16 ms·

Google Fiber Was Doomed from the Start

206 points by ptrptr 10y ago

PaulHoule 10y ago
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.)
- majormajor 10y ago
  > 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. This is where I am. My local speeds and offerings (cable or a smaller local company with an ethernet jack in the condo's closet) are much better than yours, and I don't really need anything better. The tech to push speed requirements dramatically higher isn't there yet. For one or two people doing some streaming and light downloading, 20Mbps is fine for now, I'd just rather pay $20 than $50. 100Mbps for $50 would probably cover me into the near future for 4K streaming, too, but currently my local providers charge more than that for the faster speeds. I'm not sure what the next big thing network-usage wise that pushes me to want more than 100Mbps would be. Heck, I was mostly happy at 5-6Mbps cable/DSL speeds for close to a decade before video streaming starting pushing those limits - downloading linux distros or such at those speeds kinda sucked, but I didn't do it that often to justify paying a lot more. EDIT: the commercial world looks quite a bit different, both in need and demand, so maybe there are more opportunities there, but it also seems pretty well served currently, at least in big cities. I have hardly any direct knowledge, but have been at or heard of quite a few office spaces with direct fiber links to datacenters or such. When I worked in a small town it was much worse (Charter Business Cable wasn't the greatest, there, reliability- or speed-wise, to share across the small office), maybe there's a market there?
  - PaulHoule 10y ago
    Note that the case for fiber in rural areas that don't have cable is that DSL doesn't have a real upgrade path for long distances. (Funny there is a standard for long-range high performance DSL, HDSL, but you've never heard of it because it makes fiber look cheap) Another story you aren't hearing is that big improvements in communication speeds from current commodity protocols (i.e. 1Gig Ethernet, 4G wireless) aren't practical with Silicon-based technology as we know it, and these things are only likely to get affordable if the industry makes a transition to faster semiconductors such as Indium Phosphide.
    - pythonaut_16 10y ago
      It would be a strange turn of events for rural areas to become more desirable to technical people because they are the first to get fiber rollouts due to it being the only upgrade path for those areas.
      - ak217 10y ago
        No one in their right mind will plow the insane money into rural areas required to trench fiber to the curb. Meanwhile a quiet revolution is happening with point-to-point wireless, where $300 gets you a gigabit connection over up to 10 miles through a directional antenna that you point at your local water tower or something, where your ISP leases space on the roof.
        dboreham 10y ago
        As someone who has a 10 mile wireless connection that I built myself all I can say is : Hahahahahahahaha. Where do I send my $300?
        ak217 10y ago
        https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1EA45M8987 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1EA45M8...
- tekklloneer 10y ago
  I think this is part of why they've embraced microwave internet. I have webpass, owned by google fiber, and it's up to 300 mbps^ for under $50 a month. I think it speaks well to your point though: If I could get 10d/1u for $20/month, I totally would. I don't really use the internet that heavily. ^ usually around 100 mbps (100/100)
  - 086421357909764 10y ago
    What's the latency like with the service? We had a microwave transit link until our fiber was installed and we noticed that we had great speed but horrible latency on the whole.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - greenleafjacob 10y ago
      When I had MonkeyBrains I had about 2ms ping to Google.
    - tekklloneer 10y ago
      It's been excellent so far.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  Can you clarify "TCP can't move a gigabit per second across the public internet." I have google fiber btw and I have gotten a gb/sec from it.
  - tw04 10y ago
    Single-stream throughput is directly proportional to latency and jitter. It is nearly impossible to push 1Gb/sec across the public internet because of the latency and jitter that get introduced via physical distance and multiple hops across multiple networks. Outside of hitting a server within your metro area, and likely on Google's backbone itself, it would be nearly impossible to hit a gigabit (~110MB/sec) of throughput with a single stream of data. A tool like this does a nice job of doing the math for you: https://www.silver-peak.com/calculator/throughput-calculator https://www.silver-peak.com/calculator/throughput-calculator
    - greedo 10y ago
      A single stream of data is a bit unimportant, with BT and potentially multiple users on a home network. I'm getting gigE this year, and between 4k streaming, BT, and two teenage daughters, I fully expect to saturate the connection.
      - tw04 10y ago
        It's not at all unimportant. It's part of the reason people are upset that they paid for XXXMbps connection but "Only get XXXMbps" throughput. In most households having a limited single-stream throughput isn't a big deal, but it IS a big deal specifically for things like your 4K streaming. It's VERY difficult to do TRUE sustained 4K streaming over any kind of distance. If your ISP happens to have a Netflix caching box at the local pop you're golden. If you need to traverse any kind of distance across the internet - good luck. edit: I guess I should've also said, more to the point, it's why gigabit hasn't gotten the legs most people were hoping for. When you look at the per-stream throughput on that site - in general if you have any kind of packet loss you're talking about 10Mbps. Who has 100 different streams in an average household???
- nitinics 10y ago
