Google Fiber just announced their pricing and plans

I’ve been anxiously awaiting this, and can hardly wait to get it, but there are some weird bits about it.

If you give them $10 in advance, the areas that get the most requests will be installed first.

The plans are a bit weird:

$120 a month for Gigabit up and down and cable TV.
$70 a month for gigabit up and down.
$0 for 5 megabit down/1 megabit up (aka the “Fuck you AT&T DSL!” plan)

The last requires a $300 “construction fee”, which is currently waived on the first two options. It comes with a 7" Nexus Android table at the remote control.

The list of cable TV channels is really spotty. No ESPN? Are you kidding me?

It’s only available in Kansas City at first. Which sucks, because I want Google Fiber, dammit.

Seems enormously expensive. Why is this any better than FiOS?

Well, I can live without ESPN. Life without Turner Classic Movies is a whole other story. But the big drawback is living out in the middle of Nowhere, TN. I’ll be dead before fiber optics come my way.

StG

I realize it’s probably a lost cause, but I’m slightly hesitant to add “my home address,” “my bank account information,” and “everything I watch on TV” to the growing list of Everything Google Knows About Me.

Just watched the full announcement. Unfortunately, it’s only rolling out for KCKS and, from what I can tell of the map, some north of the river and down/midtown KCMO. I’m South KCMO and so there’s no plans here. Yet. But I’ve signed up to go this weekend for the Google Fiber tour so I’ll get more information.

The announcement, IMHO, was a bit lackluster. Google can dream big when it comes to technological revolutions but can’t even come up with a half-arsed reasonable way to use it. It’s 100 times faster! What can we do?
“Ha Ha. You’re on a 5 MegaBit system which is sooooo slow. Guess my little Sally will have to start the project on her own rather than wait 15 minutes for your side to download.” Really? That’s what’s incentivizing us to get this cable? So we can upload a few more pictures to the Cloud than you can?

There was also tenative clapping when they rolled out the prices. They just weren’t…WOW! Like we were expecting. But, upon a bit of reflection, I think they’re reasonable. The big provider around here is Time Warner. I have Dish Network and it’s costing me $93 a month for 250 channels plus HBO/Showtime.
I think internet is around $35 a month. So right there, that’s over the $120 for Google TV/Gigabit. So yes, I would absolutely switch to save money and have a supremely better system.

And the $0 per month charge for “basic” bandwidth? Yeah, that’s a shot across the bow for Time Warner. I think they’re legitimately crapping their pants right now.

Google fiber and BBQ.

If I were a real estate developer, I would buy an apartment complex here and start marketing to geeks currently living in California. Offer it as the ultimate gaming experience.

Wow, this sounds like the most awesomest thing ever.

I’m sure the CRTC will ensure that this, or any other service like it, will never find its way into Canada.

Oh, poor, naive Vinyl Turnip. Bless your heart.

I’d be 100% happy with the $0 5 megabit plan, considering I’m paying $50 now for 1.5 megabit.

I upload HD video clips, and even though I’m on Surewest, which offers a much better product that Time-Warner, it still takes me an hour to upload a single song.

The difference between Time-Warner and AT&T’s “up to 5 megabit” and Google’s is that since Google’s system is built for 1 gigabit service, they will be able to deliver an actual 5 megabit down/1 megabit up connection 24/7/365.

As I said, the $0 is designed to kill AT&T DSL, and the $120 a month is what Time-Warner is charging for cable + Internet.

I don’t see why I have to pay that much just so I can go to the bathroom correctly.

Oh wait…

ESPN is approximately 18 times more expensive than the average cable channel, which means that an enormous percentage of your cable bill is for ESPN. Dropping ESPN immediately reduces the cost of providing non-premium channels by more than half.

As someone who has deleted ESPN from my channel lineup, I wish there was a way to get no-ESPN cable, and the resulting savings.

I live north of the river, but my zip code is North Kansas City - it tells me they are only building in KCMO and KCK. Darn, I’d like to kick Time Warner to the curb.

Even more annoying is that U-Verse apparently reaches to within half a block of my house, and I’d get the employee pricing for that.

Walk half a block to your neighbor and ask if they’d be willing to install a high powered directional WiFi antenna in return for a substantially cheaper internet bill.

Please explain to this not-so-tech savvy person what makes this Google Fiber thing so unique and different. Thank you in advance.

If you don’t need or want the TV option, why would you choose the $70/month plan over the $0/month plan? Especially since the $300 construction fee can be paid monthly.

EDIT: Diosa, it’s really fucking fast internet, among other things listed on site. Which in itself is not totally amazing, but some places don’t get the type of service (a more standard fiber optic connection) Google is offering. And being Google, they of course are planning country wide domination and so it may become available in areas that does not have anything other than the local monopoly.

I’m on a minimal AT+T plan and I can see a need for a faster than 5 megabit connection. For one, you can connect your other media through the Internet: trying to pipe everything through there might put a strain on a 5 megabit connection. Plus you can download stuff a LOT faster. Right now it’s actually faster for me to go to the store to buy a CD than it is to download off of Amazon (I don’t have quite 5 megabits though: but that’s just an example.) So for those who will put in Internet video, skype, Amazon downloads, in addition to file transfer and internet surfing, for a whole family of people all through their internet connection, $70 a month might make sense.

I myself would probably go for the 5 megabit option because I don’t do all of that. I would probably prefer, say, a 100 megabits for $40 option if I did because I can live with just “pretty fast” instead of “super duper hyper fast”.

I know it’s fast and that’s why I’m asking why anyone would choose to pay $70/month versus $0 or $25 unless you really really need that 1Gb up/down speed?

That’s a violation of the terms of service of most internet providers.