
Google Fiber Is High-Speed Internet’s Most Successful Failure - apress
https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-google-fiber-is-high-speed-internets-most-successful-failure
======
BonesJustice
I see this a bit differently, and I frequently use the history of Google Fiber
as evidence for strong net neutrality regulations.

In the areas where it was deployed, Google Fiber was wildly successful. And
yet, Google threw in the towel. Why?

It _isn’t_ because Google Fiber is was unprofitable. To the contrary, it was
profitable _despite_ driving broadband prices way down in its service areas.

It’s because the incumbent ISPs simply have too much power. That power comes
in many forms:

    
    
      1. Excessive industry lobbying power;  
      2. Anti-competitive exclusivity agreements;  
      3. The ability to stall rollouts indefinitely in the absence of “one touch make ready” policies;  
      4. Required cooperation with and permission from governments who feel less pressured to move quickly once their residents have at least one incumbent provider;
    

etc.

If the incumbents are _so well protected_ that one of the most powerful
corporations in America found the barriers to entry too burdensome, then how
can _anyone_ argue that there is any semblance of a “free market”? What hope
is there for startup ISPs?

The incumbents have received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, so they
already had a government-assisted head start. And, despite prices being so
inflated that they _halved overnight_ wherever Google Fiber rolled out, they
are _still_ able to effectively stave off meaningful competition.

Would that be possible in a healthy, competitive marketplace? No. So we need
to stop treating it like one, when it clearly isn’t.

~~~
rayiner
Several of your factual assumptions are just wrong. For example, there are no
"exclusivity agreements"\--those have been illegal under federal law since
1994. Also, ISPs never received "hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars."
That number is a total fabrication:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556).

But leaving the facts aside, this is something you can logic through. Instead
of speculating about what problems Google might have faced, look to its actual
conduct to see what problems it tried to avoid. If "industry lobbying power"
was the problem, you'd expect Google would try to deploy fiber somewhere it
had the leg-up lobbying-wise, like Seattle or San Francisco or Mountain View.
It never did that. Under your theory, you have to assume that Comcast (based
in Philadelphia) has more lobbying muscle in Google's own back yard than
Google.

What did Google do instead? It went to medium-sized cities in Red states with
overhead utility lines. Atlanta, Austin, Provo, Kansas City, etc. Why? Because
those cities waived regulatory requirements they applied to incumbents,
including the crucial one of build-out requirements (the requirement to build
out to the whole city). Google went places like Kansas City, which fast
tracked permitting, gave free leases of public land for fiber huts, and waived
the obligation to cover low income neighborhoods. Indeed, the willingness to
waive build out requirements (which are routine in the industry), is one thing
these disparate Fiber cities have in common.

All of this tells you that the basic problem with Fiber was profitability (not
just making a profit, but enough profit compared to what else Google could be
doing with that money). Build-out requirements kill profitability, because
you’re forced to spend a lot of money building to neighborhoods where you can
expect few customers. (The major cost of a fiber build is wiring the
neighborhood, not hooking up each house.) That’s why a cornerstone of Fiber
was the idea of “fiberhoods”—neighborhoods with demonstrated demand for fiber.
(Of course, remember, the initial fiberhood selection exluded most low income
neighborhoods in KC, as you’d expect. Google was forced to back peddle and add
a bunch of low income neighborhoods in. But that misstep tells you a lot about
the money math that was driving Fiber.)

~~~
greglindahl
My large apartment building, in downtown Palo Alto, has 2 sets of wiring: one
exclusively for the phone company, and one exclusively for the cable company.

Not surprisingly, my 2 choices for fast Internet are the phone company and the
cable company.

At one point the FCC was going to issue a rule opening these wires up. My
building would be wired with a half-dozen competing ISPs about 5 seconds after
that rule was issued.

~~~
vuln
Would all of those service providers be rewiring the building at the same
time? Wouldn't it actually take months to install all the additional cabling
needed? What happens when a 6th, 7th or 8th provider pops up. That's just one
apartment building.

What happens when xyz start up wants to dig up a whole neighborhood to put
their data cables in. Then a month later a new startup that promises to give
you a better experience comes in and rips up the road. What happens when xyz
start up fails and the half finished project just sits there? Do the tax
payers pay to fix it?

