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from the non-soluble-fiber-is-good-for-digestion dept.
Fluffeh writes:
"Google has officially invited 34 cities in nine metro areas to become the next batch of the Google Fiber rollout.
Google said it 'genuinely would like to build in all of these cities,' but that the complexities of deploying networks may not allow it. 'During this process, we will work with each city to map out in detail what it would look like to build a new fiber-optic network there,' Google said. 'The most important part of this teamwork will be identifying what obstacles might pop up during network construction — and then working together to find the smoothest path around those obstacles. Some might be easy, some might take some creative thinking or a few months to iron out, and in some cases there might be such local complexities that we decide it's not the right time to build Google Fiber there.'"
(Score: 2) by dmc on Monday February 24 2014, @09:57PM
It's not crazy- it's calculated. Google wants as much control as possible. People who might be able to succeed comercially utilizing low bandwidth servers hosted at residences are a threat to Google's bottom $$ line. Sure, they may be outliers, but so were Page and Brin when they were starting out. Being able to make overly broad restrictions in the ferengi print, and then selectively enforce, or worse yet- cripple the ability of innovators to get investment capital for great ideas because of the murky legality of the ferengi print is cold-blooded calculation on their part. You are right, there is nothing crazy about it. Just criminal, since it satisfies the three criteria of a section 1 Sherman Antitrust violation.
The very, very simple honest solution is for GoogleFiber and other ISPs to stop the *fraudulent* advertising claims about bandwidth, and actually charge reasonably based on bandwidth used. (fixed costs, plus variable costs for the bandwidth). This always scared people because they thought "ooh, now my netflix usage will be more expensive". Hopefully the fallout of the demise of Net Neutrality and the extra money that Netflix is now paying to Comcast, and it's no doubt ultimate eventual being passed onto consumers will make people realize that that argument against reasonable data-usage charging was a bad argument.
I'm not looking to peg bandwidth 24/7. There is _a lot that can be done_ with low bandwidth, as long as you are free (in the Net Neutrality way that I argued and which US Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder agreed with) to do so.