21 ms·

Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

329 points by olds 9y ago

skj 9y ago
The difference between a "bet" and a "sure thing".
zzz157 9y ago
Google seems to halfass a lot of their products. I really had expected it would at least be live in the Bay Area right now. It's not like Google doesn't have the money.
- mcny 9y ago
  My understanding is that homeowners in the bay area have some next level NIMBY ism that even Google can't overcome. Those fiber huts have to go somewhere...
  - eloisant 9y ago
    Well, when you spend several million dollars to buy a house I understand you're likely to be afraid of anything that threaten your investment and turning NIMBY.
    - IntelMiner 9y ago
      With the state of the Australian housing market, having Fiber-optic internet would likely add to the property value
  - BigJono 9y ago
    Maybe this is an overreaction to being stuck with Australian internet for the past decade, but if anyone in my neighbourhood was to resist the installation of fibre it'd be fucking on for young and old.
    - ehnto 9y ago
      I have my pitchfork ready, Jono. Actually we finally got NBN on my street and I am syncing at 75mbit (paying for 100) and frankly I am over the moon. The fastest I have had previous, after living all over AU, was 14mbit down, and I was the envy of my friends for that roaring waterfall of data. Everyone else I know is on around 8mbit even in 2018.
      - BigJono 9y ago
        That sounds like a dream. I'm sharing a 6/1 connection with 3 housemates and 2 partners. I honestly feel like I'm back in the days of dial-up.
      - Whitestrake 9y ago
        Hoping against hope that we get a similar result when NBN rolls around to my neighbourhood. It would be absolutely awful for them to "upgrade" our system, after waiting so long for this, to the exact same or worse speeds as the ADSL we've been stuck with all this time.
  - avree 9y ago
    And yet companies like AT&T and Comcast have been able to improve their infrastructure and launch fiber in more and more areas in the Bay Area (it's more than just San Francisco, you know!) The cause is not NIMBYism, or any other negative traits you might try to tag on to people from the Bay, but rather, the existing telecom companies and their attempts to protect their pseudo-monopoly. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/10/google-fights-att-comcast-over-bay-area-google-fiber-service/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/10/google-fights-att-com...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - dlgeek 9y ago
      To be fair, AT&T and Comcast have existing infrastructure (mostly poles) they can leverage.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  It was more PR that delivery. In my area AT&T brought fiber and we were not in an area important enough for Google. Bemoan the big cable and phone companies all we want but they deliver a lot more and quietly. For me any time I read about one of the internet big tech companies rolling out service traditionally performed by older companies as nothing more than a PR grab. People at work were all excited when the announcement for our major metropolitan area was announced until the areas were given and it was like, what is the point if your in such limited areas? I know more outside of my metro Atlanta area with fiber than within. that to me is just backwards but I will take it. I like my hick neighborhood and with fiber I can work from home a lot more
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I think Google has too.much money. They can try a lot of stuff but there isn't much pressure to succeed.
  - Zhyl 9y ago
    Or moreover it shows that money isn't necessarily the limiting factor in success that many perceive it to be.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      That's what I am thinking when people talk about tax cuts. Apple or Google don't need more money. They already have more than they can invest productively.
      - ISL 9y ago
        That's an explanation -- another is that Apple and Google believe that future uses of the resources could yield greater aggregate return (or serve as a bulwark against a downturn). "Cash is a call option with no expiration date" https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042613/cash-call-option-no-expiration-date.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042613/cash-...
Feniks 9y ago
Not really surprising, my own country is still profiting from the massive investment in cable done by the state owned telecom operators in the 80s. Infrastructure like this is something that can only be done with government support.
- princekolt 9y ago
  I don't think that's the case. Google certainly has more disposable cash available at less bureaucratic cost than many country's governments. They just lack the interest. If there's a single company with a forever long track record of half-assing products and never finishing them, only to cancel them later with disregard to current customers, that's Google. They make so much money that nothing really matters for them.
  - mrmondo 9y ago
    I’m not disagreeing (or agreeing) with you, but your comment did make me wonder if Google truly is less bureaucratic than (all / some) governments. For example back in NZ where I grew up sure there’s bureaucracy throughout the government - but it does seem like they deliver a _lot_ more than Google is capable of and across a far more diverse product range (e.g. from fibre to the home to universal healthcare etc...), interesting thing to think about and if nothing else it highlights to me just how poorly run most google products must be given their flop rate despite their enormous wealth, amount of data on people and their reach.
  - PinguTS 9y ago
    A government owned company has easier access to public land and can do that while doing their public infrastructure work. It can go as a more coordinated work and costs can be saved greatly, especially when the property is publicly owned. The work itself is then normally done by private companies in a bidding process. The government own companies faces only problems, when it has to cross private property. While a private company has to pay for the usage of the public property too. It has also to work on the allowance to use the public property at all. Also the construction costs are much higher, as they cannot share with other infrastructure costs. If private companies wants to share the costs of infrastructure work, it requires much more coordinating work. They also need to know way in advance when which infrastructure work by which private company is planned to be able to work together. That will become a bureaucratic mess.
purple-again 9y ago
I remember the prevailing attitude at the time in message boards being that Google had no real intention of taking this serious and was instead just trying to bluff the entrenched interests to upgrade. It worked in the markets Google rolled out in...and that was it. These companies stubbornly refused to preempt Googles expansion anywhere. Maybe they called Googles bluff, maybe they were never nimble enough to even think about getting ahead of Google let alone execute it, and maybe Google was just never that serious in the first place.
- justonepost 9y ago
  Or, just face value, wireless is where the big money is.
- sureaboutthis 9y ago
  This is true, I believe, and in my area of the country, we went from 10Mb to 125Mb in short order. And now, years later, even ATT now offers 1Gb fibre (though limited areas and still mostly slow 3Mb everywhere else) .
- glenstein 9y ago
  I think the time you are referring to was at least a few news cycles after the start of Google fiber. I think it genuinely was received as the Cool New Thing for a while. Then the cities applied to be Google fiber cities. Then fiber rolled out to some cities. At some point competitors responded by upgrading their service. And then with some retrospection, we collectively looked back at that series of events and said "ah, this must have been Google's plan all along." I honestly don't doubt that Google's initial plan was insanely ambitious. And that what transpired, while falling far short of the original vision, nevertheless did advance their interests. But my recollection of the events as they unfolded in real time wasn't that this was their plan from the start, or that people felt that way, until a few news cycles passed and it was clear that it spurred other internet providers to action. But I do agree with you that it definitely did become the prevailing wisdom, eventually.
cm2187 9y ago
But is wireless seriously an alternative to fiber? I mean with 4k streaming spreading, what will happen on a super bowl night? There is only one shared bandwidth.
- candiodari 9y ago
  You have to keep in mind that with enough antennas (and enough VERY high bandwidth connections between the antennas - but only has to exist on the service provider side, plus the antennas can be pretty close together and still work) there is, in theory, 2^n interference patterns, each of which is localized. Each of which can transmit data. If you use the interference patterns to transmit data instead of the signals directly, and you have enough antennas, you have essentially unlimited wireless bandwidth, at least at relatively short range (ie. cells). Granted, doing this for more than 4 or so antennas is currently beyond the capabilities of deployed equipment, but we'll get there. I don't understand why people keep saying that we won't be able to satisfy bandwidth demand on wireless. We can, and it may be a lot cheaper (esp. outside of the cities).