~~~
mudetroit
Typically speaking, all of the wiring is done in some central location for the
building. The phone/electric/cable companies don't want to make individual
drops to each unit. They make one drop to the building and then fan out to the
individual units. All that changes when a new provider comes in is that they
make a drop to the building and then connect the units wiring to it. They do
not need to wire to each individual unit.

The level of complication for making the initial drop to the building will
vary depending on the area and how wiring is done in general there, areas
where there are pole hung wires making the drops are pretty quick to add areas
where the wires are underground are typically a little more complicated.

------
walrus01
As an ISP: right of way and economics of $ per last mile customer reached are
HARD. The incumbents in an area, generally the copper phone line company
(ILEC) and cable TV operator (Comcast, RCN, Charter, whatever) were handed the
aerial ROW and underground ROW on a silver platter 30+ years ago, when there
was no such thing as telecom competition. It was just assumed at that time
that those two companies would be installing stuff on the same poles as the
power company.

They built wherever they pleased, whenever they pleased, at minimal regulatory
cost and with minimal additional costs. Because of course nobody would buy a
house with no dialtone phone and/or no cable TV.

Now in a modern era if a FTTH ISP wants to come along and overbuild the same
routes as the phone company, it's a lot more difficult, time consuming and
expensive.

~~~
yoshamano
We're in the process of doing that where I live.

[https://marshallfibernet.com/](https://marshallfibernet.com/)

The reasons this is getting off the ground at all is because our city
government spent the past 5 years dotting every i and crossing every t to be
able to drop the hammer on AT&T and WOW! without retaliation. Also, we own our
own electric utility, and on top of their ROW they're also bankrolling most of
this operation with a sweetheart loan deal (overpaying for electricity worked
out in the end, who knew).

~~~
walrus01
Having the electrical utility controlled by the local county can be a huge
advantage. The counties in eastern WA where the local PUD (public utility
district) owns the last mile AC power distribution networks have been
generally quite successful building their own dark fiber networks. Because of
course they don't need to ask themselves for permission to build, they already
own the poles and ROW, they just do it. They already have linemen and bucket
trucks, flaggers, insurance, spool trailers, etc.

Then ISPs can reach end user customers by paying the PUD for L2 transport
across their networks.

This new PUD fiber infrastructure exists separately from whatever the local
Telco and cable TV operators have built.

~~~
toomuchtodo
It also has the benefit where citizens can decide their generation supply (ie
renewables) vs shareholders in a for-profit electrical utility or generator
deciding based solely on profitability.

------
ergothus
> But what if the company’s goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so
> much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping
> Google’s expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets
> including smart homes?

Did anyone think anything else WAS the strategy? Google has a history of such
"spurring" efforts. Glass, Fiber, Nexus, heck, even a ton of Android support
itself.

~~~
specialp
Yeah I don't understand at all why people think that Google wanted to be in
this business. They were forced to. ISPs were starting to lag behind on
bandwidth that was important to them, and also started to discriminate on
traffic. It is not a failure at all in any way because they never intended on
completely taking over. They'd much rather be in their business.

The same is true with Android, as they were under threat of locked out of a
smartphone boom by Apple. They have stuck with it because it has become more
popular than they could have ever imagined. I also think this is their reason
behind making Kubernetes. I think they want to commoditize the cloud more to
avoid dominance from Amazon.

~~~
majewsky
> The same is true with Android, as they were under threat of locked out of a
> smartphone boom by Apple.

Nice theory, except that Google bought Android Inc. in 2005, years before the
iPhone was announced.

~~~
minhazm
The first android designs were more like Blackberry's than an iPhone[1]. The
designs ended up being publicized during the Oracle trial. You can clearly see
that they were no where near what Apple was doing with the iPhone. After Apple
released the iPhone Google decided to not even release that version and
decided to re-do the phone[2]. They believed that a touch screen can't
completely replace physical buttons[3]. I'm always surprised how reluctant
people are to give credit to Apple for completely changing the smartphone
industry.

