It's a Beautiful Day in the Fiberhood

clogged up? Could you use more fiber in your internet diet? I'm sure I could? And Google, if you're listening, I would like some Google Fiber. Ah terrible, terrible jokes aside um, and I really wanted to avoid it, but I couldn't. Um, I'm weak. Uh yeah, we're we're going to talk about Google Fiber, which isn't a new breakfast supplement, is in fact really really fast internet, even for those parts of the world that have pretty darn fast internet. Um. You

know this is this is really cutting edge. UM. A lot of us here in the United States where Google Fiber is is operating, have uh even talking about broadband speeds usually less than five megabets per second. Uh. Certainly less than ten megabets per second, and that's reasonably fast for a lot of applications. Minds faster than that, or at least the advertised speed is faster than that. The actual speed versus the advertised speed is also an issue.

But um, yes, there are certain areas where you can get faster, but we're talking way faster than even that. Yeah, no, I mean we we've we've talked about how South Korea and UH and Iceland among other places, have you know, in the in the easily double digits, you know, thirty or fifty megabets per second. But this is faster than that. This is talking about a gigabit per second. So a thousand megabits per second. Yeah, that's that's incredibly fast. Now to to really kind of get an idea about this,

you have to go back a little bit. So well, I dusted it off, Yeah, yeah, we found it. I was wondering what that big lump was under the sheet. Yeah, the stuff you should know. Guys left it in Uh. It was weird. I don't know what they were doing, but they were in apparently fourteenth century Scotland. There was like, yeah, it was crazy. I think they were shopping for Kilts. I could have told them that they needed to go to seventeenth century at the at the earliest, but anyway

found it. Let's get in the way back machine. Okay. Now I'm just gonna set this to march here and push the button. Frank all right, now it's gonna open the door. You know, I don't remember that being so disorienting deafening, Wasn't it amazing? Yeah? For a minute there, all I would I could hear was bagpipe music. Well, that's still some after effects from the way back Machine. So Google announced in March that they were going to

do this. They were going to run fiber out to some community in the United States and it would give speeds up to a gig of it per second, and uh and and the cities across the United States responded pretty enthusiastically, all wanting to um but all of them, many of them wanting to to court Google to come there. So, uh, let's see if let's see let me just let me just unroll this map here. Okay, so you see you see the state here, Um, that's it's a state, Kansas. Okay.

Now you see this city here, Topeka. All right, you know what Topeka did in order to try and at Google to come there. Is that the city that renamed itself Google. Yes, they renamed themselves Google for a day, Kansas, Google Kansas. That's not a command. We're not asking you to go out and Google Kansas. That's what Kansas, Topeka, Kansas renamed itself in order to try and tempt Google to choose that city or the for the test run

of Google Fiber. Yes. Yes, and that's actually not too far from when they actually from where they actually did decide to land. Actually, we should probably get back to present day to talk about that. All right, Hey, after this, you want to play some golf. I was thinking of getting some Scotch jaggs, you know, maybe some haggis, which is weird. All right, get back in alright, it's tight in here, all right, it's all the sheep, alright, press the button, alright, so let's get back to our normal

spaces here. Um, yeah, it did. Actually Google did choose a city not incredibly far from Topeka. The city chosen was Kansas City. Actually two cities called Kansas City as well. As it happens, they're not exactly distant from one another. All right, So if you are not from the United States, or maybe you are from the United States, but you're

not really familiar with Kansas and Missouri. There are cities that neighbor one another, both called Kansas City, and one is in Missouri and one is in Kansas and UH, the Kansas and Missouri rivers sort of defined the borders

of these cities to some extent. Kansas City was what Google chose to extend the fiber to to use as the test run for Google Fiber, and both Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, where it will get the Google Fiber and this initial run UH, the specific neighborhoods within these cities will be determined by how passionately the

the inhabitants want Google Fiber. They actually have to go in and register, put their ZIP code in UH to try and petition, essentially Google to run fiber out to that neighborhood because running this fiber is going to be expensive, so Google wants to make sure that they can get the most bang for the buck by running the fiber out to the neighborhoods where people are saying, I'm going to be a subscriber, I want this service so so so what does Google call those groups of people? They

call these areas fiber hoods. Okay, I think that's a name that has been met mostly with um, yeah, exactly. That's the reaction I've heard from almost all of my tech journalism buddies. Actually, I imagine that most people go, that's really silly. But it's okay by me if Google will put one gig a bit internet in my house. Yeah, um, yeah, it's kind of interesting to UH to talk about that.

