
Google Fiber Was Doomed from the Start - ptrptr
https://backchannel.com/google-fiber-was-doomed-from-the-start-a5cdfacdd7f2#.rhxzu4r91
======
mindcrime
_The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition,
low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban areas
— is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street grid-like
“dark” (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set, wholesale
price to a zillion retail providers of access and services_

That's an interesting assertion, but not supported by any evidence that I can
see. And OTOH, there is direct contradictory evidence suggesting that there
_is_ another viable business model for building this kind of infrastructure:
non-profit member-owned cooperatives. The same kind that provide telephone,
cable and electric service all over the country[1].

Note that I'm not saying that cooperatives are a panacea, but their existence
is evidence that other options are available. And before somebody screams "but
aren't they all subsidized by the government", I would argue that if the kind
long-term stable returns that the author of TFA speaks of are really
available, then there's no reason to think that a coop couldn't get a loan (or
equity investment) from private institutions.

My guess is that the biggest thing preventing this kind of thing from
happening more often is exactly the amount of red-tape and government
regulation involved.

[1]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_cooperative)

~~~
jackmott
>non-profit member-owned cooperatives

some might call that government

~~~
mindcrime
Maybe the differences are subtle, but there are differences. That said, I've
long been a proponent of shifting more and more services from "the state" per-
se to these kinds of cooperatives. But I'm a government hating libertarian,
so...

~~~
jackmott
once all your services are shifted to the cooperatives, the red tape of all
the different cooperatives will annoy you and you will hate those =)

~~~
adrianN
Then you just use Gubernetes(tm) to organize your micro governments and all
your troubles go away.

------
PaulHoule
One trouble with fiber is that most people (who have cable) think the cable
service they have is "good enough" in terms of performance, but they'd rather
pay less for it. In fact, fiber is not that much better than cable,
particularly when you factor in that TCP can't move a gigabit per second
across the public internet anyway. And particularly when you consider that
DOCSIS 3.1 is pretty fast and that cablelabs is working on filling in the gaps
such as Full Duplex transmission.

In much of Telco land, however, the problem is that fiber already has
competition in the way that your phone company sees it. In my area, a double
play costs about $90 a month for 2 Mbps internet. Google Fiber costs less than
that, maybe people in my area "should" pay a little more because it costs more
to provide, but I can't see it going much past $110 a month (what cable
internet would cost for 25x better performance if they ever build out in my
valley.) It's not that a fiber service could not be profitable, but it is not
a rational decision for a company that can make huge profits by doing nothing.

Another problem is that there is always some new technology that is going to
"solve" the problem in the sweet by-in-by so that communities don't show the
moral fibre to do the right thing. Google's Willy Wonka approach to fiber
optics was one of the first of these, but next it is baloons, then it is
WiMax, then it is drones, then it is 4G, then it is 5G, then it is large
satellite constellations (if those get built, Elon Musk won't have to bother
sending astronauts to the space stations and can head straight for Mars or the
Moon because the space station gets shredded by space junk.)

~~~
mindcrime
_One trouble with fiber is that most people (who have cable) think the cable
service they have is "good enough" in terms of performance_

So wait.. if the customer is satisfied with the service they're receiving (eg,
it's "fast enough") then exactly what problem are we trying to solve? The
article talks about an "urgent demand" for faster home Internet, but I'm
honestly not seeing it. My cable service (from TWC) _is_ "fast enough" to the
point that I don't even think about it. I have no idea what bandwidth I have,
but I can't recall any time that I felt limited by it.

Would I take 1Gbps (or higher) home service? Sure, I guess. Do I _need_ it? I
don't see any reason to say that I do.

Edit: To be fair, I don't live in a rural area. So yes, it is possible that
people in rural areas face a more urgent need for higher bandwidth than I do.
That said, I grew up in a rural area and when I go home to visit, my friends
and family all seem pretty happy with the Internet service they have. So even
some rural areas seem to be getting at least a respectable level of service.

~~~
massysett
You're supposed to want "fiber" because it's intrinsically better and shiny
and faster. People who write these pieces always assume that we should want
"fiber" regardless of what it costs to build, or whether there is demand for
it, or how it will improve our lives. The private sector has not found "fiber"
to be profitable, so for some reason government should do it because it's
inherently good. It never occurs to these "fiber" proponents that maybe
"fiber" is not profitable because it's not necessary.

America's wireless operators plow billions into capital investment, because
there's market demand for it. That's the future. "Fiber" inspires geek
fetishes because it's fast. Non-geeks on the other hand are using their phones
to watch video and don't care about the alleged goodness of "fiber". After
all, if they did care, FiOS would be expanding and Google would add more Fiber
cities.