  - michaelt 9y ago
    I don't understand why people keep saying that we won't be able to satisfy bandwidth demand on wireless. Is it possible, from an engineering perspective, to build a wireless network with very high bandwidth and generous transfer limits? Absolutely! You just need to increase last mile bandwidth every time you get a new subscriber, so cells never get overloaded. Is it possible, from a market incentive perspective, to build a wireless ISP business where it's more profitable to increase last mile bandwidth or turn away customers, rather than overload a cell? I'm not sure.
    - alex_hitchins 9y ago
      Am I right then that to get super fast wireless everywhere we need lots of fibre to back-haul it? That's my understanding. All the 4G super fast masts springing up are all piping that hot traffic down fibre to the next hop.
jbarham 9y ago
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7112084631 http://www.speedtest.net/result/7112084631 is my 4G home wireless "broadband" plan's speed in suburban Melbourne, Australia. Basically 10/1 Mb which is not great, but still much better than what I was getting with ADSL, and I'll have to wait another year or two until the NBN rollout reaches my house. But by 2020 the mobile networks will be rolling out 5G. Apart from mailing out the modem to me, my wireless ISP has basically zero marginal installation cost for adding me as a customer, assuming their closest towers have sufficient capacity (they vetted my address first before selling me the wireless modem). And I know for a fact that they're capping my modem's speed in software as my 4G smartphone's connection is much faster. This is why the NBN's CEO said wireless networks are its biggest threat.
- ailideex 9y ago
  Is there any cap on that? Here I can get uncapped 100mbit/100mbit up/down fiber for a fraction of the cost of 100GB data over mobile/wireless broadband.
  - jbarham 9y ago
    Monthly cap is 200 GB. I typically use 50 GB/month, so it's effectively unlimited.
jaggederest 9y ago
I'm pretty happy with the results. The local company here in Portland really stepped up the rollout of their gigabit service and while it's not quite a full gigabit by my tests, it's more than fast enough (~400mbps).
- dozzie 9y ago
  > [...] it's more than fast enough (~400mbps). Even my GPRS connection is faster than 400 millibits per second.
cdancette 9y ago
This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the deployment). They planned to equip 50% of the territory by 2017 (which was achieved), and 100% by 2022. Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  > Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. There's just no way you can draw a conclusion like this. I would be equally right in say that public corporations never have an incentive to improve services due to lack of a market or competition (see mass transit). The rollout of a nationalised national broadband/fibre network in Australia has been an interesting one for a number of reasons. We've actually seen private companies roll out their own networks to compete with both the public provider AND other private companies. Ultimately, the quality of these services is going to depend on a whole lot more than "public vs private"
- masklinn 9y ago
  That only works where the government is willing though, see Australia for a case study of the opposite. And keep in mind that in France currently "fiber" means "at least FFTN", much of rural france won't see FTTH for a long time.
  - briandear 9y ago
    Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? France claiming 100% fiber by 2022? They are dreaming, or perhaps even delusional. No way they can get FTTH by 2022. There are some places that don’t have any connectivity and you have to use Satelite. They’re going to fix that in 4 years?
    - masklinn 9y ago
      > Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? I wouldn't go quite that far e.g. let's say you're my parents in a village of 300 (and as many cows) with the DSLAM >5km away, the best DSL you can get is 1024k on a good day (and on average closer to 512k with pings in the half-second range), my understanding is that for them the FTTN node would be roughly at the center of each village. All of a sudden, unless the village is huge there's <2km between any home and the node and you can expect 15~20Mbps over the entire village.
nukeop 9y ago
If even Google cannot penetrate this market then it's for all intents and purposes 100% impenetrable. Unless somebody comes up with a radically different strategy, the ISP market in USA should be considered monopolized and should be broken down by the government (fat chance). In any case, it's game over for consumers - abandon all hope.
- ckocagil 9y ago
  If Google's survival depended on solving this, they would have solved it 10 times over. Since it's not, they're approaching this problem with a cost/benefit mindset and they seem to think it's not worth it. An ideal solution would be nationalization of the infrastructure, but that's never happening in the US. A possible solution is for the US government to scare the telecom monopolies with antitrust lawsuits so much that they come up with a solution themselves (which might be simply splitting the monopoly like you suggested). BTW, is your name an ss13 reference?
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    > If Google's survival depended on solving this, they would have solved it 10 times over assuming that's true, can we safely conclude that Google is unworried by the loss of net neutrality? i mean, the broadband providers are still in position and still have their potential anti-neutral leverage. or does google have some other strategy to fight the loss of net neutrality?
    - PaulHoule 9y ago
      Google does OK without net neutrality. They can afford to pay the trolls, who in turn help them keep competition out.
- walshemj 9y ago
  LLU makes more sense but I cant see this happening for at least the next 8 years or so.
adamcharnock 9y ago
I wonder, was Google Fibre ever intended to succeed in the traditional sense? Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry by 1) scaring the incumbents into improving, and 2) expanding consumers' Overton windows[1] regarding what they could/should expect. Google presumably wants to ensure its services can be delivered to consumers, so this would seem towards that end. As another commenter notes, Google also has deep pockets. Creating & operating a whole company as a PR 'stunt' doesn't seem beyond the realms of reasonable probability. PS: I think a similar argument can be made for Tesla. I don't think it is a given that Musk intends for Tesla's success to be an economic one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window Edit: made last sentence less strong.
- leereeves 9y ago
  > I don't think it is a given that Musk ever intended for Tesla's success to be an economic one. What did Musk tell investors?
  - alex_hitchins 9y ago
    Good point, but would investors now stand to benefit over all from expediting the development of electric vehicles, solar and space transportation?
    - PaulHoule 9y ago
      People spend good money on cars, electricity, and rocket launches. I think the last one is a particularly good business because even though the US military has understood that cost reduction is job #1 for the use of space, the conventional cost plus model of developing rockets and then building and launch them can put stuff in orbit but cannot do cost reduction.
  - adamcharnock 9y ago
    I have observed a wide range of attitudes towards deception. Both deception of one's self, and of others. For example: For some people being 'a liar' is one of the worst things imaginable, but to others it is perfectly fine. The former judge the latter as being immoral monsters, the latter think the former are rather sweet (and are perhaps also glad the former exist?). Regarding deception of one's self: some people feel there is an absolute truth that can be known, whereas others may choose their reality and belief systems to fit their needs in any given moment. I'm describing opposite ends of two spectrums here, rather than categories. I think people make assumptions about where Musk is on those spectrums.
res0nat0r 9y ago
Honestly I'm sure they just realized how time consuming and expensive it is. And fiber isn't their main gig so they decided to duck out. AT+T rolled out fiber to my neighborhood over the last 6 months. They've been digging up yards and shared areas for months and I was the first person in my area to sign up. It took multiple visits for the techs to fix the line noise and clean the lines after the first rollout, and the techs are still here almost every day fixing other noise/line issues the last few weeks. Laying new cable is expensive and time consuming.
digi_owl 9y ago
Google suck at doing anything that do not support "push to prod" antics. The company at its core is a child of the web, and thus it struggles to manage anything that can't have a change/fix/AB-test pushed out on a whim.
kosei 9y ago
I think some people still don't realize quite how expensive it is to truly build out a national Telecom network. I remember when Clearwire raised ~$7 billion [1] and still wasn't in many markets and rural areas, ultimately selling to Sprint for pennies on the dollar. The infrastructure costs are staggering, and even a rich company like Google can't just dip their toes in hoping to succeed. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clearwire#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clearwire#section-fu...
- yaantc 9y ago
