[scott_karana]

> Yes, San Francisco has been skipped again and I’m going to go cry into my slow internet from Comcast.

I seriously still cannot get over how funny this is.

SF pitches itself as the centre of the tech universe, and yet, it still hasn't "disrupted" its own crappy broadband infrastructure. (Much less the rest of the country's!)

I'm sure there's many good reasons for Google passing them over, but that doesn't keep it from being hilarious.

[mikeyouse]

Chris Sacca (of Twitter / Uber investing fame) spent months / years of his life working for Google trying to get San Francisco to agree to install free, city-wide WiFi paid for by Google. It didn't happen.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/S-F-stalling-Wi-Fi-plans-...

[samstave]

Heh - I was doing this before Chris Sacca was!

Listen to what happened:

We were seeking to build wifi and wanted to get the city to allow us to put the nema boxes on street lights and stop lights.

I cant recall the officials name now (this was ~2002 or so) -- and they came back and stated they wanted video cameras on all stop lights. They then said that they wanted "at least 60 frames per second" and that they wouldn't allow us to put up the devices as they were already looking to pull fiber to every stoplight to support cameras.

[pizza]

Wow.

[scott_karana]

Good for him! Glad to see people fighting the good fight.

[Apocryphon]

While we're at it, SF has also failed to "disrupt" its own housing crisis (until very recently), its infrastructural issues, its transport problems (well, I suppose ridesharing is the workaround), its flagrant income disparity issues, and the fact that the whole industry which has enabled remote work and teleconferencing is still shackled into this overcrowding, overpriced region.

[api]

"Hacker, disrupt thyself."

[monocasa]

> (until very recently)

What happened?

[Apocryphon]

I was referring to the pro-growth/housing measures that won in the municipal election last month. Though it's hardly disruption, as it is "finally dealing with."

[freyr]

The housing measures that help reduce the housing supply by allowing apartments and condos to serve as short-term AirBNB rentals for non-residents?

Certainly, it's pro-growth (for AirBNB), but I don't see how it's pro-housing for anyone else. Unless you expect to live week to week in AirBNB rentals.

[arebop]

Even using wildest estimates of the proponents of the anti-AirBNB measure, AirBNB involves a negligible fraction of the city's housing units. It was only related to housing by political rhetoric. Surely the commenter upthread was talking about the moratorium on development in the Mission.

[freyr]

AirBNB involves a negligible fraction of the city's housing units.

A more relevant metric would be the AirBNB rentals relative to the vacant rental units. A rough estimate indicates:

- There are 300+ "Entire home" units available in SF next week on AirBNB. AirBNB says this represents 15% of the total supply. This would suggest there are 2,000+ such units in total registered on AirBNB (though I presume some of those are occupied units that are only listed when their occupants are out of town).

- The rental vacancy rate in San Francisco is 3.6% of 220,000 units, or about 8,000 vacant rental units total.

- This suggests that the percentage of unoccupied units that are serving as AirBNB units ranges from 3.6% (300/8300) to over 20% (2000/10000) Even at the overly conservative rate of 3%, this is a non-negligible fraction in a city with a rental shortage. Rents tend to jump sharply when the rental vacancy rate falls too low, and SFs vacancy rate is among the lowest in the nation.

Surely the commenter upthread was talking about the moratorium on development in the Mission.

You're likely right.

[krakensden]

Mission Rock got approved, a small affordable housing bond was approved, a measure making it easier for the city to sell surplus land to developers, and the Mission moratorium failed.

Small potatoes, but still in the "maybe we should build more housing" direction, so, tasty potatoes.

[simoncion]

> The housing measures that help reduce the housing supply by allowing apartments and condos to serve as short-term AirBNB rentals for non-residents? ...I don't see how it's pro-housing for anyone else.

The situation on the ground is... substantially more interesting than you make it out to be. You should really read this partial analysis of the existing short-term rental regulation and the changed proposed by Prop F: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/10/yes-on-f/#comment-164412 Edit: NOTE. You'll need to copy and paste the link, rather than clicking on it. HN triggers JWZ's anti-hotlinking code.

If anything in the prose is unclear, feel free to ask questions.

[azinman2]

The city got a blank check for 300M to make the problem go away (but it won't because they dont want to be NYC, so they limit supply, but then demand with money exceeds so prices go up)

[flashman]

Internet in SF is good enough to deliver Javascript, that's all Silicon Valley really is.

[blackjack48]

Sonic.net will likely beat Google in building out gigabit in SF. This megathread has been following their progress in the Sunset (and soon the Richmond) since 2013:

https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085

According to the CEO, though some of the issues have been related to permitting/bureaucracy, they have also had some contractor-related setbacks as well.

[xenadu02]

There is no likely; their truck just ran fiber in front my house in sunset. $40/mo for gigabit.

[duren]

The problem with Sonic is their 12 month contract

[wanderingstan]

First month is free, and contract doesn't kick in until after that. For me the math worked:

Was paying $100/month for 20Mb Comcast. Now paying $40/month for 30Mb Sonic. Penalty for breaking the 12 month contract early is $150. So after 2.5 months of good service, I'm in the black even if I have to cancel early.

