsoever
Google Fiber has been in Irvine CA for years, but AFAIK it's only available in certain large apartment and condo complexes. I guess it wasn't cost-effective for Google to run fiber to individual homes (or even to the curb).
Yeah makes sense
This doesn't make sense to me as a cell site technician. We use a lot of fiber optics because it is A LOT cheaper than copper on runs over a few dozen feet. The expensive bits are the SFPs on either end of the fiber to connect to the switches and routers.
I could see only running fiber to the road and copper to houses. Despite the cable being more expensive, terminating fiber is labor expensive and you don't want it where the customer could mess it up.
This has to do with how it came to Irvine. The Irvine Company made a deal with Google directly(2016) to bring Google Fiber to its properties, and not a deal with the City. I don't know if there is an exclusivity deal, but I imagine there is. Most of Irvine was built/upgraded with underground conduit making it a lot easier to deploy fiber if they want to. SCE is actually using the conduit to give business' 100gig fiber lines.
Something similar occurred in Nashville. Google Fiber basically only exists in a few highrises downtown. Comcast and AT&T blocked them from being able to access their phone poles to run fiber to other parts of the city. Which would have been more cost effective than digging and burying a bunch of fiber. So the rollout didn't get very far. But when AT&T Fiber rolled out they matched Google's price of $70 a month for two years and then extended that another year or two before raising the price. By that time Comcast started rolling out their gig speed offering. Hat tip to Google for finally spurring fiber expansion in this area. I enjoyed FIOS in Philly but was forced back into the slow lane when we moved back to TN 10 years ago. We were the first house in our neighborhood to have fiber run to it.
If that's the case then I'm surprised that they don't offer FTTC (Fibre-To-The-Cabinet) which is offered in the UK by Openreach whereby fibre-optic cables only run to a cabinet on the street with datastreams converted over to a pre-existing copper cable but I suppose Google doesn't already have that infrastructure in place and making deals with the likes of AT&T likely wouldn't help them...
I have it and LOVE IT 🤣 $70 1gig up/down. Was down once in 2 years....some kids messed with the main box down the road. It was fixed within 4 hours 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
I have gigabit though AT&T and it’s only $55
@@ross4 if u wanna flex the price gigabit where i live is like 10$ a month here
@@ross4 Sure, but is the service as good as with Google Fiber? Don't think so...
@@deus_ex_machina_ Maybe. What do you mean? What ways if Google service better I am curious.
@@Bixmy That’s how much it should cost. Google and all the telecom companies are price gouging in the US.
Perfect strategy when you think about it the higher speeds people have the more internet they will use and in turn, a lot of google services will be used more.
I remember when they switched to fiber in my area. We went from 25mbps speeds to 200mbps for the same price. I used to wait entire days to download games that now take a few hours
I've had google fiber for the last year and it's easily the best internet I've had with very little hassle. Also the superior up time of the service is absolutely fantastic!
Google are actually pretty smart. They threatened the traditional ISPs forcing them to upgrade their stuff so they wouldnt become irrelevant. End result is now much faster internet is in many more homes. Which Google now benefits greatly from increased access to their services and of course the ability to show many more ads. All at what im sure is actually pretty minimal cost to Google
In a rural area where fiber isn't available, the best option has been Verizon's 4G cell network. 50 mb/s currently compared to the max 25 mb/s spectrum provided despite advertised 100 mb/s. They can advertise what ever but they never delivered. Plus the cost saving was huge. Anything for more competition I am in favor of.
I live in an area where fibre is not available and recently got starlink and regularly get 100mb/s download and a decent amount of the time I get over 100mb/s and the upload speeds are between 10-20 mb/s some up to 30
@@dogcat823 Thought about star link, the cost over Verizon was just less for decent service. I think it added 30 bucks to my bill.
@@cmdr1911 yes the down side of starlink is it expensive to get into and it is more expensive per month them most other ISPs
Where I live we could only get 25 download and 0.5-1 up and for me it only $20 more so it was definitely worth it for me
I wander now with starlink If ISPs will expand fibre to at least some of the rural communities
@@dogcat823 Unless subsidized under the 2022 infrastructure law, I don’t see fiber optic connections being expanded to rural areas. I also think that 5G connections will make it unnecessary. I live in NYC and switched to a 5G provider and for $50 a month I am getting gigabit up and down (practically like with all gig services lower when it goes through Wi-Fi to my devices). In my building, I can get gigabit FIOS, and two cable companies with down load speeds in the gig range but I chose and love this simple 5G solution.