  Yes, I agree this is the key here. Google realized FTTH is too expensive in most places, and still are looking at wireless IIUC. Except for new buildings in dense areas or similar, it's likely that bringing fiber close and going over the remaining distance with either 3.5 GHz radio or millimeter waves (former better for range, later for available BW) makes more sense. We'll see soon how well it works in practice, 5G NR deployments will start with fixed wireless like this.
GiorgioG 9y ago
I have fiber internet at home (US) and while I'm generally happy with it, the thing I'm most happy about it is I'm no longer giving Time Warner Cable / Spectrum any of my money. In terms of speed, yes it's fast (1gb up/down) but let's be honest, there are very few things that can make use of that bandwidth. As a test I just downloaded an Ubuntu ISO at 40 megabytes/sec (320 megabits/sec.) While it's nice, if I had to wait 4 minutes instead of 1.5 minutes with my old service, it's not really changing my world/life.
- martinald 9y ago
  Agreed entirely, I also have 1gig up/down, even 802.11ac struggles past 300mbit/sec through a couple of walls. Plus very few servers seem to be able to reliably send at fast speeds, and TCP slow start means small files (<100MB) see 0 benefit at all. The biggest problem I have is that a lot of portable storage I have (SD cards + USB hard drives) is way slower than my internet. I have one SD card which struggles at random file writes at more than 50mbit/sec.
IshKebab 9y ago
There's a simple solution to this really - force ISPs to charge the same price to everyone. The fact that there are different prices in different areas is really weird and I don't think it happens in any other country.
trisimix 9y ago
Check out rocket fiber though
exabrial 9y ago
Living near kc, they're not very good at marketing to the local audiences. Many people don't understand the difference between 1gpbs and "up to 300mbps".
- EADGBE 9y ago
  So much of KC still isn't available (metro, specifically), which is also a large problem. I don't think most people care when their typical WiFi setup will only get them in the 100-150 real-world range. As much as I'd love to sign up for Spectrum's 940 downloads, I can't even hit the 200 I'm limited to with any of my internet devices.
exabrial 9y ago
Also, they didn't really seek to keep expenses down where they could. Both the jack and the router are proprietary, for instance. Also, in very high density areas like high rise apartments, normal cat6a would more than suffice at half the price of single-mode fiber, and that's not even taking into the account the price of switch equipment.
BatFastard 9y ago
GF potential customer here in Atlanta, I will say 5 years in it has been nothing but a series of disappointments. I was in one of the first neighborhoods to get GF actually laid down. I have been promised "any day now" for 2 years. But what it looks like is if your house is not on a direct fiber line, it will never be coming. GF had promised it would get ATT to complete the 1 block connection between their fiber and my house for 2 years. However I did get fiber from ATT for 100 meg symmetrical for 50 bucks a month. And unlike comcast it really delivers 100 megabits per second. I could have gotten the full gig fiber for 70 a month. But it did not seem worth it.
- linsomniac 9y ago
  Sounds like GF succeeded in getting you gigabit Fiber Internet for $70/month to me. :-)
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    It did indeed! Just not on the expected path.
- matthewmcg 9y ago
  Similar situation. Got on the waiting list as soon as they put it up. Got my "Google Fiber" T-shirt. And then nothing, for several years. When Comcast offered 1000Mbps* service for $70/mo with a three year contract, I gave up. Interestingly, this offer only seems to have been available in likely GF service areas and was a pretty transparent attempt to tie up potential GF customers with a nice early termination fee. * download. Upload is 40Mbps.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    Interesting, implies that it is still a cable based backbone. I still remember the PITA back in the days where I needed to do 800 meg updates to my game, it took two hours to post it! I would have loved 40, and 100 was unimaginable.
brandmeyer 9y ago
Recall the CEO's departure and scale-back announcement[0]. There was going to be a shift of direction towards other kinds of last-mile (or even, last 100 yards) technology. Its a shame we haven't heard any more since then. [0]: https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-bet.html https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-b...
cowmix 9y ago
I credit GF for getting Cox and Centurylink to roll out fiber here in Phoenix. I have gigabit through Centurylink at a reasonable price. Thx Google!
thebigspacefuck 9y ago
I'm still on the cheapest plan I could find, which is 60 Mbps for $40/month. Even if fiber were $70/month, I'm not sure I would buy it, as 60 Mbps seems to be doing the job fine. What kind of things would 1 Gbps allow me to do that I currently cannot, that would justify an extra $30/month?
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The difference between 60 and 1000mbit is not in allowing you previously impossible things. It is the same difference as between spinning rust and SSDs. It affects every single interaction you have with the networks to reduce friction as much as possible on your end, and also improves parallelization capabilities. Downloading of small files will change from being a fraction of a second to nigh-imperceptible, and as long as the remote side supports it, this will apply to all images on a website at once. And no longer will downloading a game on steam mess with your youtube/netflix/whatever.
- pault 9y ago
  Everything you do now, but faster? I have GF and I don't know how I will ever be able to go back to <100Mb if I ever move. I haven't had to wait for _anything_ since I got the gigabit; even multi-gig 4k movies finish downloading before I can finish making my popcorn.
andrewla 9y ago
> By late 2016, Google executives clearly started becoming disenfranchised by the slow pace ... I assume they mean "disenchanted" -- this sentence makes no sense as written.
- samfriedman 9y ago
  Maybe the expansion pace was tied as an incentive to their corporate voting power?
- rdiddly 9y ago
  There's another malapropism further down too - so-and-so trying to bring financial constraint (restraint) to Alphabet.
  - empanadada 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm a bit befuddled as to how a journalist can miss these.
- empanadada 9y ago
  It bugged me a lot too that there are a lot of sloppy editorial errors that were somehow not picked up by the journalist, nor the copy editors, and the editor(s) in chief before publishing a headline story like this. It reminded me of how far we've slipped in journalism quality :/
cletus 9y ago
Tech companies are incredibly profitable. Fixed costs are really low. Employees are probably the biggest cost. This is in stark contrast to the likes of, say, Comcast, Spectrum or Verizon that have massive capex budgets. Building a broadband network is an interesting business. I like to describe it as a hyper-local national business. I saw this because every municipality has different rules (eg compare getting pole access in Louisville vs Nashville vs Austin), the ground is different (one area might have a lot of limestone in the ground and make trenching slow, difficult and expensive) and so on. Getting something resolved might be a case of whoever is the construction manager in a given area knowing the right person to call that might otherwise have 11 people standing around for 2 days. This is something that national ISPs are exceedingly good at because they've spent decades doing it. I mean they go further than that by trying to keep competitors out through regulatory blocks and so forth but this doesn't change the fact that this is a core competency. It is not nor was it ever Google's core competency. Google is at its heart a technical company that solves technical problems. Making search or Maps or GMail worth with petabytes or even exabytes of data is something Google is exceedingly good at. This is an entirely different business model and core competency. I don't know this for a fact but I SUSPECT that Google's executives went into Fiber with the naive belief that (a lot of hand-waving here) they were Google and could do anything and somehow they could reduce the cost per household connected from a more normal $1000-3000 to <$500. This might be true if it was a software problem. Digging up trenches and stringing cables to poles is not a software problem. What's more Google has never really had to control costs in the same sense that a large capital project would have to. Worse, Google's culture that it'll ship when it ships (which is great from a software engineering POV) doesn't work when you need to plan for lighting up networks and areas and there are a lot of moving parts to make that happen. It's really a case of what gets measured gets done. Add to this that there is uncertainty over what the future of fixed broadband is going to be. Will it be wireless or wired? That's the ultimate question. If it's wireless and you've just spent $50B building a national wired network then... woops. If it's wired and you've just invested $25B in building wireless infrastructure then... woops. I suspect it's one of these cases where doing nothing is worse than doing something but I suspect Google's board was scared off by the large capital costs involved in doing anything and were too risk-averse to be wrong. Disclaimer: Ex-Fiber Xoogler.
