We once spent a year in a building that had Webpass. Ever since then we've moved several times, and every time we ask if they have Webpass in the building. Fantastic service.
My only complaint is that for home service there is no way to get a public IP address, so you've got to get an external server if you want to access your home computers from elsewhere on the Internet.
Wow, unexpected. I used Webpass when I was in SF and was very happy with the quality of their service, so them getting more capital to expand is a great development.
Interesting.. I've been very happy with Webpass for the past 8 or 9 years (though my building's crappy wiring can "only" support 100Mbit).
A Webpass engineer I spoke to last week mentioned they're rolling out fiber to the building to provide redundancy for the wireless mesh. Surprised me as I could count on my fingers the number of outages webpass has had since I started using them. Perhaps it'll replace the wireless portion in the longer term.
It might look like a mesh on a topology diagram but believe me, it has nothing in common with wireless "mesh" networking... I don't have insight into the exact configuration of webpass' routers but they're undoubtedly using fairly ordinary BGP and OSPF between nodes. The wireless links are exclusively high capacity point-to-point trunks.
Former Webpass employee here. Was one of the first software eng. hires. This is a great example of a bootstrapped business focused on customer experience that built up with no outside funding (that I know of). Congrats Charles & team.
The idea of starting an ISP without outside funding (unless you're a millionaire already) is pretty astonishing. Been researching the possibility of this myself recently and costs of infrastructure are simple astronomical.
Webpass does not serve houses or smaller and/or older apartment buildings. This substantially lowers their install costs per customer relative to business models, like Fiber, that serve almost everyone n an area.
This is exciting news! In Chicago, I'm currently living in a high rise where the fastest plan I can get is 24 Mbps for around $80/mo. My high rise has an exclusivity contract with AT&T U-Verse. I've spoken with AT&T reps and they can't offer any higher speeds. I also talked to property management and they said there's nothing they can do for me. They are locked into an exclusivity contract with AT&T for the wires in the building.
Does anyone have experience dealing with properties who claim to have exclusivity contracts? I talked to people at Webpass, and they've stated it is available in my area. They'd come in and set everything up free of charge. I don't see the downside for my building to allow Webpass to come in. I do know the FCC has regulations about exclusivity contracts with video providers, but I couldn't find any documents on things like internet. It seems like my only option is to find a place that does not have exclusivity contracts with providers.
Your property management company is likely receiving a significant sum of money from ATT to keep it this way. Unless you have access to their contract with ATT, you're SoL.
Hopefully this will speed up Fiber's rollout in San Francisco. I remember Google's announcement regarding Fiber in SF a few months back. This acquisition is a no-brainer for both companies!
God, I hope the support doesn't end up like most other Google product's support. I have webpass and my heart dropped. My project fi experience has been bad enough already.
I work on Google Fiber. We have pretty good customer support; call us 24/7, someone in the US will help you with pretty much anything you want that's Fiber-related (WiFi too slow? TV remote not working? That sort of thing.)
I was a happy Webpass customer for about 3 years before moving to an area not served by them. I would be curious to see if they are folded into Fiber or if they are kept as a separate brand. As it currently stands Webpass has much stricter limits on who they are willing to serve. Last time I checked they required that all customers lived in multi unit buildings that were built within the last 20 years. I imagine this was meant to keep their installation costs low while hopefully benefiting from economies of scale. That makes sense for a new niche ISP, but Google has the resources and motivation to abandon those restrictions.
Has Google Fiber sold fixed wireless under the Fiber brand before? I think they would have to keep a separate brand at least until they can get all of the many Webpass fixed wireless subscribers switched over to fiber.
I hope this reduces the cost of their business offerings. I love the service, and the home offering is the deal of the century, but $500/month for 50Mb/sec symmetric or $250/month for 20Mb/sec symmetric is hard to swallow for our business (or any other).
They offer faster service (gigabit and probably more) but what startup can pay 10k/month for their business internet?
What's worse is monkeybrains and webpass should seemingly compete on price for business offerings but it seems like they actually collude. Their pricing for businesses is exactly the same.
My webpass is already 1 Gbps symmetric. If yours is less, it's a per-building upgrade (so maybe with additional capital they'd do that in more places) and may not be feasible.
Webpass has only been doing fiber for 10 months [0], as far as I know the bulk of their customers in SF are on fixed wireless. I'm discouraged by this announcement - now it seems there's zero chance of widespread Google Fiber in SF.
I'm surprised by your downvotes. While "zero chance" might be a bit dramatic, it seems like this warrants discussion. Does this mean that Google thinks P2P wireless is the way to cover urban areas? Will it disincentivize them from persevering through a city-wide fiber installation because P2P wireless is "good enough"? Or is it a good opening play for fiber in SF because Webpass was already navigating the zoning/regulation/rights and just needed capital to succeed? I'd be very interested to hear others' perspectives on this.
