Hallelujer! Wait...3 years??? I'll be forced out of my $3,500 one bedroom apartment off California Ave. by then.

Google should scrap the plans for any local wireless hubs and go entirely with a 1 GHz "last mile" fiber optic cable network. Google's fateful experiment with free Google WiFi was a disaster from its inception due to grossly insufficient bandwidth to meet existing demand. And that was almost 10 years ago when demand was far less than it is now due to streaming video, etc.

It's 1 gigabit per second, not 1 gigabyte per second. Network bandwidth is measured in bits but everything else is bytes.

@1 Gbps

Thanks for the good catch!

-- Mark

I love how there's one curmudgeon who's asking about using wireless instead. Remember Google tried that already, installing the wireless routers on the light poles in town. The issue wasn't that the bandwidth was too low it was the coverage was insufficient. People had to buy antennas and even that didn't work for many people. That's a lower bandwidth solution even if it worked. For many people apparently it didn't.

"Google might charge individual homes for large data bandwidth that surpassed what they could reasonably consume."
That's not what's happening. No. Just no. Put your spaceship in "R" and come back to Earth. You still have Comcast or whatever you had before. No one is forcing you to give up your current Internet solution. It's just one more option that you can take or ignore.

If you think Comcast has bad customer service, just wait until you try to call google! Google is notorious for never answering phone calls for customer support. Their so called "24-hour, seven-day-a-week hotline" is not to be believed.

I'm thrilled! I felt slighted when they announced their 2nd round of cities to get Google Fiber and their own town of Mountain View wasn't on the list! I grew up here, moved away, and am just moving back. Perfect timing!

AT&T came through our neighborhood earlier this year installing fiber optic cables. Interesting timing.

"In other cities already outfitted with Google Fiber, the cost to subscribe is $100 per month for 1-gigabit service and $130 per month for similar internet service with cable television. A cheaper $50-per-month plan would deliver 100-megabits per second."

Google Fiber's monthly price for 1 Gbps service is $70/month for residential customers in other markets ($100 for small businesses), not $100.

Seems like we're one more baby step closer, but I'm wondering why we haven't had any official announcement from Google Fiber itself. As much as I'm looking forward to the day I call up Comcast to tell them where they can stick it, my enthusiasm is tempered until I hear more solid timelines than "three years".

Tell me what the number was that you called. I bet you're wrong or repeating stuff without evidence(do you even have a number to share?).
Also, since most all calls go into a phone tree, how is it that a phone tree does not answer? I detect shenanigans.

@ Molly Bierman

You may be right. Just so you know, we pulled those pricing numbers from the city staff report:

Web Link

In Boston and Provo, the basic fiber internet is $0 per month. Hope Google will offer the same deal here.

Web Link

Oops - looks like the basic internet offered in Boston and Provo is NOT fiber. But free is always nice...

Take a look at craigslist, there is a lot of cheaper 2 bedrooms than what you are paying for 1 bedroom.

$2655 / 2br - Corner 2 Bedroom Apt. w/ Balcony & Garage Prkg. - $300 Off 1st Month (mountain view)

May 4 OPEN AND AIRY APARTMENT HOMES ON QUIET TREE-LINED STREET $2665 / 2br - (sunnyvale) pic map
May 3 Very Nice, Large extra living room, All Hardwood floors $2490 / 2br - 1000ft2 - (cupertino) pic map
May 4 The Studio you've been waiting for here at Woodland Park Apartments! $1835 / 506ft2 - pic map

I did F/O installations at Cray Research. The technology for laying F/O cable has improved since then. You used to have connection vaults every 150 feet. I saw F/O cable being laid along I-70 ( Probably for the supercomputer farm of Clapper's 25 miles outside SLC ). Cable was laid in the way oil wells have been doing for years; Actual direction allowed curves and even 90 degree bends. The actual cable is fault tolerant and takes bends easier. For High Speed Backbone F/O, you could have underground vaults MILES apart.
When I was back there, yes, I had to do a Google WiFi installation. At home, Google WiFi was slooow and I never used it unless power was out and I had a laptop with it's battery.

The real problem: Most of my area of Mountain View has 50 year old wiring on POTS. I upgraded my parents service entrance and installed internal wiring in their house. We started to have my DSL and phone service go out. Two phone techs tried to blame my setup for the outages ( I'm a networking expert ) and I had to bar the 3rd tech from my parent's house and say " Check YOUR wiring FIRST! " After he took readings, the next day ( it was raining ) a bucket truck replaced THEIR wires from the service entrance ( modular with POTS ( you can add F/O terminations by changing modules ) to the 50 year old wiring on the telephone pole.

I hope Google offers special POTS along with High Speed Internet with Streaming video. That replaces that 50 year old telephone lines!

Pots: Plain Old Telephone Service

I wonder if Google has any networking experts involved in this. Maybe you should help Punnisher. I bet Google is really scratching their collective heads over this one. They probably NEVER thought about any of the details of this project.

What's a telephone? This is going to involve digging, drilling? Are those forms of manual labor? What are parents? I don't know anyone or own anything more than 50 years old!

I made such bad life choices that I got a masters in computer science and hired into an astoundingly good job. I guess that makes me bad. I am also an Elk, a classroom volunteer 1 x per week, coach soccer and am a community volunteer for local cleanup activities including creek cleanups and graffiti abatement. I am a generous contributor to the MV educational fund and a member of the PTA. I know what parents are because I'm caring for them as they age, which could be a full time job in and of itself.

Go ahead and wish jerks like me out of your community. Sorry for messing it up for you. Better yet, why don't you qualify yourself for being here.

3 years? that bytes.