- 9y ago
shmerl 9y ago
It's a management failure. They should have pushed further, despite monopolists' resistance. But they gave up. Didn't they know it was a long term investment? Alphabet could afford it. > And in markets that Google Fiber has been deployed, it has resulted in a dramatic reduction in prices among regional incumbents. Yeah, that's the main outcome. Gigabit for $70 is a norm today, and if someone charges a lot more, it's viewed as a rip off. And not only in markets where they deployed.
EADGBE 9y ago
Though I'd have the option of getting Google Fiber if I only lived across the street, I still consider it a win, because after Time Warner was bought by Charter which was bought by Spectrum, they're now starting to compete with speed offerings. Before Spectrum came into town, Time Warner was "forced" to give me 300Mb/s at my 100Mb/s price simply because the average in the area was significantly higher after most of the city switched to Google Fiber. It made me laugh, thinking they had this capacity all the time but didn't even offer it residentially. I have the option of using Spectrum @ 940Mbs down now; which probably would have never happened if Google Fiber didn't infiltrate my city.
EA 9y ago
Our city just built a fiber network and GF was the first to offer service. Since they have come to town, ATT has installed their own fiber network in our neighborhood and Comcast has increased their speeds. I consider our local area disrupted. And I feel no matter what happens with GF, we’ll have faster internet from now on. BTW: cut the cord. GF 1Gb plan with DirecTV Now and YouTube TV.
- sf_rob 9y ago
  Unfortunately disruption is a temporary state. Hopefully the existing incumbents will continue to provide enough competition in your area to keep each other in check.
  - jclardy 9y ago
    I feel like it would be very difficult for them to dial back. In my area the same thing occurred. Google Fiber was announced, and suddenly AT&T had fiber to home options available. Then spectrum magically increased their available speeds. If one of them dials down their service levels, users will just swap to the other. They would have to be concerted in their service downgrades if they didn't want to lose customers.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  I'm happy for you, but I think you have to realize that you're in the minority in this country with the levels of choice and competition you have.
  - Scooty 9y ago
    I wish I had any choice. I'm stuck using my phone as my primary internet source because my Comcast cable connection drops every fifteen minutes. After several tech support calls and router/modem replacements, I assume they either don't know how to fix the issue or they just don't care.
caycep 9y ago
I had high hopes for Sonic as well, but it seems they can't get access to a lot of markets....one can still hope...
rb808 9y ago
One thing is that most people really dont need gigabit connection. I'd think most people couldn't tell the difference between 10mbps & 1gig. Maybe 25-100 mbps is required if you have 8 kids each streaming their own movies. Maybe 5g is enough and the fiber rollout is a waste of resources. Upstream backups are a little different. It doesn't work quick enough with dsl. But isn't that important.
- zanny 9y ago
  "Nobody needs more than 640k memory!" We don't see the broad adoption of tech that can utilize 1gbps because too few people have it. If everyone had 1gbps Netflix could increase the bandwidth of their streaming, everyone could do live backups of every file they have in realtime anywhere, hell there are more esoteric use cases like WLAN terminals with centralized compute resources. You could run a normal OS perfectly fine over a gbps connection from anywhere that can maintain that link at low latency. You could use remote GPUs and CPUs to accelerate compute on demand. None of that is possible as long as most Internet users are stuck on two magnitudes less bandwidth. How incredibly shortsighted to think dramatic improvements to performance in any metric are pointless just because we haven't seen the fruits of such improvements already happen yet.
- JohnnyConatus 9y ago
  I have FIOS and aside from finally syncing my online backups, I've been struck by how little difference / improvement there is over cable. I'm not a gamer so the latency doesn't matter. My TV isn't 4k so no help there and I suspect video "CDNs" will be the primary fix for most of the market. What is the best use case for fiber? I feel like I'm missing it.
apeace 9y ago
As you can surmise by reading this article, the rise of the wireless ISPs (or WISPs) is not because the wireless technology is better or drastically cheaper. It's because in so many places, the incumbents are able to prevent you from building out fiber. They simply haven't developed the weapons to destroy the WISPs yet, but unless the political climate in states/cities changes, they will. It is tough for WISPs to compete on latency[1]. Not to say there's no value in it or that it couldn't be improved, but right now, aside from the political/regulatory issues, fiber is the best way to build an awesome network for customers. If you want to work on software at a company that is deploying fiber in multiple cities, we're hiring[2]. [1] https://serverfault.com/questions/286588/intermittent-high-ping-latency-problem#286603 https://serverfault.com/questions/286588/intermittent-high-p... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493742
- sireat 9y ago
  Speaking of latency: a well calibrated point to point wireless connection is less latency than fiber jumping a bunch of switches. Proof: finance industry's wide use of microwave towers. https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cables-oh-my.html https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cab... There was another set of articles describing microwave towers in Europe, quite fascinating. Not sure if this was the one: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-part-i/ https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba...
  - seattleeng 9y ago
    Doesn't weather adversely affect these, though?
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      What of it? If you have an advantage half the time that's better than not having it, as long as benefits exceed costs.
      - 9y ago
knowaveragejoe 9y ago
Maybe it's because I live in a wealthier and more dense metropolitan area where there is actually still some semblance of competition between them, but over that same time period both major ISPs in the area have stepped up the speeds they offer and prices haven't risen to match(as far as I can tell). Their lowest tier service is 50mbit, which was just a few years ago one of the highest. Both are offering gigabit to the home now, and one offers 2 gigabit in certain areas.
- zpallin 9y ago
  But the technology for these speeds were available 15 years ago. The ISPs did not offer them or build them out to consumers, and this attributed to the lack of competition. Without Google trying to enter the scene, most internet consumers would not have realized they could get better. Also, these ISPs are overcharging for their service. Google's pricing allowed people to peer into the fact that they were being cheated. I'm not a Google lackey by any means, but they did a huge service to internet consumers, who are now much more aware of the quality of service they should be getting from ISPs like Comcast and AT&T.
  - knowaveragejoe 9y ago
    Well, what I was getting at is that Google did seem to have a tangible effect. Either they did or some other parties in the area, I'm not sure. But based on the jump in available speeds and prices remaining roughly the same, someone at the big incumbents was worried about disruption.
vermontdevil 9y ago
Seems Google is banking on SpaceX and Starlink. I think this is a better outcome than continuing to invest in the last mile to homes.
brian_herman 9y ago
Google is a faint echo of the disruption promiced.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Disruption is a faint echo of the disruption promised.
zpallin 9y ago
This might be a bit off topic, but it seems folks still want to use the word "disenfranchised" in the wrong context. To be disenfranchised, it means you have lost the political privilege to vote. It is not a synonym for "disillusioned".
bfrog 9y ago
I feel like this is almost everything google does now... do they actually have a growing profit outside of digital advertising? Digital advertising seems like a growing quagmire of difficulties and skepticism.
stcredzero 9y ago
Vice Media itself is a creature of the old media. It may successfully transform itself into a new media company. I've noted a lot of Far-Left ideological bias there, however. In my estimation, it's the 2018 equivalent of Fox News, just on the other side of the political spectrum.
twostorytower 9y ago
Today, I am able to get Gigabit fiber (1000/1000) in my area for $80/month. It's not from Google, but from a major ISP. I am pretty confident if Google Fiber never existed, it would not have pushed other ISP's into fiber expansion at such an affordable consumer price. Hopefully the fall of net neutrality is stopped before all this progress goes to shit.
throwaway84742 9y ago
That’s because google rewards launching and doesn’t reward improvement. People launched, got their brownie points, and now things are staffed by two kinds of folks: a). Those who don’t yet know they’ll get nothing for their effort, and b). Those who do. So things deteriorate on their way to getting canceled. This happens all the time there.