Government investment in FTTH is a twenty-first century boondoggle waiting to
happen. It's nowhere near my list of beneficial things government could do if
it wants to start plowing billions of dollars into capital investment.

~~~
adventured
There have been numerous studies done on the economic benefits to having
broadly deployed, super fast wired Internet. The results are always the same:
the economic benefits are dramatically underwhelming. It's true in Romania,
Netherlands, Latvia and it's just as true in Kansas City [1]. Finland has had
among the fastest Internet speeds for years - they've been stuck in a decade
long near-depression economically and could hardly be further away from being
in a tech boom from their high average access speeds. So where is the evidence
to support the societal benefit of going from good speeds, to extremely high
speeds? I've seen no evidence for it over the last decade anywhere on the
planet.

 _For now_ , it turns out anything beyond ~50 to ~100mbps, is practically
useless for consumers in delivering a big leap in productivity or quality of
life. That has been the case for a decade (despite the propaganda in favor of
spending a trillion dollars so everyone can have 1gbps tomorrow). South Korea
for example has had among the fastest wired Internet speeds on the planet for
a long time, it hasn't turned them into the next economic juggernaut in any
regard (GDP per capita lower than Puerto Rico).

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-28/why-
it-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-28/why-it-s-so-hard-
to-build-the-next-silicon-valley)

~~~
Ygg2
Romania switched to fiber for economic reasons. People were stealing and
selling copper wires.

Optic cables don't have equivalent black market.

Source: Romanian I worked with.

------
cosinetau
From what I understood, Fiber wasn't a long term solution for Google. I think
they anticipated that they could kick a American infrastructural movement into
gear if they gave the other ISPs a real reason to compete.

I don't know if this is Google's response to those ISPs taking a different
approach than they wanted, or if this is symptomatic of the company changing
overall. Judging by the other ISP's marketing campaigns, competition doesn't
seem to be the real message. That's a whole other can of worms.

I would venture to guess that given older company's paths, that it's the
latter, and the problem is that they don't want to take big gambles like that;
play a more conservative game.

It could also be a number of other factors. Maybe Google thinks Trump is
looking to make good on infrastructural promises. It would be prudent of
Google to capitalize on that momentum rather than spend their own resources.

~~~
agildehaus
Also possible Google and SpaceX are teaming up. That constellation isn't going
to manage or sell itself and Google put $1 billion into SpaceX two years ago.

~~~
iainmerrick
What does that have to do with Google Fiber?

~~~
Retric
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation)

The idea is by sticking with LEO satellites vs geosynchronous the ping stays
reasonable (~700 miles ~= 9ms vs ~22,236 miles ~= 279ms ping ping) and the
bandwidth is much higher than traditional satellite internet. Further you
don't need any effort aiming a dish thus vastly reducing installation issues.

~~~
CountSessine
Tech companies and entrepreneurs have been pitching LEO satellites for
internet delivery for a very long time. Even Bill Gates had a kick at this
can.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic)

It's interesting to me that our cities and their governance are so awful -
with their limited voter participation, poor cost control, class warfare
politics, crazy fringe political advocacy, and unreasonable franchise
agreements - that going into space is considered easy compared to working with
city governments to get fibre in the ground.

~~~
Retric
SpaceX is looking at much lower costs to LEO which very much changes this
equation. They charge around $2,500 per pound right now, but with reusable
rockets there internal costs may be under 1,000$/lb. Putting up ~1,400 * 600lb
* 1,000$/lb is less than 1 billion dollars to get into space. Worst case they
are looking at ~3 billion in launch costs which is hardly an issue for world
wide infrastructure.

Now, the costs of these satellites and receiver's will make or break this
idea. But, it's surprisingly viable even if they only cover the continental US
to start.

PS: Iridium NEXT
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation))
is aiming for some data bandwidth. Though presumably at very high costs.

~~~
CountSessine
_Now, the costs of these satellites and receiver 's will make or break this
idea. But, it's surprisingly viable even if they only cover the continental US
to start_

They also have to get radio spectrum for the uplink everywhere they operate.
Have a good look through the history of Iridium (Iridium PREVIOUS?) and all of
the unexpected costs Motorola ran into building and maintaining a satellite
fleet.

~~~
ryanmarsh
I can see a situation where the USG would want this constellation to exist.

If you go to the middle east and many third world countries much of the
Internet is still satellite. If a particular country wanted a way to insure
that they still had access to most of the world's internet traffic (as
economies grow and infrastructure is built) they might prefer a constellation
of LEO sats capable of carrying the entire planet's traffic in a point to
point fashion owned by a US based company who is very reliant on the USG for
most of its other business.

~~~
CountSessine
_I can see a situation where the USG would want this constellation to exist._

But would they want this to exist enough to pay for any of it or have a hand
in maintaining it? Beyond how much they already are by awarding SpaceX
government and NASA launch contracts?

And all because muni government sucks.

