Google Fiber Reviewed
Overview:
- Moving from AT&T Uverse (TV & Internet(/ Vonage (Phone)
- I regularly saw down load speeds of 25Mbs and upload speeds in the single digits with AT&T.
- TV Picture was better than TWC but compressed.
- I had Vonage for 8yrs the only complaint was it could not do FAXs unless you upgrade to a business plan.
- Moving to Google Fiber Internet, TV, and Phone
- I am seeing nearly 1Gbs upload and download speeds
- The TV picture looks significantly better on my 4k OLED TV than with AT&T.
- The phone works reliably. I have not tried to FAX yet. I do like that is integrated with Google Voice.
The Installation:
I had and an 8:00AM installation appointment. Not 8:00 AM to noon. Just 8:00AM. The technician was here at 8:00AM. Actually he may have been a couple of minutes early. This sure beats TWC and AT&T. The last AT&T appointment I had, the guy showed up 2hrs outside the 4hr window. So far Google has them both beat.
I don't have your normal setup. I have 2 TV's, one in the living room and one in the upstairs office. The upstairs office TV was serviced by an AT&T wireless TV set top box. The Google Tech needed to have a wired connection from the downstairs set top box to the upstairs box. He always used the existing coax used by the previous TV providers. I asked if he could use Ethernet? He said yes but he had never done that. I guess I was going to have to school him. I had wired my house with Cat5 cable 15yrs ago. At first the upstairs TV box did not work. The signal was passing through another router and 2 switches. He called his support line and they told him it would not work going through a switch. I told him, what they meant is, it should work but it has never been tested. I found that the Ethernet cable to the switch by the upstairs TV had popped out. I plugged it in and it worked. I just saved the technician a lot of crawling around in my crawl space to run new cables.
We noticed my switches were only showing 100Mbs with their connection status lights. As I stated earlier, I had run Cat5 cable 15yrs earlier. For 1Gbs, you need to run over Cat5E or above. I guess I will be doing some rewiring sometime this spring with Cat6 cables.
The Tech installed the phone modem with no issues. He transferred my existing land line number from Vonage to Google Voice. I saw no interruption of service.
The main downstairs TV box installed without an issue.
The whole process took a couple of hours. It probably would have taken an hour less if we did not have that adventure with the upstairs TV.
The internet:
As I stated the speed is as advertised. I just need to upgrade my network to take full advantage of it. The wireless speed runs around 86Mbs. We got around 25Mbs with my old duel band router. The Google router is really good.
The network management is probably the simplest I have ever seen. Just point your Chrome browser to fiber.google.com and you are there. It is so simple, my in-laws could manage it. You can set up your wireless, run speed tests, etc... Very simple. You would expect Google to do this right and they did.
TV:
This is where Google does not shine. While picture is excellent the remote and screen layouts are not so great. For example, every DVR remote I have ever seen in the last 15yrs has a DVR/LIST or some single button to bring up your recorded shows. The only way I can see to get a list of my recordings is to hit Menu and then select DVR. I also don't see a easy way to delete multiple recordings. It may be there but I have not seen it yet.You can cast from your Chrome browser and Google Play Music app to the TV. I uploaded 2K songs up to the Google cloud and I can "Cast" them to the TV box. Actually, I can cast my whole computer screen to the TV box. This is cool.
TV wish to haves:
- A single button push to get to DVR recordings.
- Integration with Google Home. If I had a Google Home device, I would like to say, "OK Google, Put on CNN" and have it show CNN on my TV.
- They have APPs on the Menu. They only have 4, NetFlix, VUDU YouTube, and Weather. Google is the master of integration. They really did not show their expertise this time. Maybe they are planned for future upgrades. None of the other TV providers provide any real integration. I guess I just expected more from Google.
Do you need 1Gbs?
Probably not but you probably need more than 25Mbs.
I have up to 2 laptops, 2 desktops, 2 tablets, 3 cell phones, and my VOIP phone connected to the internet at one time. If you have a couple of people streaming content, and you are on the phone, things can get dicey,
Also, Google fiber does not have data caps. Most providers do have or are planning on implementing data caps and throttling. I would regularly use more than 750GBs per month with AT&T. Since I had TV and internet, they did not charge me for the extra data. I am not sure if they were throttling me. AT&T Uverse Fiber, which is also available in my neighborhood gives you 1TB of data if you get internet only and unlimited if you include TV. 1TB may sound like a lot, but if I am using 750GB at 25Mbs, I would expect to blow through 1TB in a couple of weeks. It is like dropping a V8 into a Toyota Corolla but keeping the 10 gallon gas tank. You may go real fast but not very far.
