I've got a place in Vegas that's presently served by CenturyLink. It has 1G/1G symmetrical fiber at a guaranteed fixed price of $65/mo. 8G is appealing. So far I haven't seen a map or a timeline of where/when. I signed up for status emails from Google over a year ago.
They just raised the price on my fixed for life deal from Century Link. If you look back, there's nothing in the documentation/terms that actually claimed it was for life. Super shady on their end and I'm going to switch to Google Fiber once they're finished installing it in my neighborhood (they're currently in the installation process)
The only way they could have raised the price was if you opted into their new "Quantum Fiber" plan. I got the snail-mail postcards offering me the "upgrade", but I did not see any benefit. They offered exactly the same service I already have. I assumed (correctly) that they were just trying to get out of the $65/mo "lifetime" deal they promised.
I still have the deal.
Edit:
I just checked, and Quantum Fiber now offers 2G/1G (two down, one up) fiber in my Vegas neighborhood for $95/mo. They are claiming it's a "lifetime" price guarantee.
Same here ($65 -> $75); I think it's an "equipment fee." I don't even use the router. My employer covers the cost so I haven't called to complain, but I suspect if you do you can return the router and lose the fee.
I keep the router they gave me in one of my garages. The only time I've ever connected it was when their service had a problem and they wanted to run remote diagnostics. The other 99.9999% of the time, I use an OpenWRT VM.
I would not have accepted the router if there were any strings attached, and they're welcome to take it back if they want to start charging me for it.