------
nandhp
> The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition,
> low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban
> areas — is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street
> grid-like “dark” (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set,
> wholesale price to a zillion retail providers of access and services.
> There’s plenty of patient capital sloshing around the US that would be
> attracted to the steady, reliable returns this kind of investment will
> return. That investment could be made in the form of private lending or
> government bonds; the important element is that the resulting basic network
> be a wholesale facility that any retail actor can use at a reasonable, fair
> cost.

Google Fiber had promised to operate an open access network[1], but they
apparently changed their mind before they launched.

[1] [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-
gig-o...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-our-
experimental.html)

------
wahern
If you live in San Francisco, sign-up for Sonic Fiber. Even if Sonic hasn't
reached your neighborhood (or city) yet, sign up now because it helps them
with financial planning of their build out. If you can't sign up because Sonic
has no existing plans for your neighborhood or city, call Sonic and demand to
sign up.

I just got Sonic fiber service a few months ago, and it's been great. I had
signed up nearly a year prior, as soon as my neighborhood could register, and
I'm glad I did.

Sonic is persevering and succeeding. And profiting, apparently, at only
$40/month! They're besting Comcast and AT&T without the whinging and excuse
making. Not that they don't gripe about the bureaucracy and NIMBY-erected
barriers, but they're committed. And they should be supported; not simply to
be socially conscious, but because they deliver. The more [prospective]
customers they have the more quickly they can build out.

If you don't know the backstory in San Francisco--both AT&T and Sonic spent
years working with the City on fiber plans. At some point AT&T decided that if
they weren't going to have a monopoly, they'd rather sabotage things by
dragging things out in the hopes that Sonic would bleed cash and exit the
market. The big hold up, IIRC, was NIMBY opposition to street-level cabinets.
Also, Sonic was hoping for permits for micro-trenching. The city refused to
permit micro-trenching, and AFAIK the cabinet issue still hasn't been fully
resolved. But as best I can tell, Sonic decided to make lemonade from lemons,
got permission to hang fiber from utility poles, and began building out a
network in the Western half of the city (i.e. the parts with utility poles
instead of underground conduits). Instead of making excuses or going home with
their ball like the big guys tend to do, they've pushed forward as best they
could.

~~~
jacobolus
So is there hope for the eastern half of the city?

~~~
wahern
Not unless the city changes its tune on micro-trenching. It's not financially
viable to dig up the street just to lay fiber for the last segment. At least,
not for a small company like Sonic.

Some supervisors have recently proffered (again) plans for the city to lay
fiber underground. Unrelated, there are also plans to move the existing
aboveground utilities in the outer neighborhoods below ground. Both sound like
a colossal waste of money unless paired with required work like sewer
replacement. In any event, like the sewer work I can't see how the timeline
would be any less than a decade or two. (If you Google news articles
discussing plans to move utilities underground you can find cost estimates.
Spoiler: it's unfathomably expensive!)

Aside from micro-trenching, I think the best hope would be FTTN/FTTC. But the
holdup there are the NIMBYs worried about larger utility cabinets on
sidewalks. And because AT&T isn't keen on competing with Sonic, who would also
benefit from newer cabinets, they've put that work on the back burner. Like
Comcast I think AT&T has decided to opportunistically improve their network.
So, for example, I'm sure all those new buildings in SOMA are getting fiber.
But if you're in an older neighborhood, theoretically they may never come; not
with FTTH or FTTN.

There's an epic, multi-year thread discussing all of these San Francisco
issues.

    
    
      https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085
    

(Probably best to go to the last page and work backwards.) The CEO regularly
answers questions there. But Sonic tries to keep secret from AT&T and Comcast
the details of their expansion plans. You may not be able to get any answers
to the most important question, especially if you're not in the Sunset or
Richmond.

~~~
jacobolus
Thanks for the summary. I had found that forum thread, but have no desire to
read 100+ pages.

~~~
wahern
The same questions tend to be asked repeatedly. If you read the last two dozen
pages or so you've basically read the whole thing, especially regarding the
more recent developments.

Every month or so last year I went back to that thread and could literally
track Sonic's progress westward in the Outer Richmond, starting from the
central office at Geary Blvd & 9th Ave. In fact, IIRC that's how news broke
about the Richmond build out; people reported in that thread suspicious Sonic
activity at the central office and nearby.

Also, if you read the CEO's, Dane's, comments, you begin to get a sense of the
regulatory landscape they're treading. I think among the 2014-2015 posts,
mostly discussing the Sunset, are some good posts from Dane explaining delays
related to cabinet installation, including AT&T's behavior.

------
forrestthewoods
Fiber has operating margins of 99%. Yes there's a big upfront cost. But it
recoups quickly and becomes pure profit. Goldman Sachs estimated the cost to
wire the whole country at a mere $140 billion [1].

