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Google Fiber coming to Charlotte?


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7 hours ago, jednc said:

Please explain the difference between those two things in your mind.

Not even my post, but, well... Given those two words have different meanings... No different than a Boss - Employer relationship. Google hired the contractors, they should do their due diligence. Things do happen, and bad contractors are hired, but Google needs to take the stand on some of these bad contractors. If they make mistakes, make sure they don't keep making them. If they keep making them, let them go. Google should have some oversight on the process.

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Exactly.  If I give tasks to my employees to accomplish, those become their responsibilities - I won't be directly working those tasks.  But as their boss I will be held accountable for them and could even lose my job because of their performance.

Edited by SentioVenia
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On 6/28/2016 at 0:24 PM, SentioVenia said:

Exactly.  If I give tasks to my employees to accomplish, those become their responsibilities - I won't be directly working those tasks.  But as their boss I will be held accountable for them and could even lose my job because of their performance.

 

But that is not the relationship here. Google is not their employer, not their boss. Google is contracting them to do work. This is more akin to the relationship between you and someone you might hire to trim your trees. If they inadvertently drop a limb on your neighbor's house, they are responsible, not you. This is assuming you hired someone competent to do the job I guess. In this case, the contractor's competence would be based on whether they are licensed to do the work I suppose.

I understand the urge to blame the big, well-known company, and I'm sure you have a point about switching contractors if they prove they can't do the job properly. I'm sure there is a reasonable rate of damage associated with this type work when contractors are putting in anything underground. I assume we haven't crossed that line if Google is continuing to use the same contractors. I guess time will tell...

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This is about relationships.  In your scenario, if my tree contractor dropped a limb on my neighbor's house and I told my neighbor, "Sorry, deal with my tree guy, he's the one who did it," I wouldn't be building a very good relationship with my neighbor.  Likewise, if Google told all their potential customers, "Sorry, about your power/gas/telephone/cable/water disconnections, deal with our contractors," they wouldn't be setting themselves up for good relationships with their new customers.

Fun, related, real-world story:  several months back I started receiving calls from Google originating from Greensboro.  Their reps were apologizing for disconnecting my services during fiber installation.  Although I told them they had the wrong number and I was in Charlotte, they were taking accountability for their contractors' actions.

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On July 3, 2016 at 7:48 PM, jednc said:

But that is not the relationship here. Google is not their employer, not their boss. Google is contracting them to do work. This is more akin to the relationship between you and someone you might hire to trim your trees. If they inadvertently drop a limb on your neighbor's house, they are responsible, not you. This is assuming you hired someone competent to do the job I guess. In this case, the contractor's competence would be based on whether they are licensed to do the work I suppose.

I understand the urge to blame the big, well-known company, and I'm sure you have a point about switching contractors if they prove they can't do the job properly. I'm sure there is a reasonable rate of damage associated with this type work when contractors are putting in anything underground. I assume we haven't crossed that line if Google is continuing to use the same contractors. I guess time will tell...

 
 

You make it sound like a Contractor is absolutely nothing like an Employee. This isn't a discussion about the legal definition of the relationship, it is a conversation about what is right. Your example is misleading, it is all about scale. It's more like the City of Charlotte contracting for tree trimming, and that contractor drops limbs on different houses weekly. The contractor will likely make it whole and repair damage but citizens would have a right to hold the city accountable if they just wash their hand of it and say "Not our responsibility?" Is the city responsible from a legal point of view? No, but if they continue to use a contractor that is clearly bad at their job, the city should make a change. Hence the difference between responsibility and accountability. 

All the legal definitions aside, Google is the face of all this, the average citizen would blame all this on Google. That is not a good look, and bad for their brand and business, the whole Google Fiber rollout here has a very negative PR look right now. Google should do something to fix that.

Edited by Squid7085
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AT&T gigabit hit 3 gas lines while laying fiber in my neighborhood this week...you don't see them apologizing (or even acknowledging it).  crap happens, the fire trucks show up (I counted 6), and life goes on even if the yard smells like rotten eggs for a couple days.  No one blames ATT, we blame the contractors whose first language is not English.

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I think I must clarify my statement above.

When the different parties involved met with Google about their projects in the Charlotte area, Google stated that they knew there would be utilities interrupted but have already budgeted for the fines. Pretty much they told the contractors to do it as quickly as possible, don't worry about checking for utilities and the fines incurred by hitting them, we will pick up that tab. We just want you to help us get our product online as quickly as possible because competition  (AT&T) is doing the same. As a contractor who knows their job, why would you blatantly rush through a job if you know the fines incurred would be significant enough to put your company under unless you were told the responsibility of those fines would be handled by the company you're contracting for? 

But when the contractors do what Google asked of them, Google just steps back and leaves the fines with the contractor which puts them under and Google moves on to the next contractor.  One thing I've noticed recently is the contractors are now getting utilities marked, but accidents are still occurring. I suppose the wait for marking them is less now than the wait for PNC digging crews after hitting them. Or they now understand they are being left with the fines.