When QWest had a monopoly in the area I live in, it cost $120 (once you include all the fees) for 20 mbps and that was the fastest you could get. Then a competitor showed up and prices dropped while speeds soared. That’s why I find the consolidation of so many of these corporations concerning. It’s gives them disproportionate power over the market, which ultimately screws over consumers.
Use to work at a major ISP and this is so true. One of our former CEOs went on record saying "...customers don't want faster internet speeds." It was also widely spread info that gigabit speeds were impossible on a cable network. Present day, that same cable network supports gigabit speeds and customers have been taking advantage of it.
They know they're lieing out their asses, they just don't want to spend the money to upgrade their network. They can say whatever the hell they want when they're the only ones with the power to collect the money.
Gigabit DOWN. Up... still in the toilet. (and gig down is asking a lot of the aging technology.)
In India, I started my internet journey in Cyber Cafes having Dial-Up connections. Later DSL based broadband was introduced in early 2000s with speeds over 256 Kbps and upto 2 Mbps. Later on in mid 2010s DSL was getting speeds around 40 Mbps. In past 5 years Fiber internet has spread like anything with speeds upto 1 Gbps in less than $50.
A lot of what stalled google was construction due to securing and rewriting easements and permits for either aerial installs or using directional drilling that was expensive, disruptive, time consuming and caused a lot of damage. Once they switched to microtunneling it’s solved a lot of their issues. When the power lines were buried here, it took just over a year start to finish mostly due to planning and legal, with the bulk of the construction lasting about six invasive and disruptive months tearing up both my front and back yards. Google microtunneled at the same time and had the whole neighborhood finished and my home switched over in just a couple weeks, with just one noisy day for construction on the street only. ATT only offered 40/5mbps and spectrum was 400/20mbps, or 900/50 for $200+/m with a $600 install fee. Now at 1000/1000mbps for $70/m, no install fee, they’ve been easy to deal with, good support, reliable and had been waiting years to ditch spectrum.
Indeed, Google refused to do things the way they had been proven to work for decades. They don't know how to do 90% of the stupid things they try to do. Being an ISP is just one more on the list. Microtrenching doesn't work. Literally everyone in the industry knows this, yet Google had to be different. When all their fiber popped out of the street, they simply wrote it off and walked away. (that's KY, btw.) One Touch Make Ready(tm)? Universally bad idea. In the few places where they got their way, they screamed bloody murder when other ISPs used the rule, and touched Google's infrastructure.
Here, AT&T's installation took *a day!* They didn't make a mess. They didn't break anything. If you didn't see them working that Friday, you'd never know they had ever been here. Google, on the other hand, took a dozen contractors *6 days* to do the same work. They were loud and disruptive. They cut holes in the pavement. They made a mess of the grass. They left massive mud holes. AND they cut the cable hard line, outside their permitted and marked area. There's no way anyone could miss Google Fiber being installed.
I have Google Fiber in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina and it's been great. It may have pushed AT&T and Spectrum to up their game, but unlike AT&T I have nearly 100% uptime, and consistently high speeds both ways (something Spectrum couldn't match). So at least it works here.
I’m in Kansas City, and google actually offers 5 gig for $125/month. Right now I don’t need those types of speed and am getting by with 1 gig for $70, but a 5x speed increase for a 56% price increase is damn good for the money if I ever had the need
I work for GF doing installs in Utah and we've expanded here a ton in the past 2 years. My company is also building out Des Moines Iowa and Mesa Arizona right now, so it's not dead by any means.
Google was always upfront about their concept with Google Fiber. The notion was always to be the halo product offering to prove the viability of 1 gbps fiber at that time. now, here in Canada anyway, Bell Canada is offering 8 Gbps for a bit over $100 USD and things keep getting faster all the time.. Google really invigorated the speed race in connectivity.
Man I remember the days that I had to pay 100/month for 100Mbps Shaw...
The few large cable/DSL providers had a government granted monopoly and used it to deliver crappy performance at ever increasing prices. This is counter to technology, which either provides magnitudes more at the same price, or reduces the price over time. Cable and DSL providers were going to sit still forever and rake in the money. This is why other countries, such as South Korea or Japan, can boast better internet than we can.
