$120/mo for cutting edge consumer entertainment is just a slap in the face to other service providers.
I pay $120/mo in New York and get high speed internet, and cable TV with HBO (conspicuously missing from Google's offering) and ESPN. Don't get me wrong, I'd switch to Google in a heartbeat, but I don't actually think that $120 price point is much of a slap in the face to existing providers.
EDIT: and this is just in Kansas City. Given the existing variations in price across the country, I'll be very surprised if we are all paying $120 when (if?) it rolls out nationally.
Yes, although there are rumblings about other locations. I can tell you that if it does 'decimate' the entrenched carriers they will go thermonuclear as well (so Google ends up opening another front in the legal wars) You can already see some of the tactics where cable companies have convinced legislatures to make it illegal to allow either public funds to be spent on infrastructure or to allow non-contracted third parties into a region.
No way to know. This is a pilot program. Running fiber to the home cost effectively is as much a political challenge as anything else. They're hoping to blow the doors of in KC to then help make things go more smoothly in other cities.
Because most customers don't care about gigabit. I'm a tech geek and I don't care about it- my existing speed (around 10mpbs, I think) has rarely posed problems for me.
In any case, $120 in Kansas City is not ever going to translate to $120 in New York City.
This is incorrect. It is why places like T-Mobile run commercials about caps and why there are tons of articles and blogs and Twitter comments about data caps. A lot of people care.
That's all mobile, though (and also wasn't what I was commenting about). My provider (Time Warner Cable) doesn't have any data caps- I know others do, of course.
In Orlando I'm paying $240 a month to get 40Mbps down / 5 up with a full channel lineup, plus Showtime and NHL Center Ice. So THIS would be a huge deal to people in my area where only one cable option exists in a lot of Central Florida.
I pay $120/mo in New York and get high speed internet, and cable TV with HBO (conspicuously missing from Google's offering) and ESPN. Don't get me wrong, I'd switch to Google in a heartbeat, but I don't actually think that $120 price point is much of a slap in the face to existing providers.
EDIT: and this is just in Kansas City. Given the existing variations in price across the country, I'll be very surprised if we are all paying $120 when (if?) it rolls out nationally.