329 points by olds 9y ago

skj 9y ago

The difference between a "bet" and a "sure thing".

Google seems to halfass a lot of their products. I really had expected it would at least be live in the Bay Area right now. It's not like Google doesn't have the money.

mcny 9y ago
My understanding is that homeowners in the bay area have some next level NIMBY ism that even Google can't overcome. Those fiber huts have to go somewhere...
- eloisant 9y ago
  Well, when you spend several million dollars to buy a house I understand you're likely to be afraid of anything that threaten your investment and turning NIMBY.
  - IntelMiner 9y ago
    With the state of the Australian housing market, having Fiber-optic internet would likely add to the property value
- BigJono 9y ago
  Maybe this is an overreaction to being stuck with Australian internet for the past decade, but if anyone in my neighbourhood was to resist the installation of fibre it'd be fucking on for young and old.
  - ehnto 9y ago
    I have my pitchfork ready, Jono. Actually we finally got NBN on my street and I am syncing at 75mbit (paying for 100) and frankly I am over the moon. The fastest I have had previous, after living all over AU, was 14mbit down, and I was the envy of my friends for that roaring waterfall of data. Everyone else I know is on around 8mbit even in 2018.
    - BigJono 9y ago
      That sounds like a dream. I'm sharing a 6/1 connection with 3 housemates and 2 partners. I honestly feel like I'm back in the days of dial-up.
    - Whitestrake 9y ago
      Hoping against hope that we get a similar result when NBN rolls around to my neighbourhood. It would be absolutely awful for them to "upgrade" our system, after waiting so long for this, to the exact same or worse speeds as the ADSL we've been stuck with all this time.
- avree 9y ago
  And yet companies like AT&T and Comcast have been able to improve their infrastructure and launch fiber in more and more areas in the Bay Area (it's more than just San Francisco, you know!) The cause is not NIMBYism, or any other negative traits you might try to tag on to people from the Bay, but rather, the existing telecom companies and their attempts to protect their pseudo-monopoly. https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/10/google-fights-att-comcast-over-bay-area-google-fiber-service/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/03/10/google-fights-att-com...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dlgeek 9y ago
    To be fair, AT&T and Comcast have existing infrastructure (mostly poles) they can leverage.
Shivetya 9y ago
It was more PR that delivery. In my area AT&T brought fiber and we were not in an area important enough for Google. Bemoan the big cable and phone companies all we want but they deliver a lot more and quietly. For me any time I read about one of the internet big tech companies rolling out service traditionally performed by older companies as nothing more than a PR grab. People at work were all excited when the announcement for our major metropolitan area was announced until the areas were given and it was like, what is the point if your in such limited areas? I know more outside of my metro Atlanta area with fiber than within. that to me is just backwards but I will take it. I like my hick neighborhood and with fiber I can work from home a lot more
maxxxxx 9y ago
I think Google has too.much money. They can try a lot of stuff but there isn't much pressure to succeed.
- Zhyl 9y ago
  Or moreover it shows that money isn't necessarily the limiting factor in success that many perceive it to be.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's what I am thinking when people talk about tax cuts. Apple or Google don't need more money. They already have more than they can invest productively.
    - ISL 9y ago
      That's an explanation -- another is that Apple and Google believe that future uses of the resources could yield greater aggregate return (or serve as a bulwark against a downturn). "Cash is a call option with no expiration date" https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042613/cash-call-option-no-expiration-date.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042613/cash-...

Feniks 9y ago

Not really surprising, my own country is still profiting from the massive investment in cable done by the state owned telecom operators in the 80s. Infrastructure like this is something that can only be done with government support.

princekolt 9y ago
I don't think that's the case. Google certainly has more disposable cash available at less bureaucratic cost than many country's governments. They just lack the interest. If there's a single company with a forever long track record of half-assing products and never finishing them, only to cancel them later with disregard to current customers, that's Google. They make so much money that nothing really matters for them.
- mrmondo 9y ago
  I’m not disagreeing (or agreeing) with you, but your comment did make me wonder if Google truly is less bureaucratic than (all / some) governments. For example back in NZ where I grew up sure there’s bureaucracy throughout the government - but it does seem like they deliver a _lot_ more than Google is capable of and across a far more diverse product range (e.g. from fibre to the home to universal healthcare etc...), interesting thing to think about and if nothing else it highlights to me just how poorly run most google products must be given their flop rate despite their enormous wealth, amount of data on people and their reach.
- PinguTS 9y ago
  A government owned company has easier access to public land and can do that while doing their public infrastructure work. It can go as a more coordinated work and costs can be saved greatly, especially when the property is publicly owned. The work itself is then normally done by private companies in a bidding process. The government own companies faces only problems, when it has to cross private property. While a private company has to pay for the usage of the public property too. It has also to work on the allowance to use the public property at all. Also the construction costs are much higher, as they cannot share with other infrastructure costs. If private companies wants to share the costs of infrastructure work, it requires much more coordinating work. They also need to know way in advance when which infrastructure work by which private company is planned to be able to work together. That will become a bureaucratic mess.

purple-again 9y ago

I remember the prevailing attitude at the time in message boards being that Google had no real intention of taking this serious and was instead just trying to bluff the entrenched interests to upgrade. It worked in the markets Google rolled out in...and that was it. These companies stubbornly refused to preempt Googles expansion anywhere. Maybe they called Googles bluff, maybe they were never nimble enough to even think about getting ahead of Google let alone execute it, and maybe Google was just never that serious in the first place.