Apple has $230 billion cash on hand. Microsoft has $100 billion. Alphabet has
$73 billion. There's no shortage of capital to start with metropolitan areas.

The issue isn't up front costs or capital. The issue is politics and rent
seeking incumbents.

Hopefully the more competitive mobile marketplace and 5G will free us from the
tyranny of Comcast.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-would-cost-
google...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-would-cost-google-to-
build-a-cable-network-2012-12)

~~~
wmf
If it's so profitable, why don't the rent-seeking incumbents like Verizon and
AT&T deploy more fiber?

~~~
dragonwriter
Because it's even more profitable for them to not deploy fiber, so that their
political allies can continue to use the need to "encourage additional
investment in broadband" as an excuse for policies that mostly serve to give
them more money without increasing service.

If there wasn't an access problem, you couldn't blame the access problem on
policy limitations holding back the big providers.

~~~
massysett
Ok. So then why isn't Google doing it?

~~~
dragonwriter
Because lobbying for more favorable regulation that makes your existing
service more profitable under the premise that it will encourage you to add
new service you have no intention of adding is only profitable for major
existing incumbents, which Google _isn 't_ in the relevant space.

------
briandear
"We’re systematically leaving behind minorities.."

That makes no sense unless we are suggesting that minorities are different in
their ability to get internet service. The rest of the sentence uses "poor
people" \-- which could be accurate, but implying minorities by virtue of
being minorities are less able to get internet access is patently racist.
Socio-economics does have an influence but being a minority is not in itself a
factor. Most rural Americans are white and they are more likely to be "left
behind" than a minority living in Jersey City with access to FIOS -- if you
adjust for income.

------
blakesterz
>> But although the cost of fiber — the glass itself — has fallen through the
floor, and the gear needed to deliver signals over fiber has gotten cheaper
over time, 80 percent or more of the cost of installing fiber is labor.

Surely Google must've known that though. The article seems to say they're just
not making money fast enough and that's because of labor, and that cost won't
drop, but that seems like a totally obvious thing they would've known about,
doesn't it?

~~~
njharman
Yeah. Everything I've read it's because they've lost the lobbying war with
incumbents.

Incumbents (in those locations they are pausing) used their lobbyists,
political connections, right of ways, existing contracts, etc. To block, delay
and vastly increase the time and costs for Google. Driving Google to go
wireless.

[edit] here in Austin (where they didn't lose the lobbying war) it's full
steam ahead. They have been continually spreading across city. Dug trenches at
coworker's house last week.

~~~
rayiner
> Everything I've read it's because they've lost the lobbying war with
> incumbents.

Like what? There have been some lobbying skirmishes. But where was the big
lobbying war they lost that prevented them from bringing Fiber to New York,
Philly, SF, Chicago, DC, LA, or pretty much any major city?

And what about all the cities begging Google for fiber? Why didn't Google take
LA up on its bid to build fiber? [http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/los-
angeles-wants-to-bring...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/los-angeles-
wants-to-bring-free-fiber-internet-to-every-resident-without-paying-for-it)?
Or Baltimore? [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/08/snubb...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2013/08/snubbed-by-google-fiber-mad-at-comcast-baltimore-seeks-its-
own-fiber).

~~~
WorldMaker
Because the existing cities are enough of a proxy war with the incumbents?
Louisville's OTMR lawsuit involves AT&T and Spectrum (Charter/Time Warner).
Nashville's involves AT&T and Comcast. That's a big majority of the incumbents
right there covered by just two cities on the Google Fiber interest map, in
already relatively low regulated states.

~~~
rayiner
I think the lawsuits are kinda stupid, but saying they amount to a "proxy war"
is ridiculous. Any infrastructure deployment will involve lawsuits to resolve
competing rights to physical property. It's not like the incumbents are
invoking some secret "we are guaranteed a monopoly in Louisville/Nashville"
law. These are boring lawsuits about whether Google can touch/move
AT&T/Spectrum's property while deploying its own infrastructure.

