Google Fiber Delays Broadband Award To 2011 90
coondoggie writes "The response to the invitation to become a test market for Google's planned high-speed broadband network has been overwhelming, so much so the company today said it would delay awarding the system until 2011. According to a post in its website, Google said 1,100 communities and 194,000 individuals responded to its proposal. Google had hoped to award the test program this month."
Demand Unmet (Score:5, Interesting)
So Google talks about rolling out fiber to the home and they get nearly 200,000 responses and 1,100 communities express interest. That pretty well sums up the network infrastructure in the US. It's too slow, too expensive, and falling behind the times. I'm sure we will not be regarded as the most technologically advanced nation within another generation. This generation has failed to invest in critical infrastructure and has let corporate interests divert the money that should be being spent on public works projects, into those corporations own back pockets.
And yet, I can't help but think, "we deserve this". I mean the people are too lazy and stupid to pay attention to what's going on, or bother to vote, or bother to research candidates before they vote. So corporate shills are elected. They hand over taxpayer dollars, but require no return on the taxpayer's investment and pass laws to make sure taxpayers have fewer, more expensive choices when purchasing services.
Maybe one of the few innovative companies with enough prestige will be able to start real reform, but I seriously doubt it. This empire is crumbling and, as usual, the average person is too arrogant (USA #1 whooo!) to even consider how far we've fallen behind already. They don't want to hear it or have to think about the hard decisions that need to be made to turn things around.
Good luck Google, but I almost think you should just test out your new technologies in Japan or Korea or Sweden or somewhere where they are actually implementing fiber to the home, for a more realistic sense of what your future customers will be using.
Indication (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is a pretty good indication that the general public would like faster access to the internet, despite the telcos' claiming that people are pretty satisfied. I for one welcome our multiplexing digital overlords, and would like to remind them that I'm not interested in cloud services until I get at least 2 9s of at least 10Mbps connectivity with overall uptime of 4 9s or so.
Re:idea (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd pay extra for a decently fast broadband that didn't fold to whatever whims the goverment/MAFIAA have that day, and practiced true net neutrality. To my knowledge, I've never had any agencies/lawyers/etc care enough about my online activities to contact me or my ISP, nor has Comcast artificially slowed down my data. It's the principle that bothers me.
It's the principle that also keeps me from using any hermetically sealed Apple products (which is all of them). It's also the principle that keeps me from playing computers games that I really want, but are hampered by online activation requirements which strip away my rights as a buyer, and relegates me into the role of a 'licensee' (Civ5, Fallout NV, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, etc.). Apple's hypercontrolling business model, or online game activation/control, may not affect me in any meaninful way, but it's the very principles that bother me.
If I even had another option for broadband that's faster than 1.5 Mbps other than Comcast, I'd sign up in an instant. Unfortunately, I don't even have an choice.
Re:Another solution (Score:5, Interesting)
This happened to a tri-city outside of Chicago (Geneva, St. Charles, Batavia). These three towns were voting to build a municipal network and let me tell you the week before voting the amount negative ads running against it were crazy. They basically played on the fear that if this failed the tax payer would foot the bill. It failed in vote but had every household that agreed to it bought it into it would have paid itself off in 5 years.
The best part the reason the three towns were doing it were because Comcast or any other major telecom refused to bring in broadband. Literally two weeks after the vote Comcast had delivered to 90% of the three cities.
Re:idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I would love an ISP that is essentially for sysadmins. No BS, but solid tech support (no script readers, but people who actually know UNIX.) It would have the following features:
1: Limited numbers of customers. This is not an ISP for Joe Sixpack. Perhaps a friend referral system like some Google betas, perhaps a "clue test". There are many companies who want Joe and Aunt Tillie; this ISP isn't one of them. This way, someone coming from thisisp.com has an E-mail address that is distinctive.
2: NNTP caching. It isn't competing with EasyNews, but USENET is something an old school ISP always had.