You think about that, Um, we're talking for for the purposes of this exercise, we're talking about sort of the days before every home, and I use every loosely UH is wired for telephone, and every home is wired for electricity. I mean that infrastructure is pretty robust now, but Google is starting from scratch in a lot of this case. I mean, UH, we talk about UH DSL for example, or cable. Um that that information that internet service is

coming in over copper. In the case of UH cable, it's you know, copper cable or twisted pair copper in the case of phone based internet services. There's some fiber networks out there already, but they are they're the exception as opposed to the rule. Yeah, yeah, I mean fiber optics are play a very important role in our telecom communications, but they're more uh backbone if you will. Then they are individually wired neighborhood. There's there. There are very few

true examples of fiber to the home. There are some, but it's not widespread. Yeah, I mean a Verizon FiOS up in the Northeastern United States primarily, um, but they

don't reach speeds like this. Um so you know this is this is well actually this also sort of reminds me of thunderbolt um and tells technology which was initially going to be called something different light peak light peak, which uh uh you know, was going to use fiber optics signals transferring information by light rather than over as an electronic signal over copper. What's interesting is that first

generation of light peak and Thunderbolt wires happens to use copper. Yes, they have not made that transition to fiber optics in that line of products as of yet. Um. So this is you know, not foreign, brand new technology, but it is cutting edge for the way they're using it. And they're having to do this all uh you know, not by hand, but I mean they're laying new networks. Yeah, and it's it's expensive. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of construction that you have to worry about.

You have to get permits for all the stuff, you have to schedule all this stuff so that you try and impact the neighborhoods as little as possible while you're trying to lay all this this fiber optic cable, try not to hit all the other all the other lines, gases, electricity, and yeah, there's there's just a lot of work. Yeah, so it's a it's a huge project. And so what Google has done is it's asked people to um to essentially petition Google to bring the fiberhood, to make their

neighborhood of fiberhood. And you have to hit a certain threshold before Google will consider your neighborhood. And there are a lot of different things that factor into that consideration. Where else Google will be building that network. So the easier the closer your neighborhood is to an existing fibrahood, the better your chances are because it's an extension of something that's already there. If you're if you are in an isolated neighborhood that really wants this, but all the

surrounding neighborhoods around you don't really care. It makes it much more challenging for Google. Even if even if the passion is there within that one neighborhood, you have to figure out, well, we're gonna be running cable there somehow, So that's this is a problem. You have to know who are the people in your fiberhood, the people that you meet while you're walking down the street, the people that you meet each day it's a beautiful day in the fibrahood. If you if you can talk them into

uh signing up with you, your your chances improved significantly. Yes, Now, the it's it's not it's not a free service or anything. Now, this is for one thing. In order for you to be in on the ground floor of this. Uh, there's a three or fee which you pay so that you that goes towards the construction fee that Google will have to pay. And then there's a monthly subscription fee if

you want that gigabit per second Internet connection. Uh it's seventy dollars I believe, yes, seventy dollars if you want internet alone each month. Oh wait, did I say internet alone? Yes? Believe it or not? Uh. The this brand new service is like many others here in the United States, you can bundle it with another service and for Google, this

this new services television. UM there if you if you decide you want the TV with it, um, you can add that to now TV and internet is a d twenty dollars a month, which is competitive with a lot of other services and a lot of other cities which I want to come back to later. Um, but this is this is sort of an interesting thing too. They are including a DVR with this with eight tuners, which means you can watch and or record eight shows at one time, which is kind of a lot if you