Verizon/AT&T/TMO/Sprint somehow manage to build cell networks despite dealing
with _hundreds_ of lawsuits in connection with cell tower siting. It's naive
to assert that it's these two lawsuits stopping Google from building a service
it would otherwise build.

~~~
WorldMaker
I used "proxy war" very intentionally. A) Proxy: Google isn't even fighting
these particular lawsuits directly, the cities themselves are. B) War: These
examples are the first two off the top of my head out of many. As you point
out there are hundreds of "boring lawsuits" involved in this process. There
are many battles in a war, these are two of them as examples of the war
between Google and incumbents.

In a war, you pick your theaters and you pick your battles. The question was
"Why isn't Google Fiber fighting in theaters of war that are practically
begging for it when they are already spread thin across a number of theaters?"
and the answer I'm pointing to is probably "Because they are trying to pick
their theaters/battles." Whether or not you think these example lawsuits are
stupid is beside that core point of "Because they are trying to pick their
theaters/battles."

------
specialp
I really cannot believe anyone actually though that Google was serious about
bringing fiber to a huge area. They cherry picked cheap and easy areas to
install. Their purpose was to light a fire under the existing telcos in order
to protect their core business which relies on the internet. They never wanted
to be in the ISP business, ads are way more profitable.

Digging up the ground or putting wires on the poles is very difficult, and
costs a ton of money. This can be improved with regulation and removal of
onerous regulation, but it is still the case now.

You have companies like Comcast which are the most loathed in the USA and you
would think someone would certainly want to compete in a tremendous industry
against a hated competitor. It is just too much to get started. The only real
solution is to have the lines built and maintained by the government, and
providers can lease them to provide service.

------
urda
Google Fiber suffered the same fate that many other pet projects do at Google.

Google got bored when it wasn't as easy as a few steps, and just dumped the
project. Also the whole needing "customer service" thing doesn't fit with the
Google life either.

It was a nice gesture, but if they had put forth any actual effort into it
they would have had an actual rollout in the market.

~~~
bitmapbrother
It's still in operation and, as others have mentioned, the support was very
responsive and friendly. So why exactly are you complaining again?

[https://fiber.google.com/about/](https://fiber.google.com/about/)

[https://fiber.google.com/newcities/#viewcities](https://fiber.google.com/newcities/#viewcities)

~~~
MrLeap
Right? I've got Google Fiber in my house and it's awesome. The hardware is
solid, installation was fast. It's cheap and more reliable than my last TWC
service was...

Not to mention when I called to cancel my TWC service the "retention
specialist" straight up told me blatant indefensible lies to try and retain
me.

I'm never going to give TWC another dime.

~~~
pm90
TWC is one of the most dishonest companies I've ever dealt with. I second the
fact about lying...absolutely hate that company, couldn't believe how I went
through one year of their "service".

------
dbg31415
I know this post is old now... but here are some pictures of how Google left
my neighborhood. It's been 8 months since they started construction, doesn't
seem like they are done and we are told, "A cleanup crew will be by
shortly..." We've been told that for 3+ months now.

Snapped these while walking my dogs... these only represent a small sample of
the boxes on my street...

[http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z](http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z)

The work seems very sloppy... boxes not level in the lawns (means we forever
can't use a lawn mower and have to bust out our edgers to trim around it), not
enough dirt used, the wrong grass / sod planted (planting the wrong kind of
grass is basically planting noxious weeds in a person's lawn... it's a huge
pain to fix), sprinkler systems left broken (wastes water / kills the entire
lawn if not fixed quickly)...

PS: Imgur is a fickle bitch this morning. Been slowly trying to add captions
but it keeps spitting out errors.

------
hussong
I had a lecturer in a class on infrastructure policy at (German) university
who was an ICT exec and always said that the first rule of the business was
"Wer gräbt, verliert." (you dig, you lose).

------
bubblethink
Does anyone know what's going on with Google fiber in Atlanta ? Did they kill
it midway, or will they still cover Atlanta ? Don't see much activity on their
site.

~~~
robocaptain
Seems like they are focusing on multi-family condos/apartments. I don't see
much activity either - they started in a few residential neighborhoods intown
but growth has stalled.

It's incredibly frustrating - I don't even care if it's the same price (or
more) than Comcast. I just want options. Would gladly pay good money for a
reliable fast connection.

------
hosh
I remembered the story how Google created a 411 service that would connect to
their search product. Microsoft scrambled to make something similar. At some
point, Google discontinued it. The reason? By then, They had collected a lot
of voice samples for training their voice recognition system. (And likely, it
was easier to support a smartphone app than to support a call-in service).

When I was reading about Google Cloud Spanner, something struck me. Google
Cloud Spanner was able to do what it does, not because of atomic clocks, but
because Google has super-reliable private fiber that connects their data
centers together. And I started wondering -- what was the hidden purpose of
Google Fiber -- aside from stirring up the consumer broadband market?

~~~
xienze
> what was the hidden purpose of Google Fiber -- aside from stirring up the
> consumer broadband market?

Isn't it obvious? So they can collect information about you at the packet
level. There's only so much information you can get from people visiting your
web properties or using your browser. When customers use your pipe, now you
can track _everything_.

~~~
wmf
Thanks to HTTPS everywhere, not really.

~~~
xienze
You're not looking at it the right way.

HTTPS still lets you know which sites you're visiting (Hostname has to be
unencrypted).

But there's more than just web traffic. Say you like to play on your PS4 every
night at 6. Now Google knows that. Run your own SSH server, OpenVPN, and mail
server? Google knows that, and has profiled you as a "developer". And so on.
Think big, man.