  I agree that with better modulation techniques on DOCSIS protocols, you could achieve higher throughput on the downstream. However, IMO - what should have been the focus for Google Fiber is to come up with applications that consume more upstream traffic. That is where DOCSIS lacks in terms of throughput and a fundamental problem docsis nodes face called "noise funneling". To avoid that - cable companies push fiber nodes closer to last mile. If Google would have been successful in creating a FTTH marketplace, it wouldn't be that difficult for cable companies to start investing on ONU/ONT and GPON solutions to compete. With competition, Google wouldn't really get the ROI they were expecting unless they really bring about change in applications that utilize the upstream bandwidth heavy.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  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.
  - braveo 10y ago
    I think it's an issue of being good enough for the types of things we do now. If it got astronomically better, it would enable things that we flat out can't even consider doing nowadays.
    - mindcrime 10y ago
      Fair enough.
    - adrianratnapala 10y ago
      If it got astronomically better, we could download have even bigger JavaScript frameworks to render magazine articles even slower than is done now.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Infrastructure enabling new uses and more waste seem to be intrinsically connected. The same bandwidth increase that enabled video streaming also enabled clueless people to put multi-megabyte hero images (or even worse, videos!) in their articles.
- myrandomcomment 10y ago
  Not sure about the TCP not moving a gig over the public internet. Care to expand on why you think that?
  - maksimum 10y ago
    I believe it has to do with the processing power of the intermittent routers/switches able to handle that many packets per second. Not sure how parallelizable ISP-scale switches are though.
- draw_down 10y ago
  I have a fiber internet connection, the building I live in is wired for it and I just plug my router into the wall. Anyway, I'd actually agree that it isn't materially much better than cable internet, except I never have to deal with a cable company. When I've had Comcast internet, the connection itself was fine. So, I can see why this isn't super compelling for anyone who doesn't have a huge need for bandwidth.
- Ensorceled 10y ago
  I have 30/5 for around $60CND a month, I can get 100/10 with my current set up $13CDN more a month. I haven't bothered upgrading. I have no problems with ping or downloads. My SO and I can both watch Netflix at the same time and we both have Backblaze running. When with stream HD TV or movies from iTunes it works fine and we get amazing quality. I get great ping times on WoW or TF2. I'm not sure what fiber would get me that I'm not getting and I'm sure the vast majority of people feel the same. Now, if real time VR sports or live concerts ever becomes a thing ...
blakesterz 10y ago
>> 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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > 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-free-fiber-internet-to-every-resident-without-paying-for-it http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/los-angeles-wants-to-bring...? Or Baltimore? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubbed-by-google-fiber-mad-at-comcast-baltimore-seeks-its-own-fiber https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubb....
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      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.
nandhp 10y ago
> 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-our-experimental.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-o...
cosinetau 10y ago
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.
- jboggan 10y ago
  I doubt this is Trump-related, the major decisions about the change of direction were made in October.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    What does that have to do with Google Fiber?
    - martindevans 10y ago
      Google fiber and the spacex internet constellation are both ISPs
    - Retric 10y ago
      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.
vinceguidry 10y ago
Trying to solve political problems with market offerings is going to be looked at as variously crime / terrorism. Case in point: Uber
hosh 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > 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 10y ago
    Thanks to HTTPS everywhere, not really.
    - xienze 10y ago
      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.
- makecheck 10y ago
  One possible reason is that services like YouTube and Google’s messaging-app-of-the-week would require lots of bandwidth and Google definitely benefits from having those services be practical for as many people as possible. If 50% of your friends can’t realistically use online services because $ISP sucks at downloading lots of data, there is a problem.
rayiner 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
prepend 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Google makes a ton of money off of Android. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-android-generates-31-billion-revenue-oracle-says-ijor8hvt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...
bubblethink 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
- jressey 10y ago
  I have a Google Fiber outlet in my apartment and am signed up for once they get to my neighborhood. Rumor has it that will be 4/18. I saw a few installation trucks when I moved here last year but haven't seen one since probably Sep. or Oct. I think I only know 1 person who actually has it.
dbg31415 10y ago
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.
forrestthewoods 10y ago
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-to-build-a-cable-network-2012-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-would-cost-google...
- wmf 10y ago
  If it's so profitable, why don't the rent-seeking incumbents like Verizon and AT&T deploy more fiber?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    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.
