One of the rare Google products that does interest me, their new Fiber internet service. (http://fiber.google.com/about/)

The launch plans have 3 different tiers of service:

$120 a month for 1Gbit (symmetric) service and TV service. Looks like a nice modern setup for those still wanting channel packages. The system has a shared 2TB disk that can feed several TVs for DVR service, and it uses existing coax for ethernet if needed.

$70 a month is for the 1Gbit service without the TV channels.

Both of the above plans have a $300 setup/construction fee that is currently being waived, the base price is before taxes and fees.

The other interesting plan is $0 a month for 5Mbit/1Mbit service. This is valid for 7 years, and only requires either the up front $300 fee, or 12 months of spreading it out ($25 a month). Same equipment, so if at any time the subscriber decided they want to increase their speed 200x, it's one service call away.

The Verge has more in depth coverage.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3188990/google-fiber-everything-you-need-to-know

The unfortunate part for now is that it's only in Kansas City (KS/MO), and the buildout will depend on how many people in a neighborhood want access. It's a good first step though to help foster forward looking internet connections in the US. Having speeds like this, especially the upstream would make so many more things possible.

Yeah, it's no surprise that I'm very interested in this. Sadly, my cynical self is telling me there's little to no chance of this getting a wide rollout.

There's so much to like. You can record up to 8 channels at once on that whole-home DVR, and store up to 500 hours of HD. I have a Tivo Elite with 4 tuners and 300 hours, and I'm still jealous

One of the coolest ideas I've read about this is one of those things that I can't believe hasn't been thought of already. Apparently when you add one of their TV boxes to another TV, it can create a WiFi hotspot to extend your wireless into that room of the house. This is a brilliant way to get WiFi coverage in a home. Naturally, we'll have to see how well this works and how easy it is to use, but if it updates all those hotspots automatically with any change in SSID, password, etc, that's pretty amazing.

As far as I can tell, there are two giant drawbacks to the Google Fiber service:

1) It's only in KC. I don't live anywhere near KC.

2) The TV service is missing some huge channels. ESPN, TNT, AMC, CNN, and some others (I couldn't care less about Fox News, sorry). That's a huge deal. It's understandable, seeing as ESPN is very expensive for these carriers, so that's probably why the price is so competitive with existing broadband services.

It's my experience that when fiber is in the area, it's good for everyone.

Here, in the NY metro area, some cable companies have to compete with Verizon FiOS fiber service. I'm outside the FiOS service area, but I'm on the same cable system that has to compete with FiOS in other towns. So, I have access to a 101Mbps tier of service. Here's a speed test I just ran:


This service level along with basic cable TV costs me $177 per month after taxes and other fees. Obviously, you're getting a lot more for your money on Google Fiber, but I can't really complain too much. Internet speeds and costs elsewhere in the state/country can be far worse.

Cable service a few towns up from me is provided by Time Warner who doesn't compete with FiOS in this county. Cost for their 10/1Mbps tier is $54 monthly. You can step-up to 50/5Mbps for an additional $50.

Competition is a good thing.

Rob and Tom - do these plans for fiber include unlimited bandwidth?

Right now in my area I have to move to $200 per month for 50Mbit with unlimited bandwidth on a business plan. That doesn't include any TV.

I'm already on a business plan with 10Mbit and 120GB limit costing me $62.09 after tax. The great thing about this plan is that not once have I been charged a penny more than the standard price, even when I've gone over the limit.

Residential cable with 55Mbit and a 250GB monthly cap ($1 per GB afterwards, no limit) is $80/month with the price guaranteed for 1 year - and a 1yr commitment required. I know for a fact that overages are always charged on residential plans that go over.

With anything faster than 10Gb/s I'd need unlimited, otherwise it just wouldn't make any sense.

I've thought about jumping to the $200 plan and then setting up a network repeater to service 4 or 5 houses on my street. No time to look into it seriously enough yet though.

Google Fiber has no data cap.

My cable service also doesn't have a cap, but many in the US do if you're not a "business" customer.

Verizon FiOS does not have a datacap. Granted on a busy month we'd only consume ~250gb which is below the typical cable co data cap - I think...

We pay Verizon $50/month for 10/1. We don't, but could, get TV and Phone from them as well.

I'm also on Fios, and I've never gotten dinged for downloading too much, although I'm sure I've hit it in the past. I'll have to check their site if I can stand navigating it (their customer portal is worse than most cell phone carriers').

*edit*
I'm on my Verizon Fios customer portal, and it's even worse than I can remember. If they DID have a bandwidth cap, I'm pretty sure there's be a class action lawsuit because I see absolutely no way of determining how much bandwidth I've used. Their site is an absolute mess and it's horribly slow, which is weird.

BTW, that's another thing about Google Fiber. I love the idea that I'd have far faster speeds than most web servers would be able to deliver to me. Can most CDNs even get stuff to you that fast?

I didn't know any ISPs had a data limit anymore except for cellular carriers. It has been roughly forever since I've seen a cap in place.

"Anymore?" The problem is that new ones have been put in place. Comcast, in recent years, just began capping their users' bandwidth at 250GB. In countries other than the US, there are far lower caps.

There have been many reports that the ISPs aren't particularly strict about their caps, but they exist and it's something they can use as a weapon against you if they don't charge you outright for overages.

The problem is that when Comcast, for example, put their cap in at least two years ago, when we weren't using bandwidth as heavily. Now we have HD Netflix and Youtube, and people are using digital distribution far more.

Yes. The good CDNs are really fast. Individual connections may not hit 1Gbit all the time, as usually the bottleneck is the server with a 1Gbit NIC. The overall data speeds at the CDNs is pretty impressive. One I performed service in had 13GBit allocated just for the servers I worked on.

At a hotel in Palo Alto where I had 700mbit service, the CDN Steam uses was able to go at almost full speed.

If you're not locked into some kind of contract, then you ought to shop around. 28mbit/sec internet with choice of 300GB or unlimited is generally available for less in most parts of Ontario. That 28mbit/sec will become 55mbit/sec within the next year.

Cheers

I only know of 2 alternatives here. Bell and Teksavvy reselling on Bell infrastructure. Teksavvy also resells cable, but last I checked they didn't have a deal in place with Cogeco and didn't service my area.

Cable internet ISPs in Milton:

http://www.canadianisp.ca/cgi-bin/ispsearch.cgi

Crap.. no URL for the search results.. But you can redo it there.