1\. [https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-
orig...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-original-
google-phone-presented-in-2006) 2\.
[https://www.pcworld.com/article/254539/original_android_prot...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/254539/original_android_prototype_revealed_during_google_oracle_trial.html)
3\. [https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974843/google-
in-2007-a-...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974843/google-
in-2007-a-touchscreen-cannot-completely-replace-physical/in/2731667)

~~~
euyyn
I have yet to find a single person that doesn't believe that Apple
revolutionized the smartphone industry with the iPhone.

~~~
parasubvert
Are you new around here? There’s a vocal set of diehard contrarians that
insist LG was the true pioneer and Apple just has better marketing, the iPhone
wasn’t a better product.

It’s the most successful consumer electronics product in history, but some
still are in denial.

~~~
euyyn
7 years with an account, and a few before just lurking. This is the first time
I hear that, so they must not be many, or not very vocal.

------
rayiner
> But in 2009, no leading carrier was planning a major upgrade of its existing
> physical plant.

That’s not true (and the article doesn’t cite to any support for that idea or
any other). In 2009 ATT and Verizon were in the middle of deploying Uverse and
FiOS, which were planned since 2005. By that time, Qwest (later acquired by
CenturyLink) had already passed a million households and had service in a
dozen cities.

The article credits Google with these deployments, but makes no effort to show
that the pace of these projects, which were already in the pipeline, somehow
accelerated after Fiber. This would be an easy assertion to prove: show there
was a discontinuity in FTTx deployment after 2010. The article states that
there is 30% urban FTTx penetration today, but doesn’t say whether that’s on
or off the pre-2010 trend. (The article also gets the cable trajectory wrong.
In 2009, everyone was in the middle of deploying DOCSIS 3.0. The pace of
DOCSIS upgrades didn’t speed up after Fiber. DOCSIS 3.1, and gigabit cable,
came when you’d expect.)

What Google does deserve credit for, I think, is making gigabit happen. ISPs
likely would’ve held that as a premium tier for market segmention purposes.
After Fiber set the gigabit at $70 price point, everyone had to match (or come
close). That was something that wasn’t in the road maps before Fiber.

~~~
bubblethink
>ISPs likely would’ve held that as a premium tier for market segmention
purposes

They still do. I don't think much has changed regarding actual fiber. Comcast,
for example, will sell you passable gigabit over cable in the < $150 category
(not cheap), but that has some abysmal upload (probably 20 Mbps), and lots of
bufferbloat. If you want real fiber from comcast, be prepared to pay $500 in
installation, $300 a month, and a 2 year contract. This is in ATL, which is a
google fiber market, just that google fiber never really rolled out beyond the
google fiber shop.

~~~
icelancer
Comcast Business quoted me gigabit symmetrical for $1k install and around
$500/month with a 3 year contract at my location. Plus equipment costs.
Completely unacceptable.

Seattle, BTW. Where CenturyLink is theoretically rolling out gigabit, but not
actually.

------
orliesaurus
IMHO this is the fulcrum of the article:

    
    
        Though Google appears to have paused future deployments, the broadband business
        has permanently changed. Fiber investments by former telephone companies have
        accelerated or restarted.
    

As someone who lives in Austin, TX and walk past the Google Fiber office every
day, I can testimony that thanks to this mindset now there are at least 3 ISPs
serving Fiber to the Home. (Grande, ATT, Google and possibly Spectrum?) Even
if you can't get Fiber, most gentrified blocks can get 300Mbps (and with
offers you can get it for $50ish a month). That's amazing, just because ISPs
were afraid of Google's offering.

All in all Google's Fiber is super limited (very few blocks can get Fiber to
their home) but just like a "grimreaper waiting on your doorstep" ISPs
competing with Google had to start offering really good deals to everyone.

~~~
tasty_freeze
I live in Austin. For two years I waited for my neighborhood to be included in
their coverage map. Even after the map showed I was covered, repeated attempts
to sign up would get rejected by their automated registration system. For
months I watched workmen laying in the orange cables, including right through
my front yard.

In October 2017 a Google employee walked door to door in the neighborhood
signing people up. We signed up, gave a $15 (?) deposit, and then never heard
from him or google again.