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      Also some variation of "never attribute to malice/greed what can be attributed to sheer laziness/neglect" probably applies here too. The incumbents don't have to do anything to keep margins stable, and so laziness implies they won't bother to do anything but the bare minimum. (See also: every other bit of crumbling infrastructure.)
    - massysett 10y ago
      Ok. So then why isn't Google doing it?
wfunction 10y ago
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?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- brewdad 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
transfire 10y ago
Otherwise known as, "Why Americans Can't Have Nice Things".
mindcrime 10y ago
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
- LogicX 10y ago
  Yes, we have Horry Telephone Cooperative here in Myrtle Beach, SC. They've been laying fiber in the ground for 20 years, and I've been petitioning them for the last few years to offer faster speeds. They just started offering gigabit fiber a few weeks ago for $134.99/mo. I'm thankful to have an alternative to national cable companies, the only disadvantage is that local cooperatives can move slow!
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    Yes, we have Horry Telephone Cooperative here in Myrtle Beach, SC. Hah, what an interesting bit of synchronicity. I'm originally from Brunswick County, NC, just a hair north of you. We are served by Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative and Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation.
    - 10y ago
briandear 10y ago
"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.
specialp 10y ago
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.
ghobs91 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Latency: Average 888 ms Pass! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access
  - vocatus_gate 10y ago
    Not quite! SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbits, with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles. By contrast, the existing HughesNet satellite network has an altitude of 22,000 miles. <...> SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements. source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-gigabit-speed/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...
  - macintux 10y ago
    I'd hate 1s latency for interactivity, but for streaming video or audio? Sure, sign me up.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    That's not LEO.
  - netinstructions 10y ago
    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/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-gigabit-speed/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...
rietta 10y ago
"... 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.
jeffdavis 10y ago
"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 10y ago
  > 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 10y ago
    I can work from home on my 4g wireless connection with no problem.
    - throwaway729 10y ago
      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.
- wahern 10y ago
  Yes, they have. Where? The theory is there. Experimental equipment exists. But something that can be deployed at scale to provide 100+Mb/s to each and every household in an area simultaneously? The only people claiming this exists are the marketing departments of wireless carriers, who not coincidentally have an interest in discouraging wired infrastructure investment. Theory is one thing. Scaling it and getting it into production is often the truly hard part--because technology, because business, because politics. And it's possible that the state of the art in wireless will trail the state of the art in fiber optics for quite some time. I agree with your other points, though. People lack imagination about the potential of high-speed access. Although, that potential will be hard to realize unless and until those speeds become pervasive. Those speeds can't spur innovation and change until a large, viable market of potential consumers exists. So it's not only a collective action dilemma at the local level, but at the national level as well.
brightball 10y ago
Oh Google Fiber. Greenville, SC wanted you to come here so bad. https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/home https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/...
urda 10y ago
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.
- nikcub 10y ago
  They didn't get bored - they hired Ruth Porat as CFO and she trimmed many of the high-cost no/low return projects.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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".
  - urda 10y ago
    Still in operation in what, just a handful of markets? So it's the classic "works great for me, but the rest of the country forget em". By those metrics Comcast is doing fantastic considering I've only had two outages with them while living on the West Coast, and they have a much larger market. The google fiber (and customer service at Google in general) rollout is a complete joke for 2016, 2017 standards. Google has the time, capital, and resources to hit more markets. They got bored and the project is literally halted. Ask Louisville, they are still waiting for their "rollout" (which, odds are, isn't happening).
HillaryBriss 10y ago
> 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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dirtbox 10y ago
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.
losteverything 10y ago
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
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
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.)
scythe 10y ago
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.
hussong 10y ago
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).
wahern 10y ago
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 10y ago
  So is there hope for the eastern half of the city?
  - wahern 10y ago
    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.
Shivetya 10y ago
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
dbg31415 10y ago
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.
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206 points by ptrptr 10y ago

