http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/how-google-fiber-will-work-20120726/

https://fiber.google.com/about/

Interesting idea they have here. Given how many problems people have with internet providers(Looking at you Comcast), I could see this becoming quite popular.


Edit: this is being tested in Kansas City, MO as well as Kansas City, KS

It just seems too good to be true.

Incredible. I'll probably never see it in my area though.

Interesting. Though I think a lot of people already distrust Google. They gather so much information on you already when you use Google products, can you imagine them having access to everything you do?

I personally don't care, I've never been bothered by privacy issues. Google Fiber is exciting, I hope I come across it someday.

1Gb/s? That's extraordinary.

If that was available where I am, I'd just get the 5Mb/s internet. While it's really not hugely faster than what I have now (3Mb/s), it would be nice to actually have some reliable internet. There's only one company where I am that offers DSL service in my area, their service is terrible.

I'd love to get 5 megabytes per second, far faster than what I get now, especially for free. I guess slow internet is the price I pay for living in the country.

Unfortunately that isn't how internet speed rating work. 5Mb/s stands for megabits, not megabytes (indicated by "Mb," rather than "MB"), and one bit is 7x the amount of a byte. So, if you have a 5 megabit download speed, in a perfect world you'd get a 714 kilobyte download speed.

Of course, we don't live in a perfect world, and you're never going to get the stated speed. A more realistic speed would be around 600 kilobytes.

I can never get it the right way round, there really needs to be more than a capital letter to distinguish between two closely related units.
I tend to average around 5 megabits per second and usually download at 700 to 800 kilobytes per second.

I personally greet our Google overlords with open arms.

Currently I only get 20mbps down on my Comcast connection and 50mbps down on my Verizon connection (tethered unlimited 4G)

I would love atleast 100mbps. I share a datacenter VPS with 2 friends with 100mbps up and down and I love it. If only I could get that connection to my house.

1gbps down would be even better. Hopefully it comes to Maryland sometime soon. I read an interesting article that Google is all making a profit on this since they make their own hardware. All of the home routers are all made my Google.

There are 8 bits in a byte. 5 Mb/s would be 0.625 MB/s, or 640 kB/s.

I am doing this math right, right?

It was always my understanding that it was 8.

Only 1.5 Mb/s where I currently live.

Get roughly 120 KB/s if I recall(140 on good days). Used to be only 56Kb/s modem only for a while(which actually connected at a good bit less). I wouldn't mind free 5 Mb/s. That 1Gb/s service sounds really nice though.

Right, my bad. It is 8 .


Oh, you ONLY get 20-50Mb/s? You're truly suffering .

Yep.

5Mbps free would be good enough for me, it would be half as fast as what I currently have and 45$ cheaper... Can't imagine ever needing 1Gbps. Too bad it will be ages before it ever comes here if it catches on.

Just imagine. The games I bought from the Steam sale that took 20 hours to download would have taken 4 minutes.

It'd be just about useless for me the rest of the time though.

Its decent. But I download 2-3GB of podcasts a day. My new apartment near DC gets up to 105mbps down from comcast....I am just not sure if I am willing to spend $100/month on it. I dont watch TV, so I don't need a cable subscription, however its built into my lease, sadly....I am paying $50 for cable which I will never watch.

Cloud gaming just got a [censored]-ton more feasible

EDIT: But if the rest of the world has 'normal speeds', then those with the Google Fiber speed will have a hard time maxing out their bandwidth with servers outside the 'Fiberhood'.
Until then, those bandwidths will only really help them with downloading and seeding torrents.. which I don't think is what was intended. Or was it, Google?

Might work if they use the government funds in bringing broadband to rural areas

Please come to Canada? Honestly if Google actually accomplishes this, they'll own the planet.

Comast customer?

They had it so bad here in Georgia that the State threatened to run them out if they didn't get their act together. State government received way too many complaints about comcast lol.