------
rietta
"... rural stories of telcos cutting off even crappy DSL service any time
anyone stops a subscription; realtors are tearing their hair out trying to
ensure that some narrow drip of data will be available to a new buyer of a
home..."

I've seen this with my own eyes. When my wife's grandmother sold her house on
10 acres in west Georgia just outside of Carrollton (which is a biggish small
town), she had to transfer her AT&T account along with her phone number of 30+
years to the buyer just so that they could keep internet service running. This
is the kind of place where your cell phone signal drops to nothing as you turn
onto the dirt road a mile from the house.

------
scythe
I wonder about using last-mile wireless as a way to distribute fiber internet.
Something like a fiber-connected wireless hub that provides service to
customers within a quarter-mile. At a density of 10000 households per square
mile (pretty high) your service area is about 0.15 square miles and you need
1.5 Tbps bandwidth or so in the air around a hub for 1 Gbps service to the
household. Feasible? It's a stretch, but I assumed a very high density of
customers and I think many people would be happy with 100 Mbps.

------
ghobs91
I'm willing to bet the real catalyst to ISP competition will be LEO satellite
constellations like the one SpaceX has mentioned they're working on. Much
better ping, cheaper/faster than wiring up entire cities and having to dig
through streets. This could actually become a huge source of revenue for them
to fund their mars initiative. Imagine once several companies do that, you
could pick whichever ISP you want and just have them mail you a receiver to
put outside your window.

~~~
putsteadywere
Latency: Average 888 ms

Pass!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access)

~~~
netinstructions
SpaceX plans to have satellites at 1,100 kilometers (680 mi) altitude unlike
previous attempts / current offerings. Latency would be closer to 25-35 ms.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/space...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-
gigabit-speed/)

~~~
putsteadywere
I'd take that to get out from under xfinity!

------
dbg31415
I live in Austin and the rollout in my neighborhood has been a debacle.
Dumpster fire from the get go. I can only imagine the mountain of money Google
has dumped into Google Fiber at this point.

They started work back in August, marking gas and water pipes. 8 months later
(today), I'd say less than 50% of the homes have service hooked up... they
still have holes in some people's yards, clear evidence of broken sprinkler
lines, and they still have a lot of cleanup left to do.

Every step has been painful. As a homeowner, Google is really miserable to
deal with -- opting to punt the responsibility for managing the project to
various contractors at each stage. Nobody from Google actually ever replies to
issues. Nobody from Google ever actually walks the neighborhood to make sure
the job is done correctly.

Round 1... first dig... they went through and dug holes for boxes in our
yards. Destroyed a lot of sprinklers. Left it sit in my yard for a month with
a big sheet of plywood over the hold... and no movement. Killed large areas of
my lawn and flower beds not being able to water them.

Round 2... digging in the street... they dug a small channel in the street,
and managed to cut a number of my neighbors water lines or water return lines.
For a week some people had to stay in hotels because they had no water / no
drainage in their homes. I was lucky, this didn't happen to me but did happen
to my next door neighbor.

Round 3... putting the box in the front lawn... It was clear the work was
being done by the lowest bidder. Boxes put in crooked, not flush with the
lawn, so you couldn't drive a lawn mower over them after. They sent a repair
crew around to fix lawns up... they used the wrong grass types, and they put
sprinklers back random places... for me they broke 2 sprinklers heads but only
put one back... and put it back so it could only really water my driveway.
Also they "fixed" the sprinklers with electrical tape joining the PVC and it
just broke the moment you turned the system on... more signs they were just
using the lowest bidders for the work. Cost me an entire weekend to fix it all
up again. (Still my lawn has the wrong grass growing in, looks like shit...)

Round 4... the line from the box to the house... another lowest bidder job.
The guy putting it in put in hated sprinklers. That's the only explanation. He
broke out 25 feet of line, 5 sprinkler heads -- he had to know he was breaking
pipes, if you dig with a shovel you can feel the difference between dirt and
digging into a PVC pipe. He also broke a bunch of pavers and just sort of
tossed the pieces next to a tree; would have taken him less energy to lift
them up. Finally, there were some cut pieces of pipe, some wires... broken
pavers... he just tossed them into my flower beds.

Round 5... installation in the home. Was probably the least painful, but still
far from professional. Having a contractor wear little boot covers is pretty
common... the guy even showed up with them when he first came in, but at some
point he just stopped putting them on and tracked mud all over my house. Then
he moved my TV stand and left it in the middle of the room. (That's minor,
easy to fix.)

So here's what happened when you call Google...

1) Nothing. You don't hear back, you don't get an email. You're like, "Well, I
don't... they don't care... what do I do?"

2) Then some random contractor calls you to tell you that they got your
message, but it wasn't their fault. They assure you they will talk to the
contractor who was responsible and give you his number so you can follow up.
When you call the number they give you, they clearly never followed up as it's
his first time hearing from you and have you to re-tell / re-send the photos
to the new guy's email.

3) Then you get the run around. "Oh, we're sending a crew to fix it all once
we are done... may be a few weeks, sit tight." You wait... phone tag, and
finally you just say, "Fuck it, I guess I'll eat the cost of fixing this
myself." (I was fortunate enough to finally -- after about 30 emails / calls
with photos of every step -- to get a refund check for the damages to cover my
out of pocket expenses. But when my neighbors asked for the same treatment,
they were told, "Sorry it's not in our budget to reimburse people who don't
want to wait for our crews to do the repairs.")

It's been such a shit show.

And at the end of the day... I haven't seen speeds over 420 down, 80 up. I was
getting 290 down from Time Warner. Can't say it's a noticeable improvement for
anything. Not at all worth the hassle we went through to get this.