Now, some of this is hearsay from the upper echelon down to the blue collar,  so take it for what its worth. Regardless of fault, like the above comments, the image Google and AT&T are projecting from these utility interruptions is not good. Especially from those having to repeatedly deal with the aftermath. Plus it's seriously straining all parties involved( USIC, CFD, PNC, citizens, etc)

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Somewhat related news and maybe someone else can clarify.  As I was talking to one of my neighbors about the mess the ATT fiber crew was making in our neighborhood, she said she worked for ATT and that while ATT was laying the conduit for the fiber, she said that ATT and Google fiber will sharing the conduit for the fiber with google just leasing the "space".  She said they have teamed up on different parts of the city to get both networks in place quicker (basically the same thing as sharing poles, just with conduit).  Man I hope so as they have left my neighborhood looking like a war zone!  Multiple water lines pierced, gas lines ruptured, trash/equipment everywhere, etc.  

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  • 3 months later...

Google Fiber's president is stepping down, the division is being re-organized, 9% of the staff is being laid off, and all expansion will be put on "HOLD." They won't be announcing anymore cities during the pause and will continue to operate where they have installed cable, but expect the expansion in those cities to slow as Google figures out if Fiber is really the future and worth the upfront investment. Sounds like they think a completely wireless society is a better investment. It looks like most of Charlotte won't ever see Fiber as they slow the roll-out and shift to wireless.

http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-bet.html?_sm_au_=iVVj68DkRjqHDMj5

Edited by CLT2014
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8 minutes ago, southslider said:

^Could Time Warner give AT&T a pre-built advantage on "fiber" network?

AT&T won't get a pre-built advantage from acquiring Time Warner Inc. the media/content company, which is a separate company from Time Warner Cable, which just got acquired by Charter Communications. AT&T will still need to install their own high speed fiber. 

Time Warner Inc. and Time Warner Cable used to be one company until 2009, when Time Warner Cable was spun off into a separate public company. 

Edited by CLT2014
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So, Craig Barratt is stepping down, yet in his blog, he indicates existing platforms/infrastructure in cities already underway will continue in conjunction with "point-to-point" wireless so are we to believe that (other than a few scattered apartments) Google Fiber is a no go for single family homes in the Metro?

"These changes to our business and technology will have some immediate implications. Some of our efforts will remain unchanged, but others will be impacted. In terms of our existing footprint, in the cities where we’ve launched or are under construction, our work will continue"

Craig Barratt, SVP, Alphabet

 

Seems it would be in their best interest to let folks know the game plan for each city rather than keep customers on the fence about which ISP they should be going with. 

Personally, I loathe TWC (or Spectrum)..whomever they are now and have been holding out for Fiber since I got my freebie black Google T-Shirt back in 2014. We need choices here in Charlotte (especially in NoDa)

btw...I pay TWC for 100mbps d/l speeds yet Ookla verifies that I rarely get over 53 and thats on a good day.....pitiful!!

Humming the tune of Dire Straights "Money for Nothing" "I Want my Google Fiber":tw_bawling:

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
9 minutes ago, InSouthPark said:

False advertising. That isn't gigabit!  

I'll just go back and hide behind my < 50mb TWC connection now... 

Haha, just an FYI though, when it gets to speeds that high, the limiting factor becomes the hardware in the rig that the test is running from.  Our installer was actually astonished by the result we got.  Apparently every machine so far in Charlotte that HE has done tests on hasn't gotten much above 900Mb/s, if even at all.  It helps that we tested ours from a custom built desktop with dual gigabit NIC cards.  In theory the connection will get even stronger as their network adds redundancy.

If you're getting Fiber and have a retail bought computer, don't expect much more than 900Mb/s.  Our macbooks/iphones are all getting around 850mbs via wifi.  And I'm perfectly happy with that.

I know you were just posting in jest, just figured I'd hand out a PSA

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On 11/11/2016 at 8:29 PM, Neo said:

^ That latency! Wowsers! I had Windstream install a 1 gbit fiber line at my day job a couple of years ago and with the overhead we get about what you're getting, but our latency is ~5 ms. I'm amazed at the latency you posted.

Wait. You were supposed to be impressed.

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^ That latency! Wowsers! I had Windstream install a 1 gbit fiber line at my day job a couple of years ago and with the overhead we get about what you're getting, but our latency is ~5 ms. I'm amazed at the latency you posted.

We were shocked too! It has been consistently at 2ms the last few days. So many of our neighbors have been getting their installs this week and performance hasn't wavered one bit. But I guess that's the idea.
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21 hours ago, jednc said:

Wait. You were supposed to be impressed.

I am, but the reality is that you can only download as fast as the other end can upload, and that is almost always throttled. A 1 gbit connection doesn't get you much for home outside of notoriety and seriously not having any issues whatsoever in being able to stream your favorite content in whatever quality you want to for however many people you can fit in your house.

The latency though, that is something else! With that you have an edge against your online opponent in a game and have absolute confidence in your home VoIP system. The latency is far more impressive to me than the speed. We pay several thousand at work for our gbit connection and still can't get a latency that low.

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11 hours ago, Neo said:

I am, but the reality is that you can only download as fast as the other end can upload, and that is almost always throttled. A 1 gbit connection doesn't get you much for home outside of notoriety and seriously not having any issues whatsoever in being able to stream your favorite content in whatever quality you want to for however many people you can fit in your house.

That depends.  If you're someone who seeds files, a synchronous gigabit connection 19900% over what you typically have.  The thing about connections like fiber is they have yet to figure out how to use the upload speeds.

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  • 5 months later...

Has there been any news / new service in the past six months? I know they were working in Dilworth long ago and their web site still says no service in the hood. The web site also shows that they have increased pricing ($30 more per month for gigabit and tv package, AT&T has held their gigabit pricing steady).

Are they serving any SFH neighborhood other than Highland Creek?

Edited by kermit
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