Google Fiber

[Novocaine]

Google Fiber starts with a connection speed 100 times faster than today's average broadband.

fiber.google.com

I wonder how long it will take for it to come to Australia (if it ever will).

[TheFugitive]

Gah, I was just about to make this exact topic.

• 1Gb/s connection (125MB, I think) and no data caps on their 'basic paid' plan of 70USD/month, plus you get 1TB on Google Drive and their modem.
• 120USD/month gets you all the above PLUS a Nexus 7 tablet, a set-top box and a 2TB 'storage box'. Why the set-top box? Why, so you can access TV on your tablet or HDTV such as Animal Planet, Discovery, Comedy Channel and another 150+ channels.
• Interested, but at the moment, 70USD a month is too much? What about free? Yes, free*, but you're limited up to 5Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speed. On the bright side, still no data caps.

*$300 construction fee, payable over 12 months

On a scale of 1-10 for jealousy, I'm about a 27.

[jambo]

At the moment it's only in Kansas City, so it'll be a long time before it ever comes to Australia.

Plus with the NBN, they probably won't even bother.

[exe3]

At the moment it's only in Kansas City, so it'll be a long time before it ever comes to Australia.

Plus with the NBN, they probably won't even bother.

Unless Liberal get in. :dodgy:

[SaNE]

Plus with the NBN, they probably won't even bother.

It doesn't stop them doing a trial in a new development (I'd rather Google put FTTP in than Telstra, as is with the Telstra 'Smart Communities'), however with the wholesale requirement of new networks which rival the NBN and the higher costs of bandwidth; It's a rather high expenditure which would be better spent building the networks in another country.

[Canguro]

It is quite incredible... Is there fine print somewhere? Are they going to overlay advertising on top of EVERYTHING? What will they do with all the data they mine from this? In other words, how are they actually going to make money from this?

[Mekon]

how are they actually going to make money from this?

You'll note that their deployment relies on getting a critical mass of users in any given area before they roll anything out. Economies of scale (and population density).

[Yurtles]

Man I hope this turns out to be a tremendous success and that the Labor party stays in power next federal election. The potential for Google to do new and interesting things with a speedy network they wholly own could easily translate into amazing services for us here on the NBN.

[HolyBumble]

Plus with the NBN, they probably won't even bother.

Google Agrees

[Mekon]

Plus with the NBN, they probably won't even bother.

Google Agrees

It's pretty valid, the existing setup of the FTTH hardware is that each fibre pair can transmit 2.4Gbps. The caveat is that the splitter may serve many homes.

The technology being used in the FTTH portion of the NBN is GPON, gigabit passive optical networking. In GPON a single fibre pair carries 2.4Gbps to an optical splitter, the node that splits this signal into a number of individual fibres, one pair per home. If there are no more than 24 homes served by that node you can absolutely guarantee that they could all get 100Mbps simultaneously, if there were sufficient capacity in the backhaul.

Once you go above 24 your theoretical maximum drops below 100Mbps but also you have to share the optical power among ever more fibres and that limits the distance over which you serve homes from that node.

However, and this is the key point, the nature of the technology is such that the full 2.4Gbps of bandwidth is available on each and every one of those fibre pairs. No matter how many of them there are. They just cannot all get 1Gbps at the same time.

(...)

With only 2.4Gbps in the shared fibre only two users on the node would be able to get the full 1Gpbs simultaneously. However in practice it would be very unlikely that every user with a one gig service would demand the full bandwidth. "the chances of this happening by the millisecond are very small," Brooks said.. "And by that stage you'd be limited by backhaul capacity."

He added that if demand warranted it would be a simple matter to install another splitter in the node and connect another fibre pair into the backhaul network "They don't make cables with one one fibre pair."

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analy ... on?start=1

Why would Google compete directly with a national provider?

It rather puts paid to all the vacuous Liberal posturing about the NBN, IMO.

edit: As for the data caps... they have the advantage of living in a country where they have national access to most of the content they want. We have to hop overseas for access to said data and the underwater cables owners don't give their bandwidth away for free, unsurprisingly.

[flabcab]

Labor party stays in power next federal election.

As much as I am excited about the NBN and without trying to start a political debate, please no all labor has managed in it's last two terms is to spend a lot of money and achieve very little.

[Yurtles]

Oh please. Our political parties are like comparing apples with the exact same apples only with a different sticker on them. It's not like one party plans to adopt communism while the other wants to invade New Zealand.

The NBN is something real rather than the usual "less taxes and better roads" spiel. There isn't a (good) reason in the world to not support the party wanting to build it.

[DXPetti]

At the moment it's only in Kansas City, so it'll be a long time before it ever comes to Australia.

Plus with the NBN, they probably won't even bother.

Unless Liberal get in. :dodgy:

Liberals have stated the NBN is too far in to scrap, even the NBN's biggest opposer Malcolm Turnbull

[diamondd]

Oh please. Our political parties are like comparing apples with the exact same apples only with a different sticker on them. It's not like one party plans to adopt communism while the other wants to invade New Zealand.

The NBN is something real rather than the usual "less taxes and better roads" spiel. There isn't a (good) reason in the world to not support the party wanting to build it.

not a bad analogy but I don't know of any apples as undesirable as the Liberal OR Labor party.

sorry, but there are potentially hundreds of good reasons to not support the party wanting to build it. I think you'd have to be pretty short sighted to vote for any particular party based on a single policy.

[Yurtles]

No, not really. Like I said, their policies are like comparing apples with apples, you're virtually guaranteed that tomorrow is going to be pretty much just like today regardless of who is in power - we're not ever going to be going to war or coverting to a religious fundamentalist state just because one certain party gets elected. The NBN is the biggest extreme I've seen from either party in my entire voting life, it'd be pretty short sighted NOT to vote for a party considering just that single policy.