~~~
boardwaalk
As someone also in Austin with G.Fiber, an opposing anecdote:

They were in and out of the neighborhood probably a month, month and half.
Filled in the holes and reseeded where they dug up lawns. Patched up the
street pretty well too. It was uneventful.

The contracted out installer couldn't understand I didn't want the Google
Fiber box, so I had to figure out how to do that myself. That was my only
issue.

P.S. If you're only getting 420 down, you might be CPU limited on network
hardware. I know my router is around that speed (an option I have enabled
disables hardware acceleration). 420 is fast enough such that I don't care
about upgrading it.

~~~
dbg31415
Glad you had a good experience! I'm in Circle C, and I know that my friends in
condos downtown said it seemed pretty painless for them. I was so excited to
get this and be able to cancel Time Warner... Maybe in a year I'll be happy
with it, but it's been a huge hassle dealing with the construction for as long
as we have.

~~~
boardwaalk
Yeah, hopefully. I'm right over in Maple Run, so I'm surprised you've had so
many problems comparatively.

I'm glad I haven't had to get support from Google, that's for sure.

------
Shivetya
Well here in metro Atlanta, if you can call being thirty miles or more out
still being in metro we have fiber from AT&T. I live in hickville as some
would call it, yet the county which is not of the bigger counties in this area
has a lot of fiber.

The costs must be horrible, when going through the subdivisions near me they
had people digging up lawns, guiding pipe under roads/drives, the whole nine
yards. Props to them for not destroying my lawn as they only dug to get the
pipe pushing contraption in and went as far as they could.

Now from I could tell AT&T moved because they did not want to have to ride
another companies fiber. So unless fiber goes utility like electricity, water,
and gas, its going to be who can invest first which isn't conducive to getting
fiber deployed because they will certainly only go where density is high

------
rayiner
The idea that there is tons of private capital sloshing around wanting to
invest in municipal fiber is ridiculous. Baltimore and LA have been soliciting
bidders for years to build such networks without success.

~~~
piker
I think the author is saying there are municipal bond investors who would
finance the deal (via the municipality) were there successful responses to the
bids you reference.

~~~
massysett
Exactly. There are always willing lenders when the borrower has the sovereign
power to tax so it can repay the debt. But apparently there are fewer willing
investors who are willing to sink money into something that apparently is of
little use and that, therefore, puts their capital at substantial risk.

What the FTTH proponents really want is a huge subsidy for an investment whose
payoff is questionable, especially in an era when 4G LTE blankets the
countryside and wireless operators are yet again selling "unlimited" data.
Yeah, "unlimited" has limits...but wireless is improving, yet despite that,
people want government to plow billions into laying wires to people's houses.
Google tried it and it's apparently not profitable, so let's have government
toss money into this sinkhole.

~~~
indolering
Where's the subsidy? These projects are usually paid for through usage fees,
not taxation.

There is a _lot_ of money that will only invest in Triple-A rated bonds. Local
governments have the scale, return-on-investment horizon, and political
willpower that private ventures lack.

The funding is easier to secure at lower cost because the investment is less
risky. It's not a risk-free venture, but (worst case scenario) everyone has to
pay double the projected cost and we end up with the standard Comcast bill. I
would prefer to send that money to my local government than to Comcast for
perpetuity.

------
wfunction
Can someone tell me what the point of fiber is exactly? What use is it when
pretty much every server rate limits its connection to you to below your cable
throughout anyway? What difference would the user see?

~~~
brewdad
It's useful when you have multiple streams in a household. In my 3 person
household, a typical evening might have my son on Youtube, my wife and I
streaming a TV show (sometimes 2 shows if we can't agree on what to watch) and
light web surfing on our personal devices if the show isn't one that demands
full attention. That all adds up. I've got 50/50 service and it's fine. 4K
streaming would make it not so fine however.

~~~
wfunction
How are (say) the 100-200 Mbps connections provided through regular cable not
sufficient for this? And is all this fight really over being able to stream 3+
different 4k video streams? It seems like such a niche and low priority first
world problem that if these are really the concerns I'm almost glad they're
not being addressed. Is there really no other better use case people are
fighting for here?