justonepost 9y ago
Or, just face value, wireless is where the big money is.
sureaboutthis 9y ago
This is true, I believe, and in my area of the country, we went from 10Mb to 125Mb in short order. And now, years later, even ATT now offers 1Gb fibre (though limited areas and still mostly slow 3Mb everywhere else) .
glenstein 9y ago
I think the time you are referring to was at least a few news cycles after the start of Google fiber. I think it genuinely was received as the Cool New Thing for a while. Then the cities applied to be Google fiber cities. Then fiber rolled out to some cities. At some point competitors responded by upgrading their service. And then with some retrospection, we collectively looked back at that series of events and said "ah, this must have been Google's plan all along." I honestly don't doubt that Google's initial plan was insanely ambitious. And that what transpired, while falling far short of the original vision, nevertheless did advance their interests. But my recollection of the events as they unfolded in real time wasn't that this was their plan from the start, or that people felt that way, until a few news cycles passed and it was clear that it spurred other internet providers to action. But I do agree with you that it definitely did become the prevailing wisdom, eventually.

cm2187 9y ago

But is wireless seriously an alternative to fiber? I mean with 4k streaming spreading, what will happen on a super bowl night? There is only one shared bandwidth.

candiodari 9y ago
You have to keep in mind that with enough antennas (and enough VERY high bandwidth connections between the antennas - but only has to exist on the service provider side, plus the antennas can be pretty close together and still work) there is, in theory, 2^n interference patterns, each of which is localized. Each of which can transmit data. If you use the interference patterns to transmit data instead of the signals directly, and you have enough antennas, you have essentially unlimited wireless bandwidth, at least at relatively short range (ie. cells). Granted, doing this for more than 4 or so antennas is currently beyond the capabilities of deployed equipment, but we'll get there. I don't understand why people keep saying that we won't be able to satisfy bandwidth demand on wireless. We can, and it may be a lot cheaper (esp. outside of the cities).
- michaelt 9y ago
  I don't understand why people keep saying that we won't be able to satisfy bandwidth demand on wireless. Is it possible, from an engineering perspective, to build a wireless network with very high bandwidth and generous transfer limits? Absolutely! You just need to increase last mile bandwidth every time you get a new subscriber, so cells never get overloaded. Is it possible, from a market incentive perspective, to build a wireless ISP business where it's more profitable to increase last mile bandwidth or turn away customers, rather than overload a cell? I'm not sure.
  - alex_hitchins 9y ago
    Am I right then that to get super fast wireless everywhere we need lots of fibre to back-haul it? That's my understanding. All the 4G super fast masts springing up are all piping that hot traffic down fibre to the next hop.

jbarham 9y ago

http://www.speedtest.net/result/7112084631 http://www.speedtest.net/result/7112084631 is my 4G home wireless "broadband" plan's speed in suburban Melbourne, Australia. Basically 10/1 Mb which is not great, but still much better than what I was getting with ADSL, and I'll have to wait another year or two until the NBN rollout reaches my house. But by 2020 the mobile networks will be rolling out 5G. Apart from mailing out the modem to me, my wireless ISP has basically zero marginal installation cost for adding me as a customer, assuming their closest towers have sufficient capacity (they vetted my address first before selling me the wireless modem). And I know for a fact that they're capping my modem's speed in software as my 4G smartphone's connection is much faster. This is why the NBN's CEO said wireless networks are its biggest threat.

ailideex 9y ago
Is there any cap on that? Here I can get uncapped 100mbit/100mbit up/down fiber for a fraction of the cost of 100GB data over mobile/wireless broadband.
- jbarham 9y ago
  Monthly cap is 200 GB. I typically use 50 GB/month, so it's effectively unlimited.

jaggederest 9y ago

I'm pretty happy with the results. The local company here in Portland really stepped up the rollout of their gigabit service and while it's not quite a full gigabit by my tests, it's more than fast enough (~400mbps).

dozzie 9y ago
> [...] it's more than fast enough (~400mbps). Even my GPRS connection is faster than 400 millibits per second.

cdancette 9y ago

This is why I'm happy to live in a country like France where the government takes part in deploying those infrastructures (by investing money in the deployment). They planned to equip 50% of the territory by 2017 (which was achieved), and 100% by 2022. Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service.

madeofpalk 9y ago
> Same goes for public service, profit-focused corporations can't provide the same quality of service. There's just no way you can draw a conclusion like this. I would be equally right in say that public corporations never have an incentive to improve services due to lack of a market or competition (see mass transit). The rollout of a nationalised national broadband/fibre network in Australia has been an interesting one for a number of reasons. We've actually seen private companies roll out their own networks to compete with both the public provider AND other private companies. Ultimately, the quality of these services is going to depend on a whole lot more than "public vs private"
masklinn 9y ago
That only works where the government is willing though, see Australia for a case study of the opposite. And keep in mind that in France currently "fiber" means "at least FFTN", much of rural france won't see FTTH for a long time.
- briandear 9y ago
  Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? France claiming 100% fiber by 2022? They are dreaming, or perhaps even delusional. No way they can get FTTH by 2022. There are some places that don’t have any connectivity and you have to use Satelite. They’re going to fix that in 4 years?
  - masklinn 9y ago
    > Exactly. Fiber to the home is the only fiber than really matters. If there is fiber but my last mile is old copper, then that doesn’t do me a lot of good does it? I wouldn't go quite that far e.g. let's say you're my parents in a village of 300 (and as many cows) with the DSLAM >5km away, the best DSL you can get is 1024k on a good day (and on average closer to 512k with pings in the half-second range), my understanding is that for them the FTTN node would be roughly at the center of each village. All of a sudden, unless the village is huge there's <2km between any home and the node and you can expect 15~20Mbps over the entire village.

nukeop 9y ago

If even Google cannot penetrate this market then it's for all intents and purposes 100% impenetrable. Unless somebody comes up with a radically different strategy, the ISP market in USA should be considered monopolized and should be broken down by the government (fat chance). In any case, it's game over for consumers - abandon all hope.

ckocagil 9y ago
If Google's survival depended on solving this, they would have solved it 10 times over. Since it's not, they're approaching this problem with a cost/benefit mindset and they seem to think it's not worth it. An ideal solution would be nationalization of the infrastructure, but that's never happening in the US. A possible solution is for the US government to scare the telecom monopolies with antitrust lawsuits so much that they come up with a solution themselves (which might be simply splitting the monopoly like you suggested). BTW, is your name an ss13 reference?
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  > If Google's survival depended on solving this, they would have solved it 10 times over assuming that's true, can we safely conclude that Google is unworried by the loss of net neutrality? i mean, the broadband providers are still in position and still have their potential anti-neutral leverage. or does google have some other strategy to fight the loss of net neutrality?
  - PaulHoule 9y ago
    Google does OK without net neutrality. They can afford to pay the trolls, who in turn help them keep competition out.
walshemj 9y ago
LLU makes more sense but I cant see this happening for at least the next 8 years or so.

adamcharnock 9y ago

I wonder, was Google Fibre ever intended to succeed in the traditional sense? Instead, perhaps it was an attempt by Google to change the industry by 1) scaring the incumbents into improving, and 2) expanding consumers' Overton windows[1] regarding what they could/should expect. Google presumably wants to ensure its services can be delivered to consumers, so this would seem towards that end. As another commenter notes, Google also has deep pockets. Creating & operating a whole company as a PR 'stunt' doesn't seem beyond the realms of reasonable probability. PS: I think a similar argument can be made for Tesla. I don't think it is a given that Musk intends for Tesla's success to be an economic one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window Edit: made last sentence less strong.