Don't know about Google fiber, but remember the Google airplane that wants to send wireless internet to everyone, don't know what happened to this project?
This video needs to be updated.. Gfiber is thriving and opening in multiple new markets now a days
Google Fiber was just launched in West Des Moines, IA in 2022. I'd say it's far from dead.
In every area Google Fiber announced they would launch, existing cable ISPs suddenly increased speeds.
I live in the K.C. area, Google wont even cover all of K.C.. Big suburbs like independence, and blue springs can't get the service, and this was their flagship market. Even though some areas are less than 3 miles away from fiber enabled areas. Google has no plans to finish their rollout. How do I know? I worked for them on the fiber project.
It's funny how the US is sooo behind Europe when it comes to the internet. 500MB, 700MB and 1GB are very common now. Here In Romania, where I live now, the minimum is 500MB with some exceptions of only 100MB in case of an outdated infrastructure that is getting updated. I'm paying 7 USD per month and just got updated for free from 300 to 500MB with an upload of 250. My provider does not offer the slower 300 anymore. And there is no data limit. I did download sometimes up to 2TB a month next to my streaming and that's totally okay. And we didn't need a Google to come and disrupt the market.
Att just upped their offering of max 1 Gbps to 5Gbps just because a start up fiber provider in central Florida sent mail out to a bunch of people saying they'd offer 10Gbps. So att had it in them the whole time but never cared to offer.
True, even in Austin they're offering 10gbps residential fiber, but AT&T has data caps while Google Fiber is truly unlimited
Edit: they don't have data caps for fiber plans. Might try them lol
@@garden-salsa data caps on 10g link? thats new :D
@@B4rr4cudk4 I just checked, for fiber plans they don't have data caps, my bad
I wish they were able to come to Canada, we need the competition up here. Theres a triopoly essentially
COVID and all the shift to WFH ironically showed that there is plenty of capacity to handle all that traffic that was no longer internal to the office, meaning ISPs really were holding back and seeking rent off of retail customers.
I can't imagine how the makers of hits like Google Glass and Stadia failed with GooFi lol.
Maybe they weren’t trying to get a hit. Maybe they were just trying to push forward the space.
@@LogicallyAnswered Yeah, but it seems like that's 'their plan all along' when they get all ambitious about changing the world in some way that is usually something nobody wants and is disconnected with reality.
Like really, who's gonna adopt a new google 'game changer' at this point, the people who got suckered by Bitconnect back in the day and are now all salty at Logan Paul? It'd take that level of stupid to believe a thing Google says.
And yeah, i'm still part of the 25% of Americans stuck at 1mbps on a good day, but usually more like 500kbps for our only service. One day i got 2mbps down from the arch repo, i think the data had a tailwind that day. Today the wind is blasting and videos are buffering at 360p.
You definitely didn’t watch the video
@@LogicallyAnswered I don't understand why Google wouldn't want Stadia to be a hit.
@@2beJT I guess the income wasn't good so they decided to shut it down, plus not everyone has fast internet to play on cloud
I remember when a 56kb dial up modem was the fastest you could get lol
I think I figured this out before the ISPs did. I used to sell fiber optic service and there were areas where it was installed already for years but we couldn't sell it yet because of dealing with municipalities and all the cable companies. I thought there's no way Google is gonna go through the pain and expense of making this a real thing. But they sure scared the industry for a second.
My neighborhood just got Google Fiber infrastructure installed late last year. Certainly doesn’t seem dead.
This video didn't mention the elephant in the room. That governments blocked the roll out of Google fiber as they were favoring the established companies. It's so tough to go thru the city, state, etc regulations and authorities and the bureaucracies just to establish home internet. Plus some apartments are not allowing Google to install fiber as they have exclusivity contracts with the established companies.
Meanwhile, in Greece we have 3 isp (which in reality is only one but alas) that make bold statements like "fiber to all houses by 2027" or "average speeds of 100mbps or more" yet they never upgrade their infrastructure, they just started giving out fiber and gbit connections and if you're in an area that is "taken" by the other 2 isps you are screwed cause they have no money to create a fiber network, yet they still took the area with the promise that they will. I'm in 2023, with an adsl connection in the middle of the capital with 16mbps(thank god its not 8) and 1mbps upload. Most sites straight up cancel uploads cause they take so long. My internet connection gets disconnected every 30 mins. I wish I knew things would be like this cause I could probably build my own isp with the amount of money ive wasted leaving my pc open to download games
Yet still there's so many neighborhoods in the cities that do not have any fiber available.