On the other hand, in that span of time my Spectrum speed got bumped repeated
from 15/5 Mbps to 200/12 Mbps, without changing my price. So, thanks Google
for bluffing so well.

~~~
b3b0p
I lived in Austin and had AT&T and Google Fiber at times. The service, speed,
and reliability was exactly the same as was the price. It's amazing what some
competition will do. I now live in Minneapolis and actually have 10 Gbps
up/down and the option for 1 Gbps up/down for half the price of Google/AT&T in
Austin ($35/month), but no Google Fiber (US Internet is the provider here).

~~~
gonzo
I also live in Austin, in the one neighborhood where Grande offers FTTH.
Before Google it cost $89/mo for 100Mbps. As soon as Google _announced_
Austin, I could get 1Gbps for $59/mo.

I still wish Google would continue the buildout in Austin, as Grande doesn't
have a clue about IPv6.

------
quackerhacker
>"The overall goal: to ensure at least 100,000,000 Americans had access to
broadband speeds of 100 Mbps by 2020. As it turned out, providers blew past
that milestone as early as 2016."

First gripe....why oh why could they not make that goal for a _symmetrical_
100Mbps and not just focused on the DL speed.

If the push is to 5G, I'd welcome it, if the mobile carriers opened ports on
consumer plans. I've cherished my coveted unlimited iPad data plan with att
used in my mifi with a yagi that points right at the service tower. It
regularly sees over 250Gigs a month (check my twitter for that pic).

------
jiveturkey
Gotta give credit to Google here, regardless what you think about their
intentions or competence. They moved the needle in a way that only a disruptor
can move needles. (They didn't plan it that way ahead of time, you'll just
have to trust me on that.)

Remember they've done this before. Usenet.

And for a successful success story, how about gmail? Just like no one
remembers alta vista, lycos, etc (or myspace in more recent history), no one
remembers that when gmail launched and offered 1GB of mail, that was absurd.
The previous free tier was more like 5MB -- 3 orders of magnitude lower! Then
when Yahoo finally came around (had to stop the bleeding) and also offered
1GB, gmail went unlimited!

They are going to write this exact same story in 10 years if electric cars
take off (I don't think they will, but leave that aside) and Tesla is dead.
Tesla's failure will be the industry's success.

~~~
craftyguy
> Remember they've done this before. Usenet.

Are you implying that Google started usenet? (hint: they didn't.)

------
Animats
_The two-tiered market of high-speed cable and lower-speed DSL broadband has
given way to a free-for-all, forcing adoption of more disruptive strategies by
incumbents and new entrants alike. The result is increased competition between
providers and among cities and regions eager for game-changing private
investment._

In which alternate universe is this happening? Certainly not in the United
States. How many residential locations have a choice of more than two data
providers? Yes, there's wireless, with "Unlimited", "Premium Unlimited", and
"Extra Premium Unlimited."

------
goeric
I have gigabit fiber internet (up and down) in LA for $80/m from AT&T. It's
incredible, and I can't believe they offer it. I can't imagine that would be
the case today if Google Fiber never existed.

------
megaman8
From the sounds of it, they had plenty of cities lining up to get Fiber from
Google. I would assume that, at least in those cities, they wouldn't face too
many regulatory hurdles. So, what's stopping Google from expanding into the
willing cities? Is it the expense of digging up all that last mile
infrastructure? Is that the limiting factor?

~~~
e40
I think they underestimated the amount of cash it would take to do the job
right.

~~~
megaman8
well, they can always come up with a new estimate. If they'r e not doing it,
then it means they can't get a good ROI on it. I'm just wondering what they're
biggest expense is: I suspect it's last mile digging up all those trenches - i
hear that's really expensive.

------
mholt
One major issue, at least here in Provo, was that their only high-speed
offering (at first) was $70/mo. This is a high-proportion college town, and
almost no students can afford that (even split amongst themselves). Even if
they could, almost nobody wanted to because why pay for that when the free
plan works good enough? A speed test at fast.com reveals that Netflix still
streams at gigabit speeds even on the free plans. YouTube is similar. (They
seem to open the fire hose on those sites!)

Now they have a fifty dollar 100 Mbps plan. But students don't pay for that,
either, because they don't know about it.

It was not a well-thought-out business plan.

Their seven-year contract will be expiring soon. Will be interesting to see
what happens then.

