Major Internet service providers in the United States have long taken a beating in customer satisfaction surveys, but the latest survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index has the grimmest news yet for American ISPs: They now have the lowest customer satisfaction ranking of any industry in America, worse than even airlines, health insurance companies and gas stations. The survey shows that American consumers are particularly unhappy with ISPs’ call center service, with the variety of Internet plans they offer and with their quality of online video streaming. More →
The early reviews of Google Fiber are in from Kansas City and one of the most attractive features of the service seems to be how it makes Netflix irresistible. The buffering annoyances that consumers take for granted vanish as Google Fiber feeds movies and shows instantly to eager Silicon Prairie dwellers. What’s more, the recently launched Google Fiber TV app offers video on demand for iPad. This direction is fascinating because of the hottest trend in US consumer behavior: broadcast television audience collapse. More →
As someone who pays Time Warner Cable more than $50 each month for Internet service that promises 30Mbps down and just 5Mbps up, I would welcome Google Fiber’s $70 gigabit Internet service with open arms. Forgetting for a moment that TWC doesn’t even provide me with service that reaches the speeds it promises, I’m just tired of paying the company so much and getting so little in return. But in a world where cable companies are allowed to build mini-monopolies in cities and towns across America, I have no choice — I can either keep paying for bad service from Time Warner, or I can pay almost as much for even worse service from a DSL provider. More →
There’s little doubt that Google Fiber is forcing rivals to be more competitive, and another instance of Google’s Internet service forcing rival ISP’s hand has emerged. Now that Time Warner Cable is realizing that criticizing Google’s revolutionary Internet service won’t make it go away, the New York-based ISP admitted in a recent blog post that it is being forced — sorry, “encouraged” — to change its plans in Austin, Texas as a result of the coming competition from Google Fiber. More →
Google’s ultra-high-speed Google Fiber Internet service won’t be accessible to most Americans for quite some time, but the revolutionary service’s impact is already being felt even by those who don’t subscribe to the service. As noted by MIT’s Technology Review blog, Akamai’s annual state of the Internet report was released recently and it does a great job of highlighting Google Fiber’s ripple effect. More →
Remember how Time Warner Cable executives tried to claim that American consumers don’t actually want 1Gbps broadband connections? Well, InfoWorld’s Paul Venezia isn’t having any of it and says that ISPs who deny the challenge that Google Fiber represents are whistling past their own graveyards. In particular, Venezia says that he’s surprised that ISPs have kept insisting that ”customers don’t want gigabit Internet,” which he likens to “a lead paint salesman pooh-poohing latex paint because ‘customers don’t want their health.’” More →
Cable companies have long dismissed gigabit Internet speeds as a luxury that most consumers don’t really want but venture capitalist Hunter Walk thinks that consumer expectations for broadband service will change once they experience Google’s high-speed Google Fiber service for themselves. Walk, a former Google executive who left the company earlier this year to start his own VC firm, recently travelled to Kansas City to experience Google Fiber first hand and came away very impressed. More →
Provo, Utah isn’t as well-known as Kansas City or Austin but it’s nonetheless become the third city to get access to Google’s high-speed Google Fiber television and Internet service. The expansion to Provo will be relatively simple for Google since the city already has its own fiber network known as iProvo. Google announced on Wednesday that it will buy iProvo from the city and will “upgrade the network to gigabit technology and finish network construction so that every home along the existing iProvo network would have the opportunity to connect to Google Fiber.” Google says that Provo, which has a population of around 115,000, is a terrific market for Google Fiber because it “ranks second in the nation in patent growth, and is consistently ranked as one of the top places to live and do business in the U.S.”
Good news for Google Fiber subscribers who want to follow the adventures of Tyrion Lannister and the Stark family: Google on Tuesday announced that its Fiber television service will now offer HBO for an additional $20 per month. The entire $20 monthly package includes not just HBO but also HBO2, HBO Signature, HBO Family, HBO Latino, HBO Comedy, and HBO Zone. A similar Cinemax channel bundle is also now available for $10 per month. Google has been slowly working to add more channels to its Fiber television service to compete with cable operators such as Time Warner Cable by delivering both a comprehensive pay television service as well as the fastest broadband Internet service in the United States.
A Sony-backed ISP has announced that it now offers the world’s fastest home broadband service. So-net Entertainment on Monday began offering its “Nuro” fiber-based service to residents in Tokyo and six surrounding areas. The service is available for Y4,980 ($51) per month with a two-year service agreement and a Y52,500 ($535) installation fee. Customers who apply online, however, will have the one-time fee waived. Upload speeds top out at 1Gbps and download speeds come in at a blisteringly fast 2Gbps, double that of Google Fiber. Although most users are unlikely to experience these speeds due to limitations of most consumer network adaptors, this doesn’t change the fact that residents of Tokyo will still have access to speeds well above the rest of the world. Google Fiber currently offers the fastest speeds in the United States with its 1 Gbps service plan for $70 per month, however it is only available in limited markets.
AT&T (T) on Tuesday announced plans to build an advanced fiber optic network that is capable of speeds up to 1Gbps in Austin, Tex. The company’s announcement came shortly after Google (GOOG) confirmed that it will launch its gigabit broadband Internet service, known as Google Fiber, in the city later next year. AT&T didn’t reveal additional details such as an estimated launch date, although the company said it is anticipating that it will “be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives.” AT&T’s press release follows below. More →
Time Warner Cable (TWC) doesn’t seem too concerned about Google’s (GOOG) ultrafast fiber service encroaching on yet another one of its territories by launching in Austin this week. In a statement given to The Wall Street Journal, a Time Warner Cable spokesperson said that the company is “prepared for added competition and believe that any innovation in broadband technology is good for all of us.” Praising Google for providing “innovation in broadband technology” is an intriguing thing for Time Warner Cable to say since its CTO earlier this year said that the company doesn’t plan to build out fiber to the home because there’s no evidence that American consumers actually want super-fast networks. It will be interesting to see if Google Fiber’s plan to expand to more markets spurs more aggressive network upgrade investments from rival ISPs, especially ISPs that have been dismissive about the need to boost network speeds.