In the words of a one of my favourite tech tubers “competition is good”.
Even if Google was only doing it as a bluff, they forced the companies in that space to step up.
my dad runs a small business internet company and spectrum and the like are such predatory companies, my dad has been able to thrive because so much of ohio has yet to put ground cables down in rural areas, so theyre able to give internet to those areas the big businesses basically ignore. It's insane the hoops the put in place though, I had hoped america was supposed to support competition not big businesses being bullies
4k in 2012 was monstrously expensive
You got to be kidding me saying 4k was dirt cheap back in 2010-11-12
I just got NEW Google Fiber in San Antonio. They are expanding - laid the optics about 4 months ago, got it connected last week. It is $20 cheaper than Spectrum cable Internet (also gigabit, but not synchronous and 20 to 30 times the latency) and so I switched.
I’m going to be on a few vacations soon and still need my home infrastructure switched to 2.5GbE but eventually, I’ll have 2Gbit/s from Google for $100/month.
I live in Louisville Kentucky and everyone was anticipating the new fiber product from Google One of the problems was the contractors they hired to install the fiber there was five or coming up out of the trench es they installed they didn't dig deep enough so when winter hit all the sealant would start coming up in the streets degregating the service.. but you're right about AT&t they started rolling out fiber everywhere but as soon as Google fiber pulled out of Louisville all the expansion stopped lol so we still effectively only have two genuine ISPs in a city the size of about 750,000
I had google fiber for a while. It was very inconvenient.
It was only available where local municipalities had a fiber network set up (mine did then the city canceled the project).
You were locked into multi year contracts.
If you needed help you were put on a month long wait list.
It was about $100 a month for just internet, no phone or cable tv.
The internet speed was fast tho, my ping in CSGO was 5ms.
I had Google fiber in Kansas City myself and I was not impressed, it was constantly dropping and I never seemed to get more than 300mbps.
I remember when Google Fiber was first announced. My immediate thought was "Finally, someone is pushing crappy ISPs to upgrade their services." Glad to see my hopes panned out!
Got Google Fiber installed two months ago. 2gig down, 1gig up and 2ms response. I'll never go back to the legacy players
I was lucky enough to live in one of the first neighborhoods in the 2nd city that actually got google fiber rolled out (and before their micortrenching debacle). But even in the cities that "have" google fiber, only a small percentage of the city can actually get it.
Just got Google Fiber at my house a few months ago.
Whole neighborhood switched to Google Fiber with exceptions of a few old people that need cable subscriptions
Google fiber is in my area and expanding. It's good. I expect this video to age poorly.
same
If I remember correctly some of this was common carrier issues and threats of charging tech companies for traffic on networks. Google Netflix and others were battling a the telcos even though most of the backbones were paid for by tax payers. They were calling telcos bluff
well, it gets quite pricey on the bandwindths going on between likes of google and ISPs :) where fridge size equipment is only one of the connections in between and serves only that connection
The city I lived in paid for all houses to have it, been enjoying it for a few years now. I pay for 100mbps but they mistakenly left 1 port at 1000, I hooked that one to my computer, not complaining......
Hahaha nice
LOOOL
I always chuckle when I hear about 90' connectivty. Remember sitting waiting to log in via the telephone.
AT&t was probably already sitting on the faster speed tech. The USA has the slowest high speed internet. Google just pushed AT&t to use theirs
I still remember when pre-download GTAV on DSL for whole week 😂
The pain hahaha
im currently trying to share 1.5Mbps from a mobile tower 30km away that doesnt have line of sight, between three people.
it bloody sucks.
sadly, ISPs seem to mostly be investing in new construction. there's still a massive amount of already existing homes and businesses that are still stuck with 100 mbps or less DSL
Sandy Utah is currently installing Google Fiber. Mine has been running for 6 months.
Kansas City is in Missouri, also it’s still expanding. It’s coming to Omaha soon, they have been laying fiber and battling COX.