leereeves 9y ago
> I don't think it is a given that Musk ever intended for Tesla's success to be an economic one. What did Musk tell investors?
- alex_hitchins 9y ago
  Good point, but would investors now stand to benefit over all from expediting the development of electric vehicles, solar and space transportation?
  - PaulHoule 9y ago
    People spend good money on cars, electricity, and rocket launches. I think the last one is a particularly good business because even though the US military has understood that cost reduction is job #1 for the use of space, the conventional cost plus model of developing rockets and then building and launch them can put stuff in orbit but cannot do cost reduction.
- adamcharnock 9y ago
  I have observed a wide range of attitudes towards deception. Both deception of one's self, and of others. For example: For some people being 'a liar' is one of the worst things imaginable, but to others it is perfectly fine. The former judge the latter as being immoral monsters, the latter think the former are rather sweet (and are perhaps also glad the former exist?). Regarding deception of one's self: some people feel there is an absolute truth that can be known, whereas others may choose their reality and belief systems to fit their needs in any given moment. I'm describing opposite ends of two spectrums here, rather than categories. I think people make assumptions about where Musk is on those spectrums.

res0nat0r 9y ago

Honestly I'm sure they just realized how time consuming and expensive it is. And fiber isn't their main gig so they decided to duck out. AT+T rolled out fiber to my neighborhood over the last 6 months. They've been digging up yards and shared areas for months and I was the first person in my area to sign up. It took multiple visits for the techs to fix the line noise and clean the lines after the first rollout, and the techs are still here almost every day fixing other noise/line issues the last few weeks. Laying new cable is expensive and time consuming.

digi_owl 9y ago

Google suck at doing anything that do not support "push to prod" antics. The company at its core is a child of the web, and thus it struggles to manage anything that can't have a change/fix/AB-test pushed out on a whim.

kosei 9y ago

I think some people still don't realize quite how expensive it is to truly build out a national Telecom network. I remember when Clearwire raised ~$7 billion [1] and still wasn't in many markets and rural areas, ultimately selling to Sprint for pennies on the dollar. The infrastructure costs are staggering, and even a rich company like Google can't just dip their toes in hoping to succeed. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clearwire#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clearwire#section-fu...

yaantc 9y ago
Yes, I agree this is the key here. Google realized FTTH is too expensive in most places, and still are looking at wireless IIUC. Except for new buildings in dense areas or similar, it's likely that bringing fiber close and going over the remaining distance with either 3.5 GHz radio or millimeter waves (former better for range, later for available BW) makes more sense. We'll see soon how well it works in practice, 5G NR deployments will start with fixed wireless like this.

GiorgioG 9y ago

I have fiber internet at home (US) and while I'm generally happy with it, the thing I'm most happy about it is I'm no longer giving Time Warner Cable / Spectrum any of my money. In terms of speed, yes it's fast (1gb up/down) but let's be honest, there are very few things that can make use of that bandwidth. As a test I just downloaded an Ubuntu ISO at 40 megabytes/sec (320 megabits/sec.) While it's nice, if I had to wait 4 minutes instead of 1.5 minutes with my old service, it's not really changing my world/life.

martinald 9y ago
Agreed entirely, I also have 1gig up/down, even 802.11ac struggles past 300mbit/sec through a couple of walls. Plus very few servers seem to be able to reliably send at fast speeds, and TCP slow start means small files (<100MB) see 0 benefit at all. The biggest problem I have is that a lot of portable storage I have (SD cards + USB hard drives) is way slower than my internet. I have one SD card which struggles at random file writes at more than 50mbit/sec.

IshKebab 9y ago

There's a simple solution to this really - force ISPs to charge the same price to everyone. The fact that there are different prices in different areas is really weird and I don't think it happens in any other country.

trisimix 9y ago

Check out rocket fiber though

exabrial 9y ago

Living near kc, they're not very good at marketing to the local audiences. Many people don't understand the difference between 1gpbs and "up to 300mbps".

EADGBE 9y ago
So much of KC still isn't available (metro, specifically), which is also a large problem. I don't think most people care when their typical WiFi setup will only get them in the 100-150 real-world range. As much as I'd love to sign up for Spectrum's 940 downloads, I can't even hit the 200 I'm limited to with any of my internet devices.

exabrial 9y ago

Also, they didn't really seek to keep expenses down where they could. Both the jack and the router are proprietary, for instance. Also, in very high density areas like high rise apartments, normal cat6a would more than suffice at half the price of single-mode fiber, and that's not even taking into the account the price of switch equipment.

BatFastard 9y ago

GF potential customer here in Atlanta, I will say 5 years in it has been nothing but a series of disappointments. I was in one of the first neighborhoods to get GF actually laid down. I have been promised "any day now" for 2 years. But what it looks like is if your house is not on a direct fiber line, it will never be coming. GF had promised it would get ATT to complete the 1 block connection between their fiber and my house for 2 years. However I did get fiber from ATT for 100 meg symmetrical for 50 bucks a month. And unlike comcast it really delivers 100 megabits per second. I could have gotten the full gig fiber for 70 a month. But it did not seem worth it.

linsomniac 9y ago
Sounds like GF succeeded in getting you gigabit Fiber Internet for $70/month to me. :-)
- BatFastard 9y ago
  It did indeed! Just not on the expected path.
matthewmcg 9y ago
Similar situation. Got on the waiting list as soon as they put it up. Got my "Google Fiber" T-shirt. And then nothing, for several years. When Comcast offered 1000Mbps* service for $70/mo with a three year contract, I gave up. Interestingly, this offer only seems to have been available in likely GF service areas and was a pretty transparent attempt to tie up potential GF customers with a nice early termination fee. * download. Upload is 40Mbps.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  Interesting, implies that it is still a cable based backbone. I still remember the PITA back in the days where I needed to do 800 meg updates to my game, it took two hours to post it! I would have loved 40, and 100 was unimaginable.

brandmeyer 9y ago

Recall the CEO's departure and scale-back announcement[0]. There was going to be a shift of direction towards other kinds of last-mile (or even, last 100 yards) technology. Its a shame we haven't heard any more since then. [0]: https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-bet.html https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-b...

cowmix 9y ago

I credit GF for getting Cox and Centurylink to roll out fiber here in Phoenix. I have gigabit through Centurylink at a reasonable price. Thx Google!

thebigspacefuck 9y ago

I'm still on the cheapest plan I could find, which is 60 Mbps for $40/month. Even if fiber were $70/month, I'm not sure I would buy it, as 60 Mbps seems to be doing the job fine. What kind of things would 1 Gbps allow me to do that I currently cannot, that would justify an extra $30/month?