~~~
bubblethink
$50 for 100 Mbps is still bordering on expensive. Comcast undercuts that, at
least in the promo period. They jack it up after the period, but that's the
usual thing with Comcast. You need to renegotiate or change accounts. So the
less informed as well as cheapskates would still go with Comcast. What you get
with GF is symmetric 100Mbps and better quality, but hardly anyone would know
that.

------
chiefalchemist
"But what if the company’s goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so
much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping Google’s
expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets including
smart homes?"

I don't think it's a what if. If you can think back to the state of broadband
(e.g., Verizon, Comcast, and mobile speeds) when Fiber was announced, and the
following the subsequent increases, there's definitely a strong correlation to
Fiber's influence.

Goggle got what they wanted by pretending to do something it had no interest
in doing. That's not a failure. It's damn clever.

------
zw123456
Fiber is great. But... in my view, the key to omnipresent BB is wireless, yes
5G, sorry to grind this ax but, I do believe that is the key, particularly in
a country like the USA where there are large geographic areas, it is simply
not economic to cover the entire area with fiber. mm-wave is part of the
equation but also, lower frequency bands (sub-6Ghz) are key. FCC opening up
more spectrum (all bands) is key to wide spread BB access.

~~~
orev
Hoping wireless will solve the B.B. problem is laughable. It doesn’t matter
what technology you use, the airwaves are a single shared medium while wires
are essentially private sanctums of bandwidth within their own little
environment with essentially the same bandwidth in each wire. Wireless
companies are still charging per Gb, while wireline companies charge per 100s
of Gb. People use streaming all the time, and that’s only increasing. Wireless
is not going to be viable for the streaming future of 4K, etc for a very long
time, and even when the tech is ready, the providers are still going to charge
huge sums for that access. If wireless really is cheaper to build out, then
why the huge disparity in price per Gb?

~~~
zw123456
One of the keys here that a lot of people miss is that mm-wave alone will not
fill the BB need. It is the combination of sub-6ghz and mm-wave. 5Gnr works in
high band, mm-wave and low/mid-band. This is the key, using each in the
appropriate situation. mm-wave in dense urban, fiber rich areas, sub-6 in more
rural and xburbs.

------
vertere
> The broadband market was experiencing a classic "prisoner's dilemma," where
> neither cable nor DSL providers felt a competitive threat from the other
> requiring substantial new investment, trusting in relative peace within
> their own market segment. Continued expansion of broadband capacity was on
> the verge of stalling.

I don't see how that can be viewed as a Prisoner's Dilemma.

------
cowmix
Here in Phoenix Google announce Fiber and Cox Communications when crazy
rolling out their gigabit offering. Google stopped, Cox pretty much stopped
too.

------
phall
There’s also the theory that Google will eventually provide the consumer
service for SpaceX’s internet satellite constellation. Laying cable was way
too expensive and won’t be used for most of internet traffic in the future,
where low latency is not paramount.

If I have the timing correct, Google led a large financing round of Spacex
around the same time as they stopped expanding their Fiber service

------
JacobJans
I just signed up for Bell Fiber in Toronto 500mbps upload and download.

$34.95 CAD a month. (Around $27 USD).

Who knew fiber could be this cheap?

~~~
mrybczyn
where'd you get this deal? currently listed on their site is 1GBit for $100
per month (with a 6 month scam discount).

~~~
JacobJans
Promo code A15173269

No activation fee or any other initial fees.

------
madengr
I live in Overland Park, KS where Google Fiber has ground to a halt. About 1/2
the city is wired, but there is no ETA on the rest.

AT&T has been deploying fiber where Google was, but that seems halted too.

Spectrum is just garbage. While they offer 300 Mbps downstream, the upstream
is 20.

I at least have 100/5 from CCI, but their infrastructure is going to shit with
reliability problems.

Fiber is really the only way, with true symmetrical 1000/1000\. DOCSIS is
shit, as well as DSL variants.

I can tell you mmWave is going to be shit too. It’s only useful for line-of-
sight, which rules out mostly everywhere here due to trees.

