> GFiber service will be available in parts of the metro area later this year. Nevada residents and business owners will be able to choose between Google Fiber’s plans with prices that haven’t changed since 2012 and speeds up to 8 gig.<p>The author of the press release is under the mistaken belief that unchanged broadband pricing is a good thing.<p>From the linked price page:<p>1gig: $70/mo<p>2gig: $100/mo<p>5gig: $125/mo<p>8 gig: $150/mo<p>There was a time I would have been insanely jealous of any fiber option at all here in the Bay Area, and I know how hard it is to find fiber anywhere in the US, even still here in many parts of the Bay.<p>But when the fiber actually arrives, it becomes clear how cheap it is to provide.<p>When AT&T finally rolled fiber to my house in ~2019 it was $80/mo for 1gig symmetrical.<p>And you know AT&T's shareholders are still making money hand over fist at that price, because today, I pay Sonic $50 per month for 10gig symmetrical.
Speaking as a former Google Fiber software engineer, I'm honestly surprised this is still around.<p>In 2017, basically all the Google Fiber software teams went on hiatus (mine included). I can't speak to the timing or rationale but my <i>theory</i> is that the Google leadership couldn't decide if the future of Internet was wired or wireless and a huge investment in wired may be invalidated if the future Internet was wired so rather than guessing wrong, the leadership simply decided to definitely lose by mothballing the whole thing.<p>At that time, several proposed cities were put on hiatus, some of which had already hired local people. In 2019, Google Fiber exited Louisville, KY, paying penalties for doing so [1]. That really seemed like the end.<p>I also speculated that Google had tried or was trying to sell the whole thing. I do wonder if the resurrection it seems to have undergone is simply a result of the inability to find a buyer. I have no information to suggest that one way or the other.<p>There were missteps along the way. A big example was the TV software that was originally an acquisition, SageTV [2]. Somebody decided it would be a good idea to completely rewrite this Java app into Web technologies on an embedded Chrome instance on a memory-limited embedded CPU in a set-top box. Originally planned to take 6 months, it took (IIRC) 3.5+ years.<p>But that didn't actually matter at all in the grand scheme of things because the biggest problem and the biggest cost was physical network infrastructure. It is incredibly expensive and most of the issues are hyperlocal (eg soil conditions, city ordinances) as well as decades of lobbying by ISPs of state and local governments to create barriers against competition.<p>[1]: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/google-fiber-exits-louisville-pays-city-3-8m-to-clean-up-the-mess-it-left" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/googl...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/06/google-buys-up-sagetv-to-bolster-google-tv-with-useful-features/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/06/googl...</a>
Back when I lived in Ukraine in 2021, I got our family a 1Gbps fiber connection.<p>We lived on the edge of the city, and it was insanely hard to find a provider.<p>I knew internet was super cheap in Ukraine and was going to leave Ukraine in the following years, so getting a 1Gbps fiber as an all-time-at-home person was a great idea.<p>I ended up finding 2 providers that had fiber, and 1 of them had 1Gbps.<p>I was super happy to have symmetrical 1Gbps for $15 a month for the time I could spend there.<p>Here, in Vancouver, I am happy to have 250Mbps/15Mbps for $40 per month.
Well that's good, but they haven't even installed GFiber in cities they're in right now such as Omaha and Chicago etc. It's surprising how many places still don't have Fiber, and you can check your area with FCC's website: <a href="https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home" rel="nofollow">https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home</a>
Google Fiber was announced for Austin in 2013, and 12 years later it's still not available at my Austin address. I have used AT&T Fiber for as many years and it works great (currently at 2G symmetrical for $105/m).
A common complaint I hear at defcon and other cons in vegas is that the hotel internet is terrible.<p>Hopefully good internet service comes as a result of this?
I've had Google Fiber for almost a decade now. It's fine enough. I've had weird issues in the past though and it's been rather unfriendly when it comes to setting up things like a VPN on a router -- though this was many years ago. Perhaps things have changed?<p>I also had an issue 6 or so years ago where Google Fiber would block sites that did not have both an IPv6 and IPv4 address.<p>Nonetheless, service has been fine otherwise. I'd say Google Fiber has probably been the second best ISP I have used despite my ever slowly growing hatred of all things Google.
My parents have had Google Fiber since 2011 or 2012. It's been a joy. The uptime has been great and the price has pretty much remained the same for 1Gig. In Los Angeles I pay $90/mo for 100mbps Spectrum connection which drops once a week and has gone up from $40 to $90/mo in just under 2 years. Worst of all is Spectrum has complete monopoly and I have nowhere else to go.
Can’t come soon enough. I pay over $200/mo for Cox here in LV (including a surcharge for “unlimited data”) and still get 20% of advertised speeds at 7pm and nastygrams when I upload a 2TB photography backup.<p>Cox and CenturyLink are monopolistic criminals and should receive corporate death penalties for their misconduct.
I cant shake a feeling that above 50pM/1gig, it doesnt matter how fast residential Internet is. Back when WFH really meant FTPing a whole file down, working on it, and then FTPing it back up, sure. But gdrive and OneDrive and so on all seem quite happy to only send you the blocks you are working on, Teams/Zoom uses remarkably little bandwidth, and games distribution seems to use a combination of CDN and JIT downloads, at least after the initial 80G download for the first user. I know this is n=1 sampling, but my house of 5 was merrily WFH-ing on 100M for ages with nary a whimper. Does it really matter, in 2025?<p>What does seem to matter is variability: latency and jitter, and the stability of the network inside the house (eg wifi contention). The pipe is the least of one's worries, it would seem.
I remember reading about Google Fiber in the news 10+ years ago. At that time the idea of having a multi-gigabit internet connection at home felt very exciting and futuristic.
Today, fiber at home is almost a given in many countries. I mean, it is good that LA residents will have access to fast internet. But this is commodity now. I don't get it why is this in the news.
The comments here are interesting.<p>Mesa AZ signed a deal with Google in 2022 and I got fiber installed last summer. It was all new fiber in the streets in my neighborhood too. And I still see lots of constructions signs for it around. Definitely seem to still be growing. Two other new competitors are also in the area.
I've got a place in Vegas that's presently served by CenturyLink. It has 1G/1G symmetrical fiber at a guaranteed fixed price of $65/mo. 8G is appealing. So far I haven't seen a map or a timeline of where/when. I signed up for status emails from Google over a year ago.
I have 2gig symmetrical from a non-Google provider that works fine in an (at least) second tier city for $100/mo.<p>It seemed really trivial to install, I don't think there's an excuse to not have it everywhere than can have a telephone line.
Meanwhile; in the world capital of tech, I’m paying Cox for lousy coaxial over nearly 30 year old cable because nobody will pay to lay a fiber on my street (not even neighborhood… street)
I love the photo of the information sign "GFiber - Work being performed by ... Permit # ... Phone numbers:"<p>All the relevant information on one sign.
Since Google made a big donation, maybe Trump will clear the way for google to plow through the red tape to create more high-speed internet competition, which should lower the price for many Americans. I doubt it will happen, but one can dream.