There’s a similar situation happening on the small island where I live, the dominant phone company ISP just offered DSL with maximum 25mbps and would have probably left it like that but a local startup was using multi-point uplink mesh wireless technology up near the tops of trees to provide competitive service (with MUCH higher upstream) without all the initial costs of prewiring for everyone. The telco ISP now offers 50mbps + unlimited which they did not before, and now the local ISP got a grant to do a fiber rollout and suddenly the phone company is promising fiber soon too... but in this case the big phone co will likely be leasing bandwidth from the small ISP’s physical optical uplink connection to the mainland they got the grant for since they cannot get the same kind of subsidy to run their own optical cable... which is not actually good for the redundancy factor, but at least there will be faster wired service. The limiting factor of rolling out the wireless network turned out to be having enough qualified tree climbing installation technicians to satisfy the demand - fiber rollouts are slightly more demanding as far as tech skills and crew numbers needed for baseline infrastructure but also more manageable since it’s standardized and fairly predictable.
I wish they would expand in the cities they're already in. Here in Atlanta, two streets down they have Google Fiber while on my street it's either 600mbps or 1gbps Xfinity or 5mbps AT&T....yes that's right, FIVE mbps.
i wish this still existed, i only have max of 3.1 megabytes a sec and a minimum of .5
Google Fiber came to Louisville and I was thinking of moving to where it was available.
Then their lines popped out of where they were “buried” in the street by the tar.
So they cancelled the whole thing here…..
I have google fiber. Its amazing. In 2 years that i had it, i had 2 drops. No need to reset router.
They had the cables in the ground right by my house in 2019, but it never was active around my city!
I have a question: to what degree of a threat would ISPs deem it if their customers became their own gatekeeper to the internet, still reliant upon ISPs for long-haul transit of data but each customer was their own network operator, effectively decoupling the service area from the ISP and having it managed by the users.
PS: users would contract out operations of everything to third parties to manage it for them, the users have the ability to replace the contractors at-will.
PPS: if users made this thing a cloud as well, they could even have "free" internet service as their network could pay for itself --within reason.
PPPS: users could even attempt to make a reasonable expectation of privacy situation if done correctly & with enough distrust of others baked into every fiber of the network's operations.
5Gbps for $170? Canadians are drooling up here...
I’ve gotten so many google fiber ads recently. Not only just on TH-cam and the internet but through mail and even door to door sails people.
It’s great that you covered this because I never did any real digging, but was curious. Great vid!
Nicely packaged video
Thanks man!
Sure
True... He makes simple & well detailed v
I’m getting 42 Mbps on a test I just did right now. My plan for Spectrum says *up to* 500 mbps but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it go past 50. I’m more sick of their bs technicians coming to my house to do the same basic steps that basically amount to turning it off and on again. All I can do is put up with
If they want fiber to be successful they need to get it in more cities, thats the whole reason I haven’t gotten it, literally just because it’s not available where I live
Try living in a rural area where your only access to internet is satellite. Absolute misery.
Success or not, Google's name is soon becoming synonymous with abandoned projects. Its like how Netflix cancels their show after one season.
They really should think more about their reputation.
Those faster speeds are hard to find once out of larger cities. Fastest available where I live is 100 mbps and it costs over $150.
Those ISPs that sued to keep Google out are lucky that Google didn't keep their phones off their networks or charge them way more for the phones lol
Verzion started their fiber service in 2005
Love your videos but just a suggestion, when showing screenshots articles, the date is not visible for long or sometimes at all. I know the title is key point but the date would also give a good indication of how relavant the data is and persons can better source the article used.
I appreciate feedback Raahul
I've had Google fiber in Kansas City for at least 8 years.
During that time I've had almost no downtime except for one time when somebody broke a utility pole off and Google had to wait for a new pole and for the power company to do its work before they would allow anyone else to put their equipment back up.
Their service is second to none.
My 1 GB service is always in the 900-950 megabytes per second, range.
The price has never changed.
They now offer up to 8 GB per second in packages of one, two, five or eight gigs per second.
In my home I have no use for anything over one gigabyte... My music streamers, 4K TVs, smart devices all work at optimum speed.
Last summer after a storm I noticed that my fiber line was hanging a bit lower than it should... Almost head height.
I forgot the call them about it until I was driving home from work that afternoon. When I got home the crew had just finished correcting the cable issue.
In contrast to Time Warner Cable that I had before that, where our internet and cable TV would be down for a few hours to two or three days at least five times a year.