Disclosure edit: I'm a current Webpass P2P wireless customer. I was literally about to switch away from Webpass to another P2P wireless solution (we have a site evaluation next Monday) because Webpass has been unreliable for us lately. I'm really curious what, if anything, this means for Webpass and Google Fiber in SF.
That's not entirely correct. Webpass has been using glass provided by other companies for years, that's how they get the redundancy in the mesh.
In 10 months they've been laying down their own glass trunk lines along a VERY small corridor. Last year was ~15 blocks of Howard St. This year was supposed to be Bryant St. So if you were in SOMA you had a decent chance.
Google has already stated they were going to use some other providers glass along with deploying their own in the city. This seems like a really good way to jump start things for GF in SF.
I'm a Webpass customer. Pretty amazing service. Although lately they have been suffering from some slow speeds at peak times. I think its just growing pains due to large increases in their customer base. I believe it will be back to high speed soon.
speedtests put me at around 100Mbps consistently when its "fast" and about 20-30 Mbps when its slow.
[+] [-] nurblieh|9 years ago|reply
I hope this is a win for the Webpass employees, in the short and long term. Thanks for all the bits!
[+] [-] bduerst|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vecinu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vially|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sametmax|9 years ago|reply
Wow, in France for $40 we got:
- 12Gbps (100G Fiber at no additional cost in supported area)
- Free landline call to a 100 countries and free cell calls to France
- HD TV
- and a media center with recording capabilities, a blue ray player, public FTP and network harddrive
- for 3 more $, you get a cell phone line with 2 hours of communication and unlimited text, or for $20 unlimited calls and 4G.
And people are still complaining...
[+] [-] tlrobinson|9 years ago|reply
p.s. I'm watching you: http://i.imgur.com/rS9LGZ6.png
[+] [-] JusticeJuice|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordanthoms|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeno42|9 years ago|reply
A Webpass engineer I spoke to last week mentioned they're rolling out fiber to the building to provide redundancy for the wireless mesh. Surprised me as I could count on my fingers the number of outages webpass has had since I started using them. Perhaps it'll replace the wireless portion in the longer term.
[+] [-] walrus01|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsk139|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhrpost|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadykiller|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tekklloneer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aquilaFiera|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jboydyhacker|9 years ago|reply
The bummer is- it's actually cheaper than Google charges in other cities- hopefully the price does not go up.
[+] [-] spikels|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atburrow|9 years ago|reply
Does anyone have experience dealing with properties who claim to have exclusivity contracts? I talked to people at Webpass, and they've stated it is available in my area. They'd come in and set everything up free of charge. I don't see the downside for my building to allow Webpass to come in. I do know the FCC has regulations about exclusivity contracts with video providers, but I couldn't find any documents on things like internet. It seems like my only option is to find a place that does not have exclusivity contracts with providers.
[+] [-] visarga|9 years ago|reply
Bucharest internet pricing is 10$ / 1gbps, so that would come at about 320x price ratio, and still 5x cheaper than Google Fiber.
Funny thing, the ISP I am getting this from set the price for 100mbps and 300mbps the same, 7$/month. As if a 200mbps difference is trivial.
[+] [-] nimish|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kevenwang0531|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jrockway|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gkop|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbrock|9 years ago|reply
They offer faster service (gigabit and probably more) but what startup can pay 10k/month for their business internet?
What's worse is monkeybrains and webpass should seemingly compete on price for business offerings but it seems like they actually collude. Their pricing for businesses is exactly the same.
[+] [-] BWStearns|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cardigan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boulos|9 years ago|reply
Disclosure: I work at Google (but not on Fiber).
[+] [-] gkop|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://webpass.net/blog/fiber-is-here
[+] [-] jerryr|9 years ago|reply
Disclosure edit: I'm a current Webpass P2P wireless customer. I was literally about to switch away from Webpass to another P2P wireless solution (we have a site evaluation next Monday) because Webpass has been unreliable for us lately. I'm really curious what, if anything, this means for Webpass and Google Fiber in SF.
[+] [-] ShakataGaNai|9 years ago|reply
In 10 months they've been laying down their own glass trunk lines along a VERY small corridor. Last year was ~15 blocks of Howard St. This year was supposed to be Bryant St. So if you were in SOMA you had a decent chance.
Google has already stated they were going to use some other providers glass along with deploying their own in the city. This seems like a really good way to jump start things for GF in SF.
[+] [-] adamgray|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmwave|9 years ago|reply
Search on Licensee Name Webpass
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|9 years ago|reply
speedtests put me at around 100Mbps consistently when its "fast" and about 20-30 Mbps when its slow.
[+] [-] shmerl|9 years ago|reply