> My guess is that the biggest thing preventing this kind of thing from happening more often is exactly the amount of red-tape and government regulation involved.
I was briefly and directly involved with the Google Fiber rollout here in Austin. Here's the thing: anyone with firsthand information is unlikely to drop in to set things straight in a way that gives away any amount of detail, purely because in the professional world it would be unbecoming to say the kinds of things that would necessarily come out.
I don't expect that local government intervention and red-tape could be called the major contributing factor here.
From someone involved at the end I was working from, dbg31415's comments are exactly what I would expect the other end to feel like.
The thing you have to understand is this: generally speaking, the people involved with the labor on this kind of project inhabit a completely different world than the one that you or I or the rest of a site like HN lives in. That applies to the boys in the field doing the work, to the boys in the office shuffling paperwork and signing off on their checks.
It's unsurprising to me to hear that the labor costs are out of control, and to hear that Google was halting expansion to other cities this past fall was like hearing someone say that they smashed their fingers in the door and it hurt.
It's somewhat common for people in some security circles to post hashes of messages they don't want to post publicly, but might want to refer to disclose privately or at a later date, and have some reasonable proof they didn't make it up later.
This, for example, is a throwaway account. Perhaps there's something in the message that'll let them prove they left that message at a later date, if they desire to.
>I don't expect that local government intervention and red-tape could be called the major contributing factor here.
I can call absolute, first-hand-knowledge, bullshit to this assessment for the city of Alameda, California...
Plus, common.net has recently started service (I am a customer) but:
I spoke with the Mayor of Alameda, and they said specifically that they sold the communal rights to comcast (I can only assume it was a bribe) and this is the reason we have poor choices available to us
I don't know if I was lucky, or dbg was unlucky, or if Google streamlined things by the time they got to my hood, but the fiber install was great for me here in Austin.
I was briefly and directly involved with the Google Fiber rollout here in Austin. Here's the thing: anyone with firsthand information is unlikely to drop in to set things straight in a way that gives away any amount of detail, purely because in the professional world it would be unbecoming to say the kinds of things that would necessarily come out.
I don't expect that local government intervention and red-tape could be called the major contributing factor here.
From someone involved at the end I was working from, dbg31415's comments are exactly what I would expect the other end to feel like.
The thing you have to understand is this: generally speaking, the people involved with the labor on this kind of project inhabit a completely different world than the one that you or I or the rest of a site like HN lives in. That applies to the boys in the field doing the work, to the boys in the office shuffling paperwork and signing off on their checks.
It's unsurprising to me to hear that the labor costs are out of control, and to hear that Google was halting expansion to other cities this past fall was like hearing someone say that they smashed their fingers in the door and it hurt.
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