• db2@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Both, along with reduced speed and support that is next to useless.

  • db2@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m shocked. Totally shocked.

    Private equity means rising process and dropping quality until it’s useless at which point it will be sold off piece by piece. Consumers aren’t part of the process except as wallets.

  • orbitz@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    I always thought the 1Gbps was awesome and perhaps a good incentive for other companies to upgrade (probably more the reason since they’re Google and their ad bucks). Recently saw a reason to switch for 2.5, did it then was told by the installer they don’t even have cable that does it. Mean. I did it myself and my stream downloads are quite fast, but it’d have been nice if my provider mentioned that in the first place so I knew who had to run the wires. It was only through some holes, behind the sink / dishwasher so not awful but you td have been nice to understand 2.5 was higher than their techs supported.Also needed a switch / router upgrade. Which was actually quite fun to do and minimal cost now can get a mesh wifi going.

    Still if your techs can’t provide what is needed in cables for your upper end least tell the customer first.

  • scytale@piefed.zip
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    2 months ago

    And here I am still waiting for google fiber to reach my part of the neighborhood. I guess another one bites the dust.

      • amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        If only companies were allowed to just do what they wanted without rules and regulations… What a beautiful distopian nightmare we would live! Also the line would go vertical! One can only dream

        • maplesaga@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          The bank of Canada might not be ringing the alarm bells on productivity growth as our per capita living standards fall.

          Sadly we need exports if we want wealth, we can’t just trade homes back and forth forever. We are already losing manufacturing jobs, so what will replace them?

          As long as its like this Canadians won’t invest in Canada and we will have a repeat of the last decade, where everything is more expensive and the poor are destroyed financially. People like you will then blame corporations for raising prices, as the government debases our currency with QE.

  • sevan@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    I always thought this was their plan. I used to work for one of the cable companies when this came out. Most of us in the Operations space saw this as an obvious play to bully the big telecom companies to increase speeds and latency to benefit the tech companies. However the execs freaked out and treated them as an existential threat, which is exactly what Google wanted.

    They never had any desire to run an Internet company, it costs a ton of money to build out. So they cherry picked relatively dense middle and upper class neighborhoods that would have a good return in a way that the regulated telecoms would not be allowed to. They normalized high speed internet nationally and now they can sell off the business to recoup some of the cost.

    I’m not a fan of Google, but as an internet customer, I appreciate the result of this strategy.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Makes sense but since ISPs are essentially a monopoly in fiber, they get to charge whatever they want, despite the fact that I know AT&T’s break even cost for 5G fiber is $10 a month per line.

    • Cort@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yeah some (formerly) local fiber companies started out as a way to get decent Internet in places the big ISPs wouldn’t touch. Some are still around, but many are getting sold off to the big telcos

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    I don’t have any experience with Google Fiber, but I was bummed when Google Domains got sold off, I forgot to whom. Google Domains was so simple. No nonsense.

  • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    When do no evil finally turns to do evil always. I think this leaves the Woz as the only remnant of when tech was the good guy.

    • Peekashoe@lemmy.wtf
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      2 months ago

      Good point. Though even when Woz was involved, he was overruled by one of the model tech narcissists, Jobs. But at least he was in the room.

      I think we’ve just created an unregulated system that almost perfectly incentivizes and reinforces evil, so eventually evil is what we get.

      Free market capitalism can only serve good with a tight collar and very short leash held by healthy democracy. Maybe it was a bad idea spending 40 years removing and making all leashes and collars for capitalism illegal, and handing the collar and leash to capitalism to put on democracy. But what do I know.

  • Justifier@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    So all of the easement agreements got pushed through by google, and are being taken over by entities who wouldn’t have been able to get those easements due to commujity distrust of their company

    I’d sue to have the easement revoked as a community, and for punitive damages hefty enough as a punch to Google’s nose to prevent that type of bad behavior from happening in the future

    Not chump change, not cost of operations. Actual punitive damages enough to cut out any profits from the transaction and then some

    • white_nrdy@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      Can I get an ELI5? My understanding is that easements are the fees that customers (either individual or community) pay to get the equipment/infra run to their property for service.

      Are you saying that customers wouldn’t have paid those easements if it was the normal telecom company doing it, as opposed to Google? If so, what are the “damages” in this case? I’m not understanding for what you could sue.

      • Justifier@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        As for damages

        Say you have a old masonry structure like a masonry brick fence in the way of the easement

        They can tear it down and will, and will not replace it with one of comparable quality if they bother to at all

        Ive seen some beautiful 1950s work like that where it goes from amazing tradesmen quality masonry and iron fencing to jank 4x4’s and basically chickenwire on the easement, even 2 sections of the masonry/iron fence would take thousands to fix properly from what they did and there’s the likelihood they’ll do it again in the future.

        Those are homes of people on fixed incomes or investments. They usually can’t keep fixing the damage. And those fences aren’t really decorations, its not even slightly uncommon for people to die from dog maulings in my area. Happens a few times every single year

        Say you have a road, driveway, etc? At some point you will have a massive random pothole or speedbump because they’ll cut a trough right through it and fill it with asphalt not repour expensive concrete. I can in my neighborhood point out four locations where cable and fiber easement companies have done just that

        • misterztrite@piefed.social
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          2 months ago

          I call bullshit at least as far as Gfiber is concerned. I live in a multi family building. For mine they had to run it under a driveway, sidewalk, and fence. They didn’t touch any of them. Then when my neighbor had theirs installed they just had to go under the driveway. It wasn’t touched again but unfortunately they had cut my line. So they ran mine again and like the first time they didn’t touch any of the three. I don’t know if my other neighbors in the building have Gfiber or not as I was affected at all and they didn’t touch any of the three if they did get it installed.

      • Justifier@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Theres really no eli5, this is a purposely convoluted topic

        Best I could offer you is recomemend you go look up the channels Lehto’s Law and The Institute for Justice on YouTube

        In the US, easements have a history of being abused to render large areas of privately owned land useless/unusable, to legally trespass, and to harass landowners

        There’s a reason for example that American Tribes fight especially hard to prevent easements from oil or rail or really any companies

        Cable companies in particular have a reputation of destroying peoples properties, have numerous times now been given insane payouts to build the very infrastructure with taxes that they just bought and in those instances pocketed the money without even a slap on the wrist. Further their involvement indicates that any further infrastructure projects expanding that fiber are basically dead, and for any that exist they’re going to be on life support

        Those same bailout companies just got their hands on the easements that were allowed to go to a group who at the least didn’t have that history of abuse, and precedent of the that deal going through so it is more likely to start happening in more places

        All of those easements should be considered as dead space and new ones will have to be allocated when expansion is taken up by yet another company on 10 or 20 years when they prove they won’t upgrade or properly maintain theirs to modern needs, that means further encroaching on people’s property

        Think of it like sidewalks that moved another 3-4 feet into people’s yards every 10 or so years which you as a homeowner are not allowed to alter or use or complain when their representatives do so

    • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Locally community owned nonprofit isps are the future. Of you live in an area with that, switch over now. Isps in the next year or so are going to sign Ai data scrapping contracts and allow federal censorship like China’s great firewall. You heard it here first.

      • melfie@lemy.lol
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        2 months ago

        I gladly pay more for my local fiber connection than it would cost for Xfinity. Fuck these greedy corporate shithead monopolies with their shitty service. I’ll pay whatever it costs to support a local company instead.