

Why Google Fiber will never come to Seattle (2014) - bcl
http://crosscut.com/2014/12/29/business/123222/google-fiber-never-come-seattle-broadband-internet/

======
rayiner
To summarize, the article mentions four roadblocks:

1) Process: "Can you imagine the Seattle City Council keeping a secret like
this and then acting on it in just one day? Of course not. We’d need to have
endless community meetings and hearings and public floggings of Google
Executives."

2) Pole Attachments: "At these rates, building a network on 100,000 poles to
serve every home and business would cost Google up to $2.8 million just to
rent the pole space."

3) Permits: "Attaching fiber cable to a pole in Seattle may require a pole
attachment permit, a street use permit, and land use and environmental
permits, among others."

4) Build-out requirements: "But the company has to agree to build out and
serve every premise in that area. This is a lofty goal because it means all
neighborhoods, rich and poor, get served, although it increases the overall
cost because the company builds cable on streets with few customers."

None of these are unique to Google Fiber. These are hurdles ISPs, including
incumbents like Comcast, face in nearly every large city. Google is just the
800-lb gorilla that refuses to play along. They'll only install fiber in
cities desperate enough to sign a contract with Google without extensive
public proceedings, who will allow bypassing permit requirements that apply to
everyone else.

What the article really highlights is the _real_ reasons for the lack of ISP
competition. People imagine shadowy cabals conspiring to keep out competitors,
but in most cities, it's the result of rules that aren't facially
unreasonable. Rules like build-out requirements, which apply to incumbents and
competitors alike, make deploying fiber economically unattractive, sometimes
even for the incumbent.

Contrast the telecom industry with say the cell phone industry. It'd be
illegal for an ISP to do what Apple did with its first iPhone: target rich
buyers, then trickle down the technology to everyone else as it recouped
capital costs. The rule is deploy to everyone, or don't deploy at all.
Unsurprisingly, companies usually choose the latter. Except Google, which has
the clout to demand exceptions to the rules, and the luxury of not actually
being in the ISP business and only deploying in smaller municipalities willing
to bend-over.

~~~
hueving
>deploying in smaller municipalities willing to bend-over for them.

I think you mean municipalities with the foresight to realize that their
residents would never get fiber under any other circumstance? iPhones for rich
people and for everyone else a few years later is much better than flip phones
for everyone.

If things were regulated like last mile Internet like you want, the
smartphone/mobile boom would never have happened. Requiring deployment to a
big portion of the market that doesn't want something is idiotic.

~~~
rayiner
> I think you mean municipalities with the foresight to realize that their
> residents would never get fiber under any other circumstance

That's one spin on it, but at the end of the day, it's a decision borne out of
a lack of other options. Incidentally, it's also one reason countries like
South Korea and places in eastern Europe lead the way in fiber deployment.
They were/are underdogs, looking for ways to make themselves more economically
competitive. Places like New York or San Francisco don't think the same way.
They're prosperous enough to be able to fight over things like how ugly the
fiber cabinets are.

> If things were regulated like last mile Internet like you want, the
> smartphone/mobile boom would never have happened.

I don't think we should regulate last mile internet, for precisely that
reason.

------
mrxd
I don't really have a problem with engaging the democratic process. Bringing
fiber to Seattle is a long term infrastructure project that will last for many
decades. In the grand scheme of things, expediting the permit process hardly
makes a difference.

The author seems to really hate citizen participation. I'm sure people don't
understand fiber very well and there are a lot of opinions and concerns out
there which aren't necessarily valid, but that's going to be true of anything
new.

Cutting the public out of the debate about innovations doesn't seem like a
good path to take. The solution is to provide a more effective forum for this
debate to happen, not to put a stop to it.