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.)

majormajor 10y ago
> 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. This is where I am. My local speeds and offerings (cable or a smaller local company with an ethernet jack in the condo's closet) are much better than yours, and I don't really need anything better. The tech to push speed requirements dramatically higher isn't there yet. For one or two people doing some streaming and light downloading, 20Mbps is fine for now, I'd just rather pay $20 than $50. 100Mbps for $50 would probably cover me into the near future for 4K streaming, too, but currently my local providers charge more than that for the faster speeds. I'm not sure what the next big thing network-usage wise that pushes me to want more than 100Mbps would be. Heck, I was mostly happy at 5-6Mbps cable/DSL speeds for close to a decade before video streaming starting pushing those limits - downloading linux distros or such at those speeds kinda sucked, but I didn't do it that often to justify paying a lot more. EDIT: the commercial world looks quite a bit different, both in need and demand, so maybe there are more opportunities there, but it also seems pretty well served currently, at least in big cities. I have hardly any direct knowledge, but have been at or heard of quite a few office spaces with direct fiber links to datacenters or such. When I worked in a small town it was much worse (Charter Business Cable wasn't the greatest, there, reliability- or speed-wise, to share across the small office), maybe there's a market there?
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  Note that the case for fiber in rural areas that don't have cable is that DSL doesn't have a real upgrade path for long distances. (Funny there is a standard for long-range high performance DSL, HDSL, but you've never heard of it because it makes fiber look cheap) Another story you aren't hearing is that big improvements in communication speeds from current commodity protocols (i.e. 1Gig Ethernet, 4G wireless) aren't practical with Silicon-based technology as we know it, and these things are only likely to get affordable if the industry makes a transition to faster semiconductors such as Indium Phosphide.
  - pythonaut_16 10y ago
    It would be a strange turn of events for rural areas to become more desirable to technical people because they are the first to get fiber rollouts due to it being the only upgrade path for those areas.
    - ak217 10y ago
      No one in their right mind will plow the insane money into rural areas required to trench fiber to the curb. Meanwhile a quiet revolution is happening with point-to-point wireless, where $300 gets you a gigabit connection over up to 10 miles through a directional antenna that you point at your local water tower or something, where your ISP leases space on the roof.
      - dboreham 10y ago
        As someone who has a 10 mile wireless connection that I built myself all I can say is : Hahahahahahahaha. Where do I send my $300?
        ak217 10y ago
        https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1EA45M8987 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1EA45M8...
tekklloneer 10y ago
I think this is part of why they've embraced microwave internet. I have webpass, owned by google fiber, and it's up to 300 mbps^ for under $50 a month. I think it speaks well to your point though: If I could get 10d/1u for $20/month, I totally would. I don't really use the internet that heavily. ^ usually around 100 mbps (100/100)
- 086421357909764 10y ago
  What's the latency like with the service? We had a microwave transit link until our fiber was installed and we noticed that we had great speed but horrible latency on the whole.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - greenleafjacob 10y ago
    When I had MonkeyBrains I had about 2ms ping to Google.
  - tekklloneer 10y ago
    It's been excellent so far.
X86BSD 10y ago
Can you clarify "TCP can't move a gigabit per second across the public internet." I have google fiber btw and I have gotten a gb/sec from it.
- tw04 10y ago
  Single-stream throughput is directly proportional to latency and jitter. It is nearly impossible to push 1Gb/sec across the public internet because of the latency and jitter that get introduced via physical distance and multiple hops across multiple networks. Outside of hitting a server within your metro area, and likely on Google's backbone itself, it would be nearly impossible to hit a gigabit (~110MB/sec) of throughput with a single stream of data. A tool like this does a nice job of doing the math for you: https://www.silver-peak.com/calculator/throughput-calculator https://www.silver-peak.com/calculator/throughput-calculator
  - greedo 10y ago
    A single stream of data is a bit unimportant, with BT and potentially multiple users on a home network. I'm getting gigE this year, and between 4k streaming, BT, and two teenage daughters, I fully expect to saturate the connection.
    - tw04 10y ago
      It's not at all unimportant. It's part of the reason people are upset that they paid for XXXMbps connection but "Only get XXXMbps" throughput. In most households having a limited single-stream throughput isn't a big deal, but it IS a big deal specifically for things like your 4K streaming. It's VERY difficult to do TRUE sustained 4K streaming over any kind of distance. If your ISP happens to have a Netflix caching box at the local pop you're golden. If you need to traverse any kind of distance across the internet - good luck. edit: I guess I should've also said, more to the point, it's why gigabit hasn't gotten the legs most people were hoping for. When you look at the per-stream throughput on that site - in general if you have any kind of packet loss you're talking about 10Mbps. Who has 100 different streams in an average household???
nitinics 10y ago
I agree that with better modulation techniques on DOCSIS protocols, you could achieve higher throughput on the downstream. However, IMO - what should have been the focus for Google Fiber is to come up with applications that consume more upstream traffic. That is where DOCSIS lacks in terms of throughput and a fundamental problem docsis nodes face called "noise funneling". To avoid that - cable companies push fiber nodes closer to last mile. If Google would have been successful in creating a FTTH marketplace, it wouldn't be that difficult for cable companies to start investing on ONU/ONT and GPON solutions to compete. With competition, Google wouldn't really get the ROI they were expecting unless they really bring about change in applications that utilize the upstream bandwidth heavy.
mindcrime 10y ago
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.
- braveo 10y ago
  I think it's an issue of being good enough for the types of things we do now. If it got astronomically better, it would enable things that we flat out can't even consider doing nowadays.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    Fair enough.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    If it got astronomically better, we could download have even bigger JavaScript frameworks to render magazine articles even slower than is done now.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Infrastructure enabling new uses and more waste seem to be intrinsically connected. The same bandwidth increase that enabled video streaming also enabled clueless people to put multi-megabyte hero images (or even worse, videos!) in their articles.
myrandomcomment 10y ago
Not sure about the TCP not moving a gig over the public internet. Care to expand on why you think that?
- maksimum 10y ago
  I believe it has to do with the processing power of the intermittent routers/switches able to handle that many packets per second. Not sure how parallelizable ISP-scale switches are though.
draw_down 10y ago
I have a fiber internet connection, the building I live in is wired for it and I just plug my router into the wall. Anyway, I'd actually agree that it isn't materially much better than cable internet, except I never have to deal with a cable company. When I've had Comcast internet, the connection itself was fine. So, I can see why this isn't super compelling for anyone who doesn't have a huge need for bandwidth.
Ensorceled 10y ago
I have 30/5 for around $60CND a month, I can get 100/10 with my current set up $13CDN more a month. I haven't bothered upgrading. I have no problems with ping or downloads. My SO and I can both watch Netflix at the same time and we both have Backblaze running. When with stream HD TV or movies from iTunes it works fine and we get amazing quality. I get great ping times on WoW or TF2. I'm not sure what fiber would get me that I'm not getting and I'm sure the vast majority of people feel the same. Now, if real time VR sports or live concerts ever becomes a thing ...

