The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: geekette on March 26, 2015, 08:47:03 PM
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Our town is on the list to get Google Fiber (ditch TWC - yay!)
For those areas that have it - once chosen, and after they "design and plan" (several months) how quick is the build out?
Is their customer service good? It can't possibly be as bad as TWC, right?
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It may not directly compare, but I was in a city that was part of the Verizon fiber build out. (And yes, Verizon is not Google by any realm of the imagination.)
I am pulling from memory, but it was probably 3+ years for them to build a city that was about a quarter of a million people. It takes a long time to put a conduit in every right of way in the city.
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So i'm in KC where this was first launched. My neighborhood in KC just went live for signups in march ... my whole community is underground utilities. they already have the whole neighborhood ripped up and are installing the underground fiber. This is about 2 weeks after google started signups. Talking to others around the area its usually 3 months give or take after you sign up til you have live fiber. so if you have a sign up month then assume you will have your free 5MB/S line about 3 months following that month
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I'm in KC too, and it really depends on your neighborhood.
We got our Fiber in a few months after the sign up. My mom is still waiting - I can't be certain, but it seems like they do the denser areas first, which would make sense. She's in the city proper, but their neighborhood is not nearly as packed as ours, and it's a lower income neighborhood, so while their fiberhood qualified, I'm not sure how many went with the pricier packages (we did free, by the way, it's been fine). She's been waiting a year, IIRC.
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wow thats crazy.. our fiberhood hasnt qualified. I wonder if it will. we're still over 50 houses away from tipping.
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Ours took FOREVER to qualify. I was freaking out because I really wanted the FREE w/ construction fee plan. It qualified eventually. Hold tight. Unless you are in a really, really low income area you should qualify.
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we are extremely high income. its a lake community.
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I'm guessing you aren't KC proper, then, unless you are talking about that pond over by the zoo off of Gregory - ;P Or I guess you could be down south, if that's still KC down there.
From the last major sign up, it seemed they put a very, very high threshold to qualify in the nicer areas, whereas the crappier areas qualified really fast. I'm not even in that nice of an area, but our renter and my mom's neighborhood's qualified faster than we did, and it didn't take as many people, either.
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Google picks the areas they think will be most profitable and builds to those areas first. It will take them much longer to get to the less profitable areas, and they might skip some of them altogether. And it's not always about rich vs. poor areas. Sometimes the less well-to-do areas are just easier for them to get fiber to.
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well the are already putting it in ... i live in Lees Summit in Raintree. we still are 50+ signups away ... but our whole neighborhood is still a construction zone right now.
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I am so glad my city just got on it built there own.
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We're in a pretty dense area with a lot of techies, so I hope we can get signed up quickly.
Does having underground utilities make it that much harder? If so, this is the one time I'm sorry we have them (makes for fewer outages, though!)
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I'm hoping that Google Fiber will spread to NJ now that internet has been declared a public utility. I really, really want to completely rid myself of Comcast forever.
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We're in a pretty dense area with a lot of techies, so I hope we can get signed up quickly.
Does having underground utilities make it that much harder? If so, this is the one time I'm sorry we have them (makes for fewer outages, though!)
If Google has to lay conduit down every street/ally... yeah, it's a pain. They have to horizontally drill across the whole city.
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Since no one has truly answered this, I will.
It's going to take 1-2 years for any fiberhood to open up signups. Planning takes months. There will be Google subcontractors going around looking at streets, underground street access, and utility poles. Permitting takes months. Ripping up streets or running wire along poles takes months. Then the sign up begins, which can take a few months (some of the fiber placement runs concurrently with the sign up).
Don't let the announcement stop you from signing a cheap 12 month contract from a competitor.
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What cheap contract...
Okay, I won't hold my breath, but is their customer service decent?
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Judging from the replies, it sounds like no one actually has live service yet.
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Okay, I won't hold my breath, but is their customer service decent?
I've had fiber since last July. I signed up online. I was present when the contractors did the install. Billing is automatic. So in the 7 months I have had fiber, I dealt with the installation contractor once, who was pleasant enough, and customer service zero times. There are really only three options, so you won't have someone trying to sell add-ons. The infrastructure is brand new, and the cables are buried, so there's not a lot that can really go wrong there. I'm guessing that customer service would be good if you needed them, but you probably aren't going to need them that much, if at all. I wouldn't really worry about that aspect.
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I have Fiber, and have for quite some time. They were able to us our above ground poles, though, so it was fast install.
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So to summarize what many people have said, the speed with which Fiber will actually arrive to you has a lot to do with whether the cables have to be buried or can go up on the utility poles--it will be much faster on poles. What I've also seen in KC and the suburbs is that the city's willingness to bend to Google's demands will speed up installation (ie richer suburbs who will demand lines be buried or will be really particular about where the stations are built, etc. will take much longer).
As for customer service, I've had to be in touch with them several times and it's been fantastic--you can go via IM, phone or email and it's always quite responsive. The same people can handle both technical questions and subscription questions. Once you have the line installed you can switch from one service to another anytime you want without additional fees--so we got awesome level cable for one month during the world cup last year then downgraded back down--they had no problem with it and in fact suggested it.
Fiber itself hasn't been a lifechanger--it's still the internet, but it does help with remote connecting to work a lot--the lifechanger of it is just the increased competition and the service that comes with it. AT&T has come in with similar levels of service in addition to TWC. I just want TWC to come take their wires off of my house...
@moneycat, Ting is doing fiber in Virginia and seems more likely to come up the east coast--but I really have no idea.
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In order to get TV, though, you have to subscribe to the high speed internet, correct? We were going to see what the free version was like (paying the $300 connect fee), but I assume that means we couldn't get the TV for, say, the Olympics.
Since we have no poles in our area, I assume that means it would have to be buried. In the past, I've seen a lot of orange conduit (I guess) getting trenched and buried alongside the main streets. I thought it was fiber by someone, but have yet to see anything come of it.
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Since we have no poles in our area, I assume that means it would have to be buried. In the past, I've seen a lot of orange conduit (I guess) getting trenched and buried alongside the main streets. I thought it was fiber by someone, but have yet to see anything come of it.
It's probably fiber. That doesn't mean it's fiber to the home, though. Telcos and ISPs have big runs of fiber everywhere to run their backbone and to run business grade internet.
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geekette--I'm not completely sure, since we went from gigabit service up to tv and then back down to gigabit. It honestly seems like it would be the same amount of work for them to go from the free service all the way up to tv and then back down (someone still has to come to your house and give you the cable box and stuff) but I don't know...
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In order to get TV, though, you have to subscribe to the high speed internet, correct? We were going to see what the free version was like (paying the $300 connect fee), but I assume that means we couldn't get the TV for, say, the Olympics.
Since we have no poles in our area, I assume that means it would have to be buried. In the past, I've seen a lot of orange conduit (I guess) getting trenched and buried alongside the main streets. I thought it was fiber by someone, but have yet to see anything come of it.
the olympics are on NBC meaning that TV is free OTA. you just need an antenna. and if you want to record shows i use simple.tv it works great.
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Even though we have cable run on telephone poles, we're just outside the planned Fiber service area here. Our neighborhood is too low-income I guess. It would be fun to have that speed. And to have another choice besides the cable or DSL option.