Square Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 After a careful review, today we’re very happy to announce that we will build our ultra high-speed network in Kansas City, Kansas. We’ve signed a development agreement with the city, and we’ll be working closely with local organizations, businesses and universities to bring a next-generation web experience to the community. I'd be interested in hearing any huddlers that will get this service in there area. 100 times faster than the current internet speeds sounds pretty awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wiegie Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 That sucks--I was hoping that Grand Rapids might get it. (seriously) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennykravitz2004 Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 What is the exact speed we're talking about here? I'm on Charter internet, and what started out as "up to 10MB" is now (free of charge) "up to 20MB". Seriously - how much more speed do I really need? Are we looking at true gigabit? Terrabit? What does 100x faster mean? I like how Google has drummed interest with absolutely no facts about what they're really doing here... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Square Posted March 31, 2011 Author Share Posted March 31, 2011 What is the exact speed we're talking about here? I'm on Charter internet, and what started out as "up to 10MB" is now (free of charge) "up to 20MB". Seriously - how much more speed do I really need? Are we looking at true gigabit? Terrabit? What does 100x faster mean? I like how Google has drummed interest with absolutely no facts about what they're really doing here... We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennykravitz2004 Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 TY. I would have thought something like this would be blaring from every corner of their PR/Marketing efforts. Gigabit/fiber connections directly to my home?!!?! I'm sporting a chub just thinking about that... The implications this can have are HUGE. In theory, I could (maybe..?? probably..??) have a web server in my basement without needing a T1 line. More home businesses? Huge improvements in video conferencing... more telecommuters? This aside from the probably-typical uses of downloading HD movies in 3 seconds... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flemingd Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 The implications this can have are HUGE. In theory, I could (maybe..?? probably..??) have a web server in my basement without needing a T1 line. More home businesses? Huge improvements in video conferencing... more telecommuters? This aside from the probably-typical uses of downloading HD movies in 3 seconds... You're getting 10 Mbps from Charter, how is a T1 relevant? This kind of bandwidth has nothing to do with work, productivity, or revenue. It's about media, period. Streaming apps, movie/song downloads, and IPTV are the drivers. The truly awesome thing is that it doesn't make one bit of difference (pun intended) what your FTTC capacity is if both the entire upsteam isn't clear (never) and your apps can't handle it (almost none can) - they even mention one of the things they hope come out of this is development of apps to handle it. This is a Google caching play, nothing more. It's a good one, but a niche play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cameltosis Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 my goodness. with speeds like this my daily porn break will take 5 seconds instead of 10. my day just opened up big time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennykravitz2004 Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 You're getting 10 Mbps from Charter, how is a T1 relevant? This kind of bandwidth has nothing to do with work, productivity, or revenue. It's about media, period. Streaming apps, movie/song downloads, and IPTV are the drivers. The truly awesome thing is that it doesn't make one bit of difference (pun intended) what your FTTC capacity is if both the entire upsteam isn't clear (never) and your apps can't handle it (almost none can) - they even mention one of the things they hope come out of this is development of apps to handle it. This is a Google caching play, nothing more. It's a good one, but a niche play. Point being homes could now have access to larger bandwidth. Having a server which can handle thousands, hundreds of thousands of simultaneous connections ain't happening over my Charter connection. Yes, I'm presuming up and down stream would be able to have a larger pipe to run on. I would have to believe the upstream would be much greater than cable. Considering fiber (and/or groups of fiber) is what most backbones are (excluding sat connections), and our slower cable and copper phone lines tie to, having a larger pipe could allow more home uses crossover into business uses. As I stated, and agree with your assessment, the typical user would not have more of a need for this type of bandwidth. However, again, as I previously mentioned, the possibility of this opening up new avenues to home users could be HUGE. When Alexander Graham Bell "invented" the telephone, did he forsee his "invention" someday morphing into a cell phone as we know it today? Or that his "invention" would lead to what we now have as the internet (thank you Al Gore)? I see this as potentially putting more pressure on companies like AT&T and Charter to start offering more/better connection speeds. With higher connection speeds, I should now have more capabilities to do things I could not not previously do. I sense you do not agree... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savage Beatings Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Any competition with cable monopolies is welcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flemingd Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 I see this as potentially putting more pressure on companies like AT&T and Charter to start offering more/better connection speeds. This won't make much difference. AT&T, Charter, etc aren't in the free business. They are doing all they can to improve service speeds in most markets within a target profitability scope - which is the business model for 99% of businesses. They aren't dragging their heels making it happen for giggles, but this kind of infrastructure isn't cheap and until someone coughs up more money, or shows a willingness to do so, it' s not going to happen. With higher connection speeds, I should now have more capabilities to do things I could not not previously do. I sense you do not agree... Selectively speaking, yes you could. Most users won't, and not everything you do will be positively impacted. The connection to your curb is about 1/100th of the total connection you have to "the internet" and unless that whole path is clear then your FTTC connection isn't going to have the impact you think it will. That's the caching play - putting the content in a place that you CAN leverage that entire capacity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennykravitz2004 Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 This won't make much difference. AT&T, Charter, etc aren't in the free business. They are doing all they can to improve service speeds in most markets within a target profitability scope - which is the business model for 99% of businesses. They aren't dragging their heels making it happen for giggles, but this kind of infrastructure isn't cheap and until someone coughs up more money, or shows a willingness to do so, it' s not going to happen. Selectively speaking, yes you could. Most users won't, and not everything you do will be positively impacted. The connection to your curb is about 1/100th of the total connection you have to "the internet" and unless that whole path is clear then your FTTC connection isn't going to have the impact you think it will. That's the caching play - putting the content in a place that you CAN leverage that entire capacity. I think we agree here and are on the same side of the fence... I probably just made a big leap from A to Z, without providing much of my thoughts about the other 24 letters in between. Your mention of profitability is obviously key here. I can't recall who has Deion's quote of "if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense". I love that one. Back on point though, I did say "potentially" putting pressure on other providers to do the same. The way I see it, most consumers don't care, or, probably more accurately, only hear what they want. They know others are getting fiber optic, so "where's mine"? As for the the second point, I purposefully did not mention throttling, as most ISPs all, if not all ISPs, have this as common practice. Charter has rolled out 60Mb download speeds here locally. Sounds awesome, but I really don't need that. And I could (allegedly) handle it with my DOCSYS 3.0 Motorola modem. My point is, like fiber, it's there if I want it or decide I need it. It's the possibility that I can have a true gigabit speed at some point with fiber. Just like everything else, price point or consumer interest and needs, hardware upgrades (another consideration), etc all factor into this. Cost of a monster T1 line, or a combo of several cable lines, etc are all prohibitive. The idea that fiber can help mitigate that gap is what excites me. Case in point, I'm too far from the demarc for my phone company to offer me nothing more than 1.4Mb download speeds! Switching to cable gets my speed up to 20Mb (for the plan I'm on). Today, nobody (or 0.01% of the population) has interest in running a home network with a web server. My 12 year old nephew is already turned on to the IT world... who's to say things will be remotely close to today's needs in 20 years? 30 years ago, my brother and I were posting to online BB's via dial-up modems. That's as close to online gaming as we had back then... LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flemingd Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Less about throttling, more about the combination of over-subscription + apps that don't effectively use bandwidth. You could argue that over-subscription is passive throttling but it's more of a business management model. Apps and Internet behavior are by far the biggest constraining factor in actual usage and why the vast majority of people buying home broadband are getting < 10% usage rates. http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/...he-internet.ars The list above might make it seem that only half of Canada's responding ISPs use filtering, but a bare list takes no account of size. Bell, Rogers, and Shaw are three enormous ISPs that together dwarf everyone else on the list, and all three appear to be throttling traffic. What kind of traffic? Peer-to-peer, of course. There's a ton of crap in the article and related issues/responses, the main point is that what's throttled is a very small % of all potential traffic. This is actually why P2P/torrents were created, to leverage available bandwidth. 5 years ago you used to do a "bandwidth" test that would give you 800 kbps on a T1 connection but you could load up Iperf and push the full line rate. Why? The app/methodology doing the work. Years ago I worked a customer escalation that had been going on for 2 weeks like this. He kept telling our support staff "I'm not getting what I paid for". I talked him through downloading a UDP app and turning it on - withinin 30 seconds he said "oh, that's interesting, clearly I'm getting my full capacity from you" and the ticket was closed. DOCSYS is super and all, but FTP is still FTP. It's like putting a 2 cylinder on the Autobahn - no matter how many lanes, no matter the lack of legal restriction, the car is only designed to be so fast. They are getting caught up, but apps are nowhere near able to consistenly handle broadband usage effectively. My intent here isn't to bust on you, just point out that while this sounds neat, the idea of "1 Gbps of Internet" is pretty laughable. And if they do end up with 50k clients all truly using gigabits of traffic I'll be interested to hear their perspectives on net neutrality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matt770 Posted April 2, 2011 Share Posted April 2, 2011 Lucky bastards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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