I may have the option of a gigabit cable internet package through Spectrum (Charter) but that is NOT equivalent to fiber gigabit internet. What is TRULY game changing about a real-deal symmetric fiber internet connection is having access to gigabit upload speeds. Being able to download AND upload at such speeds from home is what is truly groundbreaking. The ability to communicate with other machines/services over the internet as if they were connected to your home LAN enables practices that were previously unthinkable. However, for most of us, that ability still remains an unattainable dream that will likely go unfulfilled for a very long time to come.
In Denmark a 1gbit up and down cost about 40 USD per month
It is 2023 in Brussels, and still no fibre no sight of it
I remember when RCN was going to "wire the nation," but didn't the company just get sold? Customers I knew complained of customer service problems.
It was never about the money for Google, it was about sending a message....
Idk from what I can tell, anyone who has accessibility to Google Fiber prefers it over any other ISP. You pay $70 every month, that's it, no hidden fees or payment increases. Can't say the same for other ISPs. I love my google fiber (gigabit up and down).
I was always jealous of the USA for having 1gbps speeds! However we got fibre in 2009 connected to our home and it was 100/100, now we have 1gbps as well, so in a way I had glass fibre since day 1 basically but didnt get the major speed till years later
lol dude. The USA lags way behind most other developed countries when it comes to internet speed. I can personally guarantee you that the vast majority of the USA does not have access to fiber internet for x y z reason. There are areas with really great internet and you can go a few streets down and have absolutely atrocious internet speeds. There's a neighborhood not too far from my old high school where they (the school) has a 10 Gbps fiber circuit through AT&T. That nearby neighborhood can get an incomprehensibly fast 0.7 Mbps down and 0.5 Mbps up with AT&T with a 1 year contract.
Here in the US, everything is about money. Money talks. Internet providers will do whatever legal or illegal thing they can do to maintain their infrastructure the least amount as possible and to expand or upgrade their foot print the least amount as possible all while providing terrible customer service support. There are exceptions of course, but in general, the largest telecommunications companies: AT&T, Comcast, Charter/Spectrum, Frontier, etc are considered to be absolutely terrible in various forms. In a lot of places, the incumbent internet provider bribes, I mean lobbies, local politicians so that they (ISP) are the only provider in town and/or make it extremely difficult for other providers to attempt to come into town.
@@JJFlores197 tell me about it. A local fiber optic ISP just laid lines up the street and stopped at the edge of my court. My area was in a buildable area and then they changed it last minute, such bs.
@Javier Flores oh I didnt know that haha, we've had fibers since 2009 in my town. However they are still connecting other cities in my country, but most places here have fiber.
Luck you.
I'm still stuck at 200KB/s network speed
Google attempting to not shutdown division challenge
*impossible*
Its going to be intresting in my Area. Google Fiber has the Green light to come here and they are promising 10 gig speeds in my market. So it will be interesting to see what Cox communications will try to pull to compete with the speeds.
I still hope that the fiber revolution will still grow. and maybe Google fiber can still become a greater success? I want to see the whole internet reinforced to be stronger for all. More highways and such.
Google Fiber only came to a very small part of Austin. Most of the city never got it.
True
They're expanding now.. AT&T has been fighting them on zoning and now they got access to few more areas. But AT&T offers 5 and 10gbps plans while Google only has 1 and 2gbps. Still better plan and peace of mind and truly unlimited data.
Had it when I lived in Austin for years, it's was a great service.
Since we we finaly got basic Google Fiber;
we are enjoying over 200 Mps up and download speeds, with few hick-ups abd connected devices!
The installation was was fast, smooth, really professional and painless!
!(:THANKS GOOGLE;)!
Sadly, the upload bandwidth hasn't improved alongside the download bandwidth. AT&T certainly has, but companies like Charter fiber doesn't. I tried to get Fiber in my area to host a server. Charter was the only option. They advertised 1 gigabit speeds and when I asked if this included upload they said yes, but that was a lie. After getting it installed I learned that while the download speed was around 600 megabits per second (just over half what they promised) the upload speed was just under 1 Megabit! My cell phone had a better upload rate than that!
So it appears that most of these companies just invested in the download infrastructure and put no effort into upload except for those who were directly challenging Google like AT&T.
The worst part is that because of the monopolies in place there's no way for anyone to compete.