blakesterz 10y ago

>> 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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > 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-free-fiber-internet-to-every-resident-without-paying-for-it http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/los-angeles-wants-to-bring...? Or Baltimore? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubbed-by-google-fiber-mad-at-comcast-baltimore-seeks-its-own-fiber https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubb....
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    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.

nandhp 10y ago

> 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-our-experimental.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-o...

cosinetau 10y ago

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.

jboggan 10y ago
I doubt this is Trump-related, the major decisions about the change of direction were made in October.
agildehaus 10y ago
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 10y ago
  What does that have to do with Google Fiber?
  - martindevans 10y ago
    Google fiber and the spacex internet constellation are both ISPs
  - Retric 10y ago
    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.

vinceguidry 10y ago

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

hosh 10y ago

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 10y ago
> 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 10y ago
  Thanks to HTTPS everywhere, not really.
  - xienze 10y ago
    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.
makecheck 10y ago
One possible reason is that services like YouTube and Google’s messaging-app-of-the-week would require lots of bandwidth and Google definitely benefits from having those services be practical for as many people as possible. If 50% of your friends can’t realistically use online services because $ISP sucks at downloading lots of data, there is a problem.

rayiner 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.

prepend 10y ago

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 10y ago
Google makes a ton of money off of Android. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-android-generates-31-billion-revenue-oracle-says-ijor8hvt https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...