------
tdicola
I wonder if they could at least bring it to the east side, where their
Kirkland office and Microsoft in general is located. I bet there are lots of
high tech workers who would be more than happy to dump Comcast for Google
Fiber over there.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The east side isn't seattle, and many of those small cities lack the poor
neighborhoods that would make universal service so unecononimical. So why not?
But man, living in Bellevue feels a bit depressing. The cooler but smaller
Google office is in Fremont right?

~~~
therealdrag0
There's one in Fremont, another in Kirkland.

------
mml
A tiny isp (USI) in Minneapolis has been laying buried fttp for years. They
just announced 100gbps (synchronous) service too. Google, feh!

Sure, it only serves a few neighborhoods, but it's progress, and more
importantly, not Comcast.

------
jrochkind1
> _When Google announced its launch city for Google Fiber – Kansas City – it
> was a sensation. And the very next day the Kansas City Council authorized a
> contract with Google for the service._

Kansas City is desperate. If Google comes calling, they will sign a contract,
whether or not it's actually good for the city, they'll figure "Hey, Google's
coming and asking, it's _Google_ , we won't say no!"

This is not really a good thing. This particular contract may be great for KC,
but it's not because you can just always trust Google and sign whatever they
put in front of you. But many desparate cities will.

~~~
MBCook
There are two Kansas Cities, and they compete tooth and nail.

Kansas City, Kansas agreed to Google fiber (possibly to due its benefits
possibly due to lack of competition) and put up with Google's requirements.

Kansas City, Missouri refused. Once the announcement was made it was a big
ruckus and looked like a black eye for the city and they rushed to do anything
they could to get in on it because every citizen was interested. The last
thing they want is to be seen as falling behind the Kansas side and losing
more jobs and businesses.

~~~
jrochkind1
Exactly. "The last thing they want is to be seen as....", it's got very little
to do with the terms of the contract of whether it's good contract for the
city or the citizens. It might be in this case, but it doesn't even matter.

My thoughts on this come from my experience with an analagous case on a
smaller level -- I have worked with a university that signed a contract with a
vendor (not Google in this case) for digitization of some library content,
because "the last thing they want[ed] is to be seen as falling behind" other
universities that signed such contracts with that or other vendors (including
Google). That any vendor was even interested was seen as an honor. In fact,
the contract was terrible for the university, they got little benefit from it
and had to expend university resources basically for the vendor's benefit. But
for a year or two, it seemed exciting and made them appear not to be "falling
behind".

------
geraldcombs
"Overland Park, Kansas, apparently has its own version of the Seattle process.
It spent nine months arguing the Google Fiber contract..."

Overland Park's haggling likely had more to do with the fact that Sprint is
headquartered there.

~~~
madengr
OP resident here. Probably not, as Sprint does not sell local ISP services.
Could have been Time Warner though. That article is dated though, as Google is
now building in OP. It actually worked out for the better as both Google and
AT&T are laying fiber in OP; competing 1000/1000 services. My ISP (CCI) just
bumped me from 30/5 to 100/5 for free. I can't wait to dump them though. Some
areas of OP will have three competing 1000/1000 services; Google, AT&T, and
CCI. My area was wired 10 years ago by CCI so it's just hybrid fiber-coax.

The real fuck-up is Leawood, KS though; just next door. Google pulled out
recently when they were told no "new" ISP lines could be run on existing
poles. It had to be 100% buried, despite existing cable ISP on poles:

[http://www.govexec.com/state-local/2014/11/google-fiber-
leaw...](http://www.govexec.com/state-local/2014/11/google-fiber-leawood-
kansas/98462/)

~~~
MBCook
It's been interesting to watch. I remember someone sending me a map of which
areas of Kansas City agreed to Google's conditions to try and get Google
fiber, and the city of Overland Park was a big obvious missing block.

------
philwelch
Frustrating as this might be, CondoInternet is going building to building to
provide gigabit Internet to apartment dwellers and even building neighborhood-
scale fiber service to Eastlake, while CenturyLink is laying gigabit service
to other neighborhoods, one by one. Even if we were on Google's shortlist, by
the time they came to town they'd have competitors. Competitors who _don 't_
have a business model of monitoring people's web usage so they can target ads
at them.

~~~
themartorana
Says you. After it came out that Verizon is actually changing request headers
in Internet traffic to inject tracking tokens, I wouldn't trust any company to
not do/track anything. In fact, it's in their best interests to track your
usage - they can sell that information to advertisers and make more money from
you.

Not trusting Google but trusting some unknown competitor is strange to me.

~~~
learnstats2
Using businesses that support your preferences is the only real economic power
that most people have.

Stick with Verizon and Verizon recognise that they can do/track anything
without consequence.

On the other hand, leave Verizon for a competitor who is not currently
doing/tracking anything and this becomes a selling point for the competition.

------
aluhut
Faced with those kind of problems with poles, can't they dig?