What if, instead of giving the telephone lines to a single company in a given area, the cities maintained them and all companies who wanted to use the lines could do so and had to share in the cost of maintenance. Then you wouldn't have to bury fiber because you could use the telephone polls and anyone could start their own ISP like used to be the case in the 90's. We'd see healthy competition pushing prices down and features up.
I had a 300/300 fiber connection just outside of downtown Vancouver through Telus who installed fiber into our 1994 artist studio condo a few years ago and it had true upstream bandwidth but the dirty bastards block port 80 and 443 on the domestic connections so you can’t serve standard web services without paying for the commercial service, unlike the cable co with their 15mbps upstream (300 down) which they left wide open. I could have gotten 1gbps down but the upstream was still physically maxed at about 300mbps due to the type of fiber used within our unit (more durable but not as high bandwidth) so I felt like paying more wouldn’t be worth it just for a bit more potential downstream speed, which I really didn’t need since I had no 4K TVs at all.
@@SchwaAlien You could potentially get around that by using an encrypted VPN connection. At least in that case, since they couldn't inspect the traffic, they'd have no excuse to throttle you.
@@Elliandr presumably most VPNs won’t let you forward port 80 and 443 into your server without quite a bit of money. The one I was using allowed one port that was assigned randomly to be forwarded, so not terribly useful even though it was a paid service.
@@SchwaAlien Depends on the VPN service. I use ProtonVPN. I paid ahead for 3 years and no such restriction appears to exist, but then my upload bandwidth isn't high enough to test your use case. You could ask them ahead of time of course.
For servers I'll likely pay a friend to leave it plugged in at his house a short drive away. Seems to me that there should be businesses whose sole model is to have a place to plug a box into the internet that the customers fully owns and manages.
If it was so successful why did the CEO step down?
I’m skeptical of the claim that Google fiber was the catalyst behind the speed upgrades by Att and comcast etc. in most of the US there is no choice of internet provider. Only in a few select areas you can have a choice of one cable company or one single fiber optic company, not multiples. In many municipalities it is not allowed to have more than one of each. It’s basically protected monopolies. The biggest pressure on cable companies to upgrade speeds was the threat of high speed internet over wireless hotspots with LTE access nationwide and the advent of people cutting cable tv. Verizon even ditched their fiber optic business ( now called Frontier ) and invested all their money on buying the frequency spectrum for their 5g networks. That’s where the smart money is.
I agree. Verizon brought fiber to my house in 2009 before Google fiber existed. DSL was already way slower than cable. The copper networks were antiquated and it was time to upgrade them.
I thought consumer ISPs were crap here but I must confess the US takes the cake..It is just crazy seeing youtubers doing nice full network setups with great hardware..that end pluggin a DSL line 😵💫 WTF. Here consumer ISPs have been on a speed race for decades recently reaching up to 10gbps. (No I am not buying beyond gigabit yet because there isn't a domestic usecase yet)
I could care less about what big ISPs offer. None of them serve my address.
Google Fiber bought Webpass in 2015 (I think). I wish they would have went full in with Webpass technology once the ISP's and local municipalities got in their way in particular states/cities
"If you're not familiar with dial-up" making me feel old.
The rollout of fiber has stagnated here over the last years, since Google doesn't pose a threat anymore. AT&T fiber just serves some gated communities around here, cares less about the rest of the city. They probably only serve these gated communities in order to beat a local broadband provider, which is specialized in offering fiber only to privately owned communities. Our cable provider, who serves the rest of the city, has increased the download speed to an acceptable level, but the upload speed is still not comparable with fiber Prices are high and the customer treatment is very bad, also. The root of the problem is that the cable providers just sliced-up the map and serve different areas. So, they can practically do whatever they want. 5G home internet seems to be available in some parts of the city, but there are probably major speed and reliability issues, when the festival is in town. As far as I know, 5G home customers have to yield for the carriers mobile customers. It's a big mess, which can only be solved with real competition or government involvement. There is no Google kicking the ISPs butts around here.
Fiber Rollout in my area (Northern Indiana) is massively kicking up. From less then 10% coverage to 85% of the county covered by fiber, from 100Mb to 2Gig with 5gig coming next summer. With three different providers AT&T, a local telecom company, and the local REMC, with Rumors of more competition in the coming year. Covid drove the need home and the Local telecoms here at least are working hard to meet the demand before someone else undercuts them and steals the customer.