Mithaldu 9y ago
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The difference between 60 and 1000mbit is not in allowing you previously impossible things. It is the same difference as between spinning rust and SSDs. It affects every single interaction you have with the networks to reduce friction as much as possible on your end, and also improves parallelization capabilities. Downloading of small files will change from being a fraction of a second to nigh-imperceptible, and as long as the remote side supports it, this will apply to all images on a website at once. And no longer will downloading a game on steam mess with your youtube/netflix/whatever.
pault 9y ago
Everything you do now, but faster? I have GF and I don't know how I will ever be able to go back to <100Mb if I ever move. I haven't had to wait for _anything_ since I got the gigabit; even multi-gig 4k movies finish downloading before I can finish making my popcorn.

andrewla 9y ago

> By late 2016, Google executives clearly started becoming disenfranchised by the slow pace ... I assume they mean "disenchanted" -- this sentence makes no sense as written.

samfriedman 9y ago
Maybe the expansion pace was tied as an incentive to their corporate voting power?
rdiddly 9y ago
There's another malapropism further down too - so-and-so trying to bring financial constraint (restraint) to Alphabet.
- empanadada 9y ago
  Yeah, I'm a bit befuddled as to how a journalist can miss these.
empanadada 9y ago
It bugged me a lot too that there are a lot of sloppy editorial errors that were somehow not picked up by the journalist, nor the copy editors, and the editor(s) in chief before publishing a headline story like this. It reminded me of how far we've slipped in journalism quality :/

cletus 9y ago

Tech companies are incredibly profitable. Fixed costs are really low. Employees are probably the biggest cost. This is in stark contrast to the likes of, say, Comcast, Spectrum or Verizon that have massive capex budgets. Building a broadband network is an interesting business. I like to describe it as a hyper-local national business. I saw this because every municipality has different rules (eg compare getting pole access in Louisville vs Nashville vs Austin), the ground is different (one area might have a lot of limestone in the ground and make trenching slow, difficult and expensive) and so on. Getting something resolved might be a case of whoever is the construction manager in a given area knowing the right person to call that might otherwise have 11 people standing around for 2 days. This is something that national ISPs are exceedingly good at because they've spent decades doing it. I mean they go further than that by trying to keep competitors out through regulatory blocks and so forth but this doesn't change the fact that this is a core competency. It is not nor was it ever Google's core competency. Google is at its heart a technical company that solves technical problems. Making search or Maps or GMail worth with petabytes or even exabytes of data is something Google is exceedingly good at. This is an entirely different business model and core competency. I don't know this for a fact but I SUSPECT that Google's executives went into Fiber with the naive belief that (a lot of hand-waving here) they were Google and could do anything and somehow they could reduce the cost per household connected from a more normal $1000-3000 to <$500. This might be true if it was a software problem. Digging up trenches and stringing cables to poles is not a software problem. What's more Google has never really had to control costs in the same sense that a large capital project would have to. Worse, Google's culture that it'll ship when it ships (which is great from a software engineering POV) doesn't work when you need to plan for lighting up networks and areas and there are a lot of moving parts to make that happen. It's really a case of what gets measured gets done. Add to this that there is uncertainty over what the future of fixed broadband is going to be. Will it be wireless or wired? That's the ultimate question. If it's wireless and you've just spent $50B building a national wired network then... woops. If it's wired and you've just invested $25B in building wireless infrastructure then... woops. I suspect it's one of these cases where doing nothing is worse than doing something but I suspect Google's board was scared off by the large capital costs involved in doing anything and were too risk-averse to be wrong. Disclaimer: Ex-Fiber Xoogler.

9y ago

shmerl 9y ago

It's a management failure. They should have pushed further, despite monopolists' resistance. But they gave up. Didn't they know it was a long term investment? Alphabet could afford it. > And in markets that Google Fiber has been deployed, it has resulted in a dramatic reduction in prices among regional incumbents. Yeah, that's the main outcome. Gigabit for $70 is a norm today, and if someone charges a lot more, it's viewed as a rip off. And not only in markets where they deployed.

EADGBE 9y ago

Though I'd have the option of getting Google Fiber if I only lived across the street, I still consider it a win, because after Time Warner was bought by Charter which was bought by Spectrum, they're now starting to compete with speed offerings. Before Spectrum came into town, Time Warner was "forced" to give me 300Mb/s at my 100Mb/s price simply because the average in the area was significantly higher after most of the city switched to Google Fiber. It made me laugh, thinking they had this capacity all the time but didn't even offer it residentially. I have the option of using Spectrum @ 940Mbs down now; which probably would have never happened if Google Fiber didn't infiltrate my city.

EA 9y ago

Our city just built a fiber network and GF was the first to offer service. Since they have come to town, ATT has installed their own fiber network in our neighborhood and Comcast has increased their speeds. I consider our local area disrupted. And I feel no matter what happens with GF, we’ll have faster internet from now on. BTW: cut the cord. GF 1Gb plan with DirecTV Now and YouTube TV.

sf_rob 9y ago
Unfortunately disruption is a temporary state. Hopefully the existing incumbents will continue to provide enough competition in your area to keep each other in check.
- jclardy 9y ago
  I feel like it would be very difficult for them to dial back. In my area the same thing occurred. Google Fiber was announced, and suddenly AT&T had fiber to home options available. Then spectrum magically increased their available speeds. If one of them dials down their service levels, users will just swap to the other. They would have to be concerted in their service downgrades if they didn't want to lose customers.
  - deleted 9y ago
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s73v3r_ 9y ago
I'm happy for you, but I think you have to realize that you're in the minority in this country with the levels of choice and competition you have.
- Scooty 9y ago
  I wish I had any choice. I'm stuck using my phone as my primary internet source because my Comcast cable connection drops every fifteen minutes. After several tech support calls and router/modem replacements, I assume they either don't know how to fix the issue or they just don't care.

caycep 9y ago

I had high hopes for Sonic as well, but it seems they can't get access to a lot of markets....one can still hope...

rb808 9y ago

One thing is that most people really dont need gigabit connection. I'd think most people couldn't tell the difference between 10mbps & 1gig. Maybe 25-100 mbps is required if you have 8 kids each streaming their own movies. Maybe 5g is enough and the fiber rollout is a waste of resources. Upstream backups are a little different. It doesn't work quick enough with dsl. But isn't that important.

zanny 9y ago
"Nobody needs more than 640k memory!" We don't see the broad adoption of tech that can utilize 1gbps because too few people have it. If everyone had 1gbps Netflix could increase the bandwidth of their streaming, everyone could do live backups of every file they have in realtime anywhere, hell there are more esoteric use cases like WLAN terminals with centralized compute resources. You could run a normal OS perfectly fine over a gbps connection from anywhere that can maintain that link at low latency. You could use remote GPUs and CPUs to accelerate compute on demand. None of that is possible as long as most Internet users are stuck on two magnitudes less bandwidth. How incredibly shortsighted to think dramatic improvements to performance in any metric are pointless just because we haven't seen the fruits of such improvements already happen yet.
JohnnyConatus 9y ago
I have FIOS and aside from finally syncing my online backups, I've been struck by how little difference / improvement there is over cable. I'm not a gamer so the latency doesn't matter. My TV isn't 4k so no help there and I suspect video "CDNs" will be the primary fix for most of the market. What is the best use case for fiber? I feel like I'm missing it.

apeace 9y ago

As you can surmise by reading this article, the rise of the wireless ISPs (or WISPs) is not because the wireless technology is better or drastically cheaper. It's because in so many places, the incumbents are able to prevent you from building out fiber. They simply haven't developed the weapons to destroy the WISPs yet, but unless the political climate in states/cities changes, they will. It is tough for WISPs to compete on latency[1]. Not to say there's no value in it or that it couldn't be improved, but right now, aside from the political/regulatory issues, fiber is the best way to build an awesome network for customers. If you want to work on software at a company that is deploying fiber in multiple cities, we're hiring[2]. [1] https://serverfault.com/questions/286588/intermittent-high-ping-latency-problem#286603 https://serverfault.com/questions/286588/intermittent-high-p... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16493742

sireat 9y ago
Speaking of latency: a well calibrated point to point wireless connection is less latency than fiber jumping a bunch of switches. