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Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

I really want to see the ROI google is planning on having for theses projects. If my calculations[1] are correct they only need something like 200,000 customers to sign up to get a ROI of one year on both roll outs.

~ 100M for both rollouts @ $70 per customer per month

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I'd argue Google's ROI on the service itself a very small piece of the pie and almost irrelevant. Google gains most of their revenue from advertising on their properties. More people online + faster access = more advertising revenue.

Especially in a market like Kansas City which is dominated by TWC who is notorious for misrepresenting bandwidth, throttling against high bandwidth sites (youtube & netflix) and has noticeable capacity issues during peak usage times.

I imagine they're aiming for a high multiplier effect, too. Even if Google Fiber never reaches a large percentage of the American public, its mere existence may spur action on the part of other ISPs. For every Fiber customer Google signs up directly, they might indirectly obtain much better internet (and thus more advertising revenue) for maybe 10 other people using other ISPs.

but what do you do if that multiplier doesn't appear ? From what I have seen even when Verizon started a massive rollout of FiOS it didn't spur other ISP's to offer a competing service, they just relied on the fact that rolling out to _every_ market would be cost prohibitive. It looks like with Google Fiber the existing ISP's are taking the same track.

I don't know, my Comcast offerings got substantially better over the last few years before I moved, going from 6/1Mbps to about 20/5, and I could have had well beyond 100Mbps down by the end if I felt like paying for it.

FiOS clocks in at 150+ Mbps and starts at 25/25 Comcast is the prime offender in the you have no other options game.

I'm quite aware in both cases, as I have FiOS now, and Comcast was the only game in town at my old place.

My point, which you seem to have missed, or at least not addressed, is that Comcast did substantially improve their offering while Verizon was rolling out FiOS, even though they remained the only real broadband provider in my area.

Actually, the Cable companies selectively pushed out much faster speeds in markets where FIOS was being rolled out, to suck the oxygen out of the water in those places.

I still think this whole thing is to shame other internet providers who says this kind of service is impossible and there is no demand for it.

There is no way Google will be able to roll this out across the country. But if they roll it out to 10 or 20 cities then they might be able to force other internet providers into doing something.

>There is no way Google will be able to roll this out across the country.

Why not? The US is big, but the population is concentrated into a few areas.

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