Anecdotally, their technicians were the smartest I've ever met. I learned a lot about DSL and how they get 30MB out of 2 lines. I also learned that my 2014 MacBook pro can't even handle more than ~20Mb over wifi. My iPhone 6S is now running at about 27Mb, and I get 35Mb when wired to the router. I'm in the Inner Richmond.

[duren]

Alright, the math makes sense for you. In my case, it would have been $10 cheaper than Comcast, but 1/5 of the speed, and I'd be locked into a year of service.

[lucaspiller]

The speeds on your equipment are probably due to a poor router. I had no issues maxing out 100mbit over wifi on my Mac and iPhone (then I moved...)

[chambo622]

Webpass[1] has been pretty "disruptive." It's only available in larger buildings, but the service and price point are fantastic.

[1] https://webpass.net/

[sureshv]

I paid $45 a month with Webpass for 100MB symmetrical when I lived in SF (back in '08) - pretty good deal. Looks like my old building can now get fiber with them.

[duren]

I recently moved to San Francisco from Chicago. I was paying $45/month for 25 mbps in Chicago, and I now pay $50/month for 150 mbps in SF. It feels like Chicago needs Fiber more than we do.

[shinymark]

What ISP are you getting 150 mbps at $50/mo from?

[duren]

Comcast/Xfinity

[rconti]

Meanwhile, my service cost jumped, so I re-upped for another Xfinity 12 month scam where instead of charging me $75/mo for 75mbit internet only, they charge me $55/mo for Internet in exchange for allowing myself to be listed as a "cable subscriber" in a sad effort to keep their TV subscriber numbers up.

That's right, their margins on internet are s huge they'd rather pay me $20 a month, plus pay the content providers (including HBO!) for another customer, than lose a "tv subscriber".

Nevermind that the cable box sits in my attic for another year.

[strange_quark]

Funny. I pay $45/month for 155 in Chicago.

[duren]

Huh, it's a shame there isn't more transparency (or consistency) in pricing.

[elif]

There factors for cities to consider besides competitive composition of existing providers. For instance, in Atlanta google fiber crews are destroying the streets, breaking utilities, and leaving really poor asphalt patches behind (especially noticeable in bike lanes). I hope, but doubt, that when they are finished, google will resurface all the roads they impacted.

I have no idea, but the underground conditions/road closure implications in SF could be even more challenging.

[porsupah]

Relatedly, AT&T will be rolling out gigabit service in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland in 2016:

http://www.mercurynews.com/san-francisco/ci_29214143/at-t-bi...

The caveat, of course, being that not everyone in these cities will be covered.

[simoncion]

> The caveat, of course, being that not everyone in these cities will be covered.

Nor will there ever be universal coverage in those cities. It'll be Fios all over again. (Assuming that ATT even actually deploys the service and this isn't just a zero-cost feint to prevent our City Supervisors from inviting Google Fiber into the city.)

[samstave]

I recall in the 90s, many large areas in San Jose didnt get DSL for a REALLY long time. I have always been floored by this. I tried to meet with the mayor of Alameda last year to see if we could do a community municipal network. Their answer "Oh we used to have one - but we gave the rights to Comcast, so we wont allow another municipal network."

[mahyarm]

SF is so wildly incompetent that startups get invented to fix the problems of living in the bay area. They succeed because the govt. alternative is so bad.

It's probably not actually true in many cases, but you get that feeling.

For example, if SF cabs weren't so horrible, would Uber gotten it's initial traction? Would it exist today?

[newman314]

I don't live in SF proper but why can't Google Fiber come to the surrounding areas? There are plenty of communities that could use this outside of SF.

[adventured]

They're going to San Jose, that's a start. It's likely they'll spread around a bit from there with time.

At a minimum, having Google Fiber that close should spur San Francisco locals to get louder about the problem.

[newman314]

IIRC, San Jose is under consideration but not official as of yet.

[jsn117]

Can't even skype anymore from my home, too unreliable

[jedberg]

Actually it has, which is probably why they are avoiding it. There are many broadband choices in SF, some with pretty high speeds, some totally wireless.

My guess is that the city, being as regulatory happy as it is (and being specifically anti-Google thanks to the bus fiasco), is not interested in working with Google to make fiber happen.

You'll notice San Jose is on the list, and that actually includes a whole bunch of suburbs too (except notably Cupertino).

[Someone1234]

The whole bus thing was not remotely Google's fault.

In fact the buses weren't even really the problem. The protests were largely about rent increases caused by tech workers. The buses were just a symbol of the difference between tech workers and everyone else (and broad inequality).

Plus I struggle to side with the protesters when they do stuff like this[0]:

> Last week, a group of activists stalked a Google engineer at his East Bay house, urging the masses to “Fight evil. Join the revolution.” [..] The group that stalked Anthony Levandowski, an engineer at Google X, the company’s clandestine research laboratory, calls itself the Counterforce, after a Thomas Pynchon novel. About a dozen members, all dressed in black, gathered outside the Berkeley house where Mr. Levandowski lives with his partner and two young children.

> They unfurled a banner and handed out fliers detailing the engineer’s work on Google’s driverless car technology, Street View and Google Maps. The flier read: “Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation. He is also your neighbor.”

That's pretty messed up. The dude was a random employee, with a family...

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/technology/tech-rides-are-...

[jedberg]

I think you misunderstood me. I didn't say the bus thing was Google's fault. I just said the city doesn't like them because of it.