bubblethink 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
jressey 10y ago
I have a Google Fiber outlet in my apartment and am signed up for once they get to my neighborhood. Rumor has it that will be 4/18. I saw a few installation trucks when I moved here last year but haven't seen one since probably Sep. or Oct. I think I only know 1 person who actually has it.

dbg31415 10y ago

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.

forrestthewoods 10y ago

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

wmf 10y ago
If it's so profitable, why don't the rent-seeking incumbents like Verizon and AT&T deploy more fiber?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  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.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    Also some variation of "never attribute to malice/greed what can be attributed to sheer laziness/neglect" probably applies here too. The incumbents don't have to do anything to keep margins stable, and so laziness implies they won't bother to do anything but the bare minimum. (See also: every other bit of crumbling infrastructure.)
  - massysett 10y ago
    Ok. So then why isn't Google doing it?

wfunction 10y ago

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?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
brewdad 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.

transfire 10y ago

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

mindcrime 10y ago

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

LogicX 10y ago
Yes, we have Horry Telephone Cooperative here in Myrtle Beach, SC. They've been laying fiber in the ground for 20 years, and I've been petitioning them for the last few years to offer faster speeds. They just started offering gigabit fiber a few weeks ago for $134.99/mo. I'm thankful to have an alternative to national cable companies, the only disadvantage is that local cooperatives can move slow!
- mindcrime 10y ago
  Yes, we have Horry Telephone Cooperative here in Myrtle Beach, SC. Hah, what an interesting bit of synchronicity. I'm originally from Brunswick County, NC, just a hair north of you. We are served by Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative and Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation.
  - 10y ago

briandear 10y ago

"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.

specialp 10y ago

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.

ghobs91 10y ago

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 10y ago
Latency: Average 888 ms Pass! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  Not quite! SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbits, with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles. By contrast, the existing HughesNet satellite network has an altitude of 22,000 miles. <...> SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements. source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-gigabit-speed/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...
- macintux 10y ago
  I'd hate 1s latency for interactivity, but for streaming video or audio? Sure, sign me up.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  That's not LEO.
- netinstructions 10y ago
  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/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-gigabit-speed/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...

rietta 10y ago

"... 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.

jeffdavis 10y ago

"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 10y ago
> 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 10y ago
  I can work from home on my 4g wireless connection with no problem.
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    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.
wahern 10y ago
Yes, they have. Where? The theory is there. Experimental equipment exists. But something that can be deployed at scale to provide 100+Mb/s to each and every household in an area simultaneously? The only people claiming this exists are the marketing departments of wireless carriers, who not coincidentally have an interest in discouraging wired infrastructure investment. Theory is one thing. Scaling it and getting it into production is often the truly hard part--because technology, because business, because politics. And it's possible that the state of the art in wireless will trail the state of the art in fiber optics for quite some time. I agree with your other points, though. People lack imagination about the potential of high-speed access. Although, that potential will be hard to realize unless and until those speeds become pervasive. Those speeds can't spur innovation and change until a large, viable market of potential consumers exists. So it's not only a collective action dilemma at the local level, but at the national level as well.

brightball 10y ago

Oh Google Fiber. Greenville, SC wanted you to come here so bad. https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/home https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/...

urda 10y ago

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.

nikcub 10y ago
They didn't get bored - they hired Ruth Porat as CFO and she trimmed many of the high-cost no/low return projects.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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".
- urda 10y ago
  Still in operation in what, just a handful of markets? So it's the classic "works great for me, but the rest of the country forget em". By those metrics Comcast is doing fantastic considering I've only had two outages with them while living on the West Coast, and they have a much larger market. The google fiber (and customer service at Google in general) rollout is a complete joke for 2016, 2017 standards. Google has the time, capital, and resources to hit more markets. They got bored and the project is literally halted. Ask Louisville, they are still waiting for their "rollout" (which, odds are, isn't happening).

HillaryBriss 10y ago

> 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.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dirtbox 10y ago

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.

losteverything 10y ago

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

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

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.)

scythe 10y ago

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.

hussong 10y ago

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).

wahern 10y ago

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 10y ago
So is there hope for the eastern half of the city?
- wahern 10y ago
  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.

Shivetya 10y ago

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

dbg31415 10y ago

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.

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