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mizzou_guy on 21 April 2016
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Soundwave said:
mizzou_guy said:

I see what you're saying, but Google Fiber is only currenlty available in 4 cities with only 7 more cities for sure being expanded into:

https://fiber.google.com/about/

AT&T has many more cities, but if you look at this map, there is A LOT of the country left out, even in the same states where several cities are being developed for fiber:

https://www.att.com/shop/internet/gigapower/coverage-map.html?partner=LinkShare&siteId=je6NUbpObpQ-Tf9WUB0q7MOQZIY_biOCWQ

Comcast also has several cities currently in their fiber market, but again,  A LOT of land in between is not covered:

http://business.comcast.com/about-us/our-network

You have to remember that America is composed of a lot more land than just cities, and there are millions of people whom are not going to be receiving these fiber networks in the near future.  As I said before, I'd guess that it'll be at least a decade before people outside of these major cities can affordably obtain fiber speeds with their home networks.  Console companies are not going to just mark-off non-city residents from their consumer bases and focus on a console that is streaming only, as they would be losing way too much profit by limiting potential customers with that business model.

This is today though, you have to understand, 2-3 years ago there were like 2-3 cities total ... AT&T is adding 38 cities this year alone. In 5 years pretty much all the country's urban centers will have ultra high speed and probably a lot of rural areas too. 

Even Comcast ... they've found a way to deliver 1 Gigabit internet through *existing* cable infastructure, no fiber network needed. 

So what's happening now is AT&T, Google, and Comcast are all in competetion with each other, which will cause everything to spread even faster. 

Google Fiber was the spark that set off the dynamite. 

You have to understand that it is easier for these companies to develop the new fiber networks in the urban areas than it is in rural or even smaller cities due to return of investment ratios.  Laying fiber is expensive, so the more densily populated an area is, the more financially it makes sense for these companies to offer these services.  Land-wise, urban areas are much smaller than the rest of the country, so that return on investment goes way down once you exit the metro populations.  Perhaps the existing cable option can help, but I still think it's going to be an extremely long time before we see a streaming only offering from anybody, as it would alienate too many users.