have only one screen. But you know, um, I for every hour I watch, I record seven more. I will never have the time to watch all the TV I want to watch. It's kind of like YouTube, how you know, sixty two hours whatever is added every minute, So therefore there's way more video that has added every minute that you could ever possibly watch. Yes, exactly, UH it can record apparently these um, these new uh DVRs can record

up to five hours of high definition TV. Now. It is important to note, um that one gig a bit of bandwidth can give you a whole lot of information. So high definition programming, UH, streaming audio and video via Internet. You should have no hiccups really with any of that. You should have clear signals as far as TV, as far as Internet goes. Of course, your mileage may vary, UM,

you know, once the kids into practice. But those of us who use a UM an online service for what for example, UM, some of the the streaming movie services UM, you know, you might have hiccups depending on what kind of service you have, depending on the speed of your Internet UH, in some cases, depending on the weather, UM you know, those things. Those things factor into our services.

And for Google Fiber it should be significantly less. So they're they're offering a a competitive product to the people of Kansas City. UM at that that offers them, I would say I would argue a premium product at a competitive price. They also have offered to UH to build free connections to a certain selection of public buildings in

both Kansas cities. UM. The two cities got together and made up a list of public buildings that they thought should be connected to this and Google is going to connect them for free as part of as part of the whole deal of bringing this to the Kansas City area. So that's kind of cool too that this gigabit per second connection is going to be a public utility in certain instances like I would imagine, you know, if if

it's connected to certain colleges or libraries that kind of stuff. Um, that would be a huge benefit for anyone who uses those facilities. And as an added incent of the first subscribers are being offered a Google Nexus seven tablet. I I have used said tablet, actually have one in my bag right now. Um. Yeah, and that tablet can be used as even a controller for the TV I believe, so then you have a big tablet remote control. Yep, sou.

So these are things that that make Google Fiber really compelling story and and for the first few days at least in the tech media, um, after they announced that they were going ahead and doing this and could please people in Kansas City please speak up if they were interested. Uh, there was a lot of coverage And since then I've seen a lot of people saying, hey, well, you know what, it ain't that great, Um, the thing is grapes there.

I E. Well, I think I think it's interesting to talk about the the benefits and detriments of it, or as one article I saw it put pros and cons um you know, it's not the kind of thing. It's true if you if you live in Seattle, Washington, which for those of you not um familiar with American geography, that's pretty darn far away from Kansas City. It's not next door, no no, uh so for them, Kansas City

is not in their fiberhood. UM. So, the people who serve See to Washington with UH Internet service and TV service probably are not quaking in their boots at the prospect of Google walking in tomorrow and offering fiber service. But they should be cons thinking about it. I mean, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example, has an option for if you are Internet subscribing in Chattanooga, you may qualify for their one gig a bit UH Internet service. Now there is a hefty

feet that goes along with it. It's more expensive, or at least was last time I checked, than what Google is offering. Um. But that's being offered by a private company, and the people in Seattle are certainly not worried about them coming in tomorrow. But Google, on the other hand, has a bit more capital at its at its uh Google's pockets are deep, y'all. That's what I was going for. So, uh, this is a test for Google, and they have made

it clear that it's a test. So the question is which fiberhood outside Kansas, the Kansas cities is going to be next? So what's going to happen? It's I mean, Google has definitely shown an interest in this sort of thing before, and in fact, when they announced it back in March, it was clear that this is kind of a pilot program and it could have been anywhere that really spoke up. And if it works, then we can

expect it to eventually roll out to other cities. And you know, how Google chooses those cities is probably going to be a pretty complicated process, partly by how realistic is it to lay the infrastructure. Some cities it may

be way more difficult than others. Um things like population density are going to matter because of course, if everyone's all spread out, then that's a lot more work for a certain number of customers that you might be able to you know, you might be able to find the same number in a much more condensed area in a different city, which could theoretically be easier to do if you don't have to lay as much cable or disru as much of the area. Geography will also play a part.