3: Squid proxy. Let the ISP do the caching.
4: Proxy/VPN service. It would be nice to have the ISP handle traffic for iPhones or Android devices to ward off attacks from Firesheep or other items.
5: Exchange. No, this isn't with the UNIX ways, but so many things these days depend on Exchange, (such as being able to erase mobile devices if lost/stolen.)
6: A decent mirror updated often. Ideally, RedHat, Ubuntu, Debian, *BSD, CentOS, Linux kernel patches, and other items. Bonus points for full repos as well.
7: The usual Web page support, with database access to the usual OSS ones, as well as Oracle and DB/2.
8: Backups standard. If it gets stored, it gets backed up.
9: Home directories have file access through the web, and are stored on a WAFL or other system where snapshots are easily retrieved.
10: E-mail privacy. Unless there is a court order, the mailbox contents are only accessible by the user, or admins doing their duties.
11: SLAs. All data is backed up onto encrypted media so a tape dropping off a truck doesn't mean compromise, all E-mail is stored on encrypted LUNs so someone yanking hard disks out doesn't get data. Finally, a guarantee that if the company is going to go under, there is money to cover complete destruction of all stored customer data by a certain date unless specifically asked for in writing. This way, someone doesn't pick up the liquidated assets and sell the information.
12: The banhammer. Someone has a machine that has obvious signatures of a botnet, and the user has not stated he may be running honeypots, that box gets yanked and the user is redirected to a Web page telling him to reinstall, or take full responsibility for any honeypots. Same with lots of spam out port 25, or repeated connections to port 22 for brute force password guessing. A user who can't clean up their mess doesn't belong as as subscriber.
13: Logs (mail, router, etc) are kept for a fairly short time (2-3 days to a week) then deleted unless a court order asks for them to be kept, or there is a security issue that means they need to be kept longer.
14: No advertisers, period. The ISP makes its cash from subscriber fees. This way, there is no conflict of interest.
15: Ad-dropping transparent proxies. This would be a feature that could be turned (default off), so people wouldn't have to worry about Adblock and such when viewing the Web.
16: SecurID as an option. This way, someone can check mail on not so trusted computers and be resistant to not having their account hijacked. The session can be hijacked, but no more than that.
Heck, an ISP could also go into the cloud VM business, and even offer Linux or Windows VPS hosting, which helps find more uses for the money spent.
Problem - US constituencies too big (Score:5, Interesting)
The average US constituency is massive , at around 700,000 people. This is much larger than originally envisioned when the country was founded, and guarantees that the little guy is drowned out. From Thirty-Thousand.org [thirty-thousand.org]:
The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed 50 to 60 thousand. Currently, the average population size of the districts is nearly 700,000 and, consequently, the principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned.
Such large constituencies as we see now in the US are also much larger than in other representative democracies. The Isle of Wight is an interesting comparison [wikipedia.org]:
With a single Member of Parliament and 132,731 permanent residents in 2001, it is also the most populous parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom.
While not widely known, the first article of the original twelve proposed for the Bill of Rights laid out the size of congressional constituencies, as an attempt to avoid that the dilution of individual votes seen in the modern US. From the US House of Representatives website [house.gov]:
Article the first
After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.
James Madison himself talked about how larger constituencies tend to favor those with land and property (i.e., the rich). He was writing about the justification for having larger constituencies and longer terms for the Senate than for the House, but his description of the basic political mechanics is sound. From page 155 [google.com] of The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates by Ralph Ketcham:
Large districts are manifestly favorable to the election of persons of general respectability, and of probable attachment to the rights of property, over competitors depending on the personal solicitations practicable on a contracted theater.
I.e., large districts are more impersonal, favor the rich, and are less representative. This is precisely what we have in the US. I do not expect any real progress until this gross imbalance is corrected -- and frankly I suspect changing my citizenship would be much more productive for me personally.
Cheers,