I'm not surprised at this at all. Comcast was initially pressured into starting their 100 Mbps service due to the advent of Verizon's FiOS. We need Google to speed their timetable up so the status quo can change yet again. Of course Comcast is trying to shut them down -- they are offering what Comcast knows should be a much cheaper service. Comcast charges an arm and a leg because most places they hold market share. With services like this and Google Fiber coming in, it forces companies like Comcast and AT&T to forgo their shitty services and actually provide legitimate internet speeds. The ironic thing is that I know there are a few companies who can do it much better than Google Fiber, but Google has the clout to get a lot of this current bullshitting changed.
And you basically got that speed because 4Mbps/1Mbps is the bare minimum speed that ISPs can give to their customers if they are receiving government subsidies for infrastructure, as mandated by the FCC. The FCC just passed law that mandates that the bare minimum should be 10Mbps/1Mbps, so you can expect a bump in speed... eventually.
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It's all bullshit at the end of the day. Consider NASA, who runs their services on 90-100 Gbps. That's 100 Gigabits, not Mega. Let that sink in. There has been many studies on their speeds through ESNet and for the most part the researchers came to the conclusion that typical family homes don't even need half of that in this age. Just the fact that they run it at 100 Gbps says a lot -- we as private citizens should be getting much more in terms of speed than what is offered. I agree with the FCC commissioner that 10Mbps is too low, but take it a step forward from his proposition of 25Mbps minimum. We really as citizens and private customers should be getting 50Mbps minimum. Services like Netflix and Hulu are already spotty if you want 1080p definition but are on a 10-15Mbps connection. And these days, a typical household will have 5+ electronic devices going at any time of the day, all which require internet access and take up bandwidth.
I, for one, welcome our new Google Fiber Overlords.