Mountainous areas are are notoriously difficult to to lay cable in, which is why so many people in the mountains use satellite television. Yeah, it's there are a lot of factors that are going to go into play for this kind

of decision making process. So um, even, and that's if this program is a success and if Google can actually see it generate revenue, because it may turn out that Google really takes a look at this and says, you know, we're charging a fair price as far as the market is concerned, but we're not getting enough return for this to be profitable. We're gonna lose money on it. Does it make sense for us to support it? If that's

the case, we may not see the fiber rollout anywhere else. Yea, yea and uh well hey in uh inve we've already seen h Google shutter many projects that either duplicate other services even though they had some unique qualities to them or yeah, exactly, and so um, you know, Google is not as deep as its pockets are. Google is not going to just throw money at it. If it if

it's never going to produce any kind of return. However, I think that this is going to make And this is one of the very first things I thought when I saw that the uh you know, the real plan for Google Fiber and the cost of what it was gonna be for a subscriber and all these things, I thought, you know what, all these other companies, the big companies that offer internet access, telephone, and uh TV services to people, especially in the United States, because I can think of

those companies off the top of my head, I'm familiar with them, They're going to have to reconsider what they offer. Because when when a company the size of Google decide it wants to get into something like this, and it's making this offer, and it's it's on the table for the people of Kansas City and well Kansas City, Um, the people who are are offering those services in Kansas City right now are going, how are we going to

compete with this? And they're going to have to compete with that in other cities that that Google wants to to make that challenge in. So ultimately, this is going to bring a lower cost I hope, is going to bring a lower cost offering that offers better quality services for the rest of us. Competition is always a good thing, yeah, for the consumer at least. Well true competition always turns out to be good for the consumer. Now, there are a lot of industries out there where there appears to

be competition but isn't. But there isn't really. Yeah, that's more like collusion competition. But I'm not going to get into that. Um, you don't like price fixing only only at five star restaurants? Um. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's such an interesting project to me. I really, I'm you know, I remember that I was is like when when the first announcement came out in March, I remember thinking, I hope at Lanta really really rallies to get this, because I would love to have the ability to tap into

that kind of broadband speed. And uh, you know, of course that's not how it turned out. And I'm still hopeful that perhaps Atlanta would be on uh not too far down the list of potential cities should Google decide to roll this out to larger areas or areas beyond the Kansas City area. Um, and you know you think about that about how that would affect everything you do online.

I mean you know, you potentially you would be able to download huge files at in in a heartbeat, but you'd also be able to do things like watch content streaming without too much difficulty. You could get in high definition without worrying about buffering problems things like that. There's one other thing that's curious about this what UM. We've talked about certain providers offering caps on bandwidth before, like

especially for for UH smartphones. That's a that's a big deal for smartphones, especially because uh you use UH data over a network, any kind of network, and you're using up a portion of the traffic that that network can carry. UM for for mobile networks, that's pretty taxing. But you know they're off also having that same problem with cable and UH telephone networks that are using being used to deliver DSL and cable UM wireless internet networks UM y

max for example. So uh So a lot of providers offer a cap you can download this amount of traffic per month, after which you will be cut off or you will be throttled so it's slower, or you'll have to pay extra. Google Fiber as of right now, maybe it's part of the test, but Google Fiber is not being capped. It's also interesting to me that there are essentially three different approaches to what you can do with

Google Fiber. All right, so, UM, if you go there, actually have a free Internet select option, and this is if you pay the three construction fee, then you would get free internet access for at least seven years. But the speed would be five megabits per second, so five

megabits per second download, one megabit per second upload. So you you are throttled in the sense that you aren't going to get that super fast UM connection that people who are paying the full subscription are getting, but you are if you're doing it for free once you pay that upfront cost of three so for seven years, I mean,

that's pretty that's that's pretty incredible UM. And they will even Google even has it where they'll have a payment plan where you can do twenty five dollars a month for a year and then so you're paying twenty five dollars for five megabits per second download speeds UH for for one year, and then after that for the next six years you don't pay anything. That is a sweet, sweet deal for those of us who are used to