~~~
duskwuff
That's not any simpler. You still need all kinds of clearances to run cables
underground, and it's a lot more work tearing up streets.

~~~
dsymonds
And digging is much more expensive to do initially (think two or three orders
of magnitude), though it's often cheaper in the long run due to less
maintenance and repairs.

~~~
mschuster91
The problem with digging is that in case of faults, it's far more difficult to
service. Also, future upgrades (e.g. fibers with better optical properties, or
more fibers) require re-digging.

~~~
toomuchtodo
When done properly, conduit is laid that fiber is then run through. You don't
re-dig to lay new media, you simply drag it through the existing conduit.
That's why "dig once" is such a big deal.

[http://www.muninetworks.org/tags/tags/dig-
once](http://www.muninetworks.org/tags/tags/dig-once)

[http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/san-francisco-
seeks-t...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/san-francisco-seeks-to-
speed-up-fiber-internet-expansion/Content?oid=2908441)

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2012/06/14/execut...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2012/06/14/executive-order-accelerating-broadband-infrastructure-
deployment)

------
Animats
Verizon's FIOS fiber hasn't been profitable, and they've stopped building it
out. Google would run into the same problem if they actually built enough that
it had to make money, instead of only doing cherry-picked demo projects.

Technically, you don't need fiber to the home to get gigabit rates. Coax from
the end user to the DOCSIS node at the pole is more than enough. Within 100
meters, such as in apartment buildings, CAT 5 is enough. The fiber connection
to the DOCSIS node at the pole, the DOCSIS node, and the back end have to have
more bandwidth.

The cable industry has a plan for slow migration to gigabit services:

[http://www.cedmagazine.com/articles/2012/07/an-
evolutionary-...](http://www.cedmagazine.com/articles/2012/07/an-evolutionary-
approach-to-gigabit-class-docsis)

One unit at a time, in the chain from head end to end user, equipment can be
swapped out for faster, but backwards-compatible, units.

Of course, in the end it's still Comcast.

------
gnoway
related:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001011462](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001011462)

------
mikhailfranco
... because it would help Microsoft too much!?

------
dang
This was published in March 2014 so we put "2014" in the title.

~~~
bcl
Usually takes me a month to realize it's a new year :)

------
jld
Here in Seattle there seems to be this fear that not getting Google to install
Google Fiber™ means we'll just have the crappy offerings from Comcast and
CenturyLink for the next 50 years.

In reality, I believe not selling ourselves to a provider immediately will
allow a better market to develop where we get real competition and the
possibility of a city run fiber network. It may take a few more years than
having Google build out the whole thing at once, but I think the alternative
will be better and other municipalities will have wished they had waited too.

~~~
tdicola
I've been living in the Seattle area for 10 years, and my only option for high
speed internet has been Comcast. So where has the magic of the free
marketplace been for that time?

~~~
therealdrag0
Same. I also find it very strange that there's not DSL offering in either of
the places I've lived. I'd rather have slow and steady DSL than erratic cable
:(

------
al2o3cr
"an you imagine the Seattle City Council keeping a secret like this and then
acting on it in just one day? Of course not. We’d need to have endless
community meetings and hearings and public floggings of Google Executives.
Every citizen in a tinfoil hat who thinks fiber is just another cereal
ingredient would have their three minutes in front of the Council. "

Ah, I see - _democracy_ is a bug, according to the author.

Actually, reading further, it appears that anything short of kneeling and
begging at the feet of corporations is somehow supposed to be terrible...

Seriously - here's the conclusion:

"Could we simply agree to pay for all the pole replacements and permitting as
a city, and hire a few extra employees to expedite the process? Couldn’t we
just hand over title to a few strands of the 500 mile fiber cable network
we’ve built to Google Fiber?"

Translation: "Couldn't we just spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize profits for
one of the world's largest corporations?"

~~~
smsm42
There's a choice - spend taxpayers dollars to prevent Google from laying fiber
or spend taxpayer dollars to enable Google to lay fiber (and yes, make the
profit in the process). I think the latter is preferable. I'd prefer no
taxpayer dollars participation at all, but in the current environment it's not
really an option, right? There's an option of having fast internet or having
slow internet and unperturbed bureaucracy. Seattle chose the latter. I hope
they enjoy their bureaucracy.