~~~
thescriptkiddie
DOCSIS has a very difficult time providing 100+ Mib/s connections. It's really
only possible when the distance to the cabinet is less than 1 km and the
number of clients served by that cabinet is less than 50. This is why cable
companies are able to offer 300 Mib/s connections in urban areas that have a
cabinet for every block, but struggle to deliver 50 Mib/s connections in
suburbs where a whole neighborhood must share a single cabinet. The cost of
installing enough cabinets to give everyone 100+ Mib/s rapidly approaches the
cost of fiber-to-the-premises as population density drops.

There is also the issue of the asynchronous nature of DOCSIS. Cable companies
must make a trade-off between upstream and downstream bandwith, and tend to
assume that people value downstream much more. This is why you see hilarious
allocations like 300 Mib/s down and only 5 Mib/s up.

~~~
dboreham
Agreed. My 100MBit down DOCSIS connection has only 7MBit up provisioned and
the ACKs for 100MBit takes 2MBits of that 7 (and whatever traffic shaping box
the cable co uses has horrible queuing behavior if you transit more than 6.6
for more than a few minutes, so I have it rate-limited at 6.5MBits on my
router). So if I have a 100MBit download running, I actually only have 4.5MBit
upload capacity free.

------
losteverything
Williams communications ran fiber inside old gas/oil pipelines. [0]

Somebody somewhere will have to touch every household for some other reason
and will piggyback fiber. An excuse for the last mile won't be for the last
mile but for some other reason. Probably some hardware install or new gadget.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/amp/m.newsok.com/article/2330222/amp](https://www.google.com/amp/m.newsok.com/article/2330222/amp)

------
HillaryBriss
> _And the only thing that will make those wireless connections competitive is
> firm public control over conduits and poles so as to ensure no monopolist
> bosses us around._

Seems like an oversimplification. City government workers are _also_ perfectly
capable of _bossing us around._

If it's not a greedy monopoly (e.g. Time Warner Cable) defending its own
interests, it will probably be an equally greedy collection of city workers
and local politicians defending _their_ own interests.

------
JumpCrisscross
My need for fibre diminished after I started needing some combination of a VPN
and Tor whenever I browsed political, sensitive or related content on the
Internet. (I don't imagine this is a common phenomenon.)

------
jeffdavis
"So far, no one has cracked the nut of getting extremely high-capacity
wireless signals reliably through walls and doors"

Yes, they have. Maybe not fiber speeds.

The problem here is that people value freedom at zero but value entertainment
(or even just big numbers on an advertisement) at non-zero.

That's the thing that bothers me about monopoly talk. It's no longer that some
company owns all the critical infrastrucutre or all the production of critical
goods. We are talking about a monopoly on exyraordinarily high speed internet
which is really only used for entertainment.

~~~
vocatus_gate
> We are talking about a monopoly on exyraordinarily high speed internet which
> is really only used for entertainment.

And online banking, and school, and working from home, and stock trading, and
and and and....

~~~
jeffdavis
I can work from home on my 4g wireless connection with no problem.

~~~
throwaway729
Video conferencing? Downloading large files (IDE and various other software
updates, VM images)?

I mean you don't need that stuff every day. But you need it often enough that
it's a PITA not to have.

------
brightball
Oh Google Fiber. Greenville, SC wanted you to come here so bad.

[https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/...](https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/home)

------
transfire
Otherwise known as, "Why Americans Can't Have Nice Things".

------
vinceguidry
Trying to solve political problems with market offerings is going to be looked
at as variously crime / terrorism. Case in point: Uber

------
prepend
I wish there was a good account of the early days of broadcast television when
ABC/CBS/NBC was really innovating technically in broadcasting and transmission
before they became just as delivery systems.

I could then compare it to what's happening with Google as they shift from
doing amazing things (e.g., make search before figuring out adwords) to only
doing things that deliver ads better.

Google Fiber will allow for untold future revenue streams if figured out. But
it seems like Alphabet is giving up because it's hard and uncertain, while
Adwords keeps minting easier money.

If Google truly drops fiber it means they are truly just ad and not tech.
Similarly if they ever drop Android (since it doesn't make them money).

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Google makes a ton of money off of Android.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-
s-android-generates-31-billion-revenue-oracle-says-ijor8hvt)

------
dirtbox
I was under the impression that it was never meant to succeed as a business,
it was merely a proof of concept. That despite the lobbying and stalling
tactics of national ISPs, progress could still be made to improve
infrastructure despite the incessant arguments to the contrary.