those speeds but much higher prices. UM and then for the Internet and TV Internet deals, if you enter into a contract, they waived the three construction fee. So I believe with the Internet deal it's a one year contract at seventy dollars a month, and with the TV and Internet it's a two year contract at dollars a month. And in either of those, if you enter the contract, they waived that fee. Now you don't have to enter a contract from what I understand, and in that case

you would pay the fee upfront plus the subscription. So if you you know, for those of us who might have the extra money to be able to pay that, we might think, well, let me go ahead. And you know, Google's got a reputation of occasionally starting things that just don't work out or the execution doesn't live up to the promise. Maybe I want to be more careful about this and not lock myself down into a contract that

I might regret later. So that's a good option for people who have that extra cash up front where they can pay that three. Essentially, they're thinking, well, this is my get out of jail free. Uh card. It's not free, it's three hundred bucks, but but it lets me get out of this. If I think that it's not a

great fit for what I need right now. I'm I'm interested to see where this goes, UM, and I hope that it's a successful trial, even if Google five or doesn't come here specifically, simply because I think it could. The business model, in addition to the the product offering itself could prove transformative for UH high speed Internet in

the United States at least. But then again, this is Google as a company UH of a size and reach that could change the way Internet is used around the world, So it could it could very well have an effect over UH people on virtually every continent and the and the planet ye, possibly some other planets. I don't know. Well, we talked about Mars not long ago, that's true. We can cover Mars with fiber. It's nothing there, but you can get that are really quickly from one side of

the planet to the other. Does the Curiosity rover have an uneata neat jack That would be a weird thing to include on that be funny but weird. Uh? Yeah, I mean, I I too, am really curious to see how this turns out, and I definitely think that there are going to be some ramifications UM that will go beyond this Kansas City area. Even if Google Fiber itself never extends beyond those neighborhoods, at least is getting some

pretty entrenched industries rethinking their their approaches. So that could that could end up being great news for us down the line here in the United States. Definitely, and then maybe you know, who knows, if this becomes a wild success, then this could eventually extend to all different areas around the world, and Google could once more push itself further along the path to world domination. And then we will just await Google uh ultimate and inevitable renaming to Skynet. Alright,

So do you have anything else to add about Google Fiber. No, No, not really, but it uh you know people who have been talking about how it is limited and include that includes uh, you know, some of the channels not they don't have all the networks and everything. Yeah, there's a lot of content issues that they have to sort out. But it but it's early that this is a trial. They're going to have to work this kind of thing out, um, and I think that is very possible that that these

things will get sorted out as time goes on. But uh, yeah, it's it's going to have a reach into other Uh, you know, I think it will affect television, the way television is delivered, the way of phone is delivered. You know, as we switch over to more of a v o I P or Voice over Internet Protocol UM solution. You know, it's it will provide better quality voice calls even if we want to do that, or video calls. So um, you know there there's a lot of that. This will

affect a lot of people. I think, a lot more than you might think just by it being limited to Kansas City. In Kansas City, Yeah, yeah, I agreed, So keep your eyes peeled, guys. And if hey, if we have any listeners in the Kansas City area that are actually going to be part of this, there are in a fiberhood and they're going to subscribe to this, let us know, send us a message, tell us what you think,

tell us what the experience is like. So far. Uh, the first neighborhoods I think are getting hooked up in September, which might not be too long after this podcast actually goes live. We're recording it in early August, but of course the episodes are recorded well ahead of time. So if anyone out there is a Google Fiber customer, uh, and they would like to share their experience with what

it's been like. Let us know, especially if you want to make us turn green within the and talk about how you wrote the response before we were able to ask the question, because that's just how past your Internet is. It's not easy being green. I guess not all right, guys. That wraps it up for this episode. If you have any topics you would like us to tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, you can let us know in

an email. Our address is tech Stuff at Discovery dot com or send us a message on Facebook or Twitter. Are handle with both of those? Is tech Stuff? H. S. W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of those topics, visit how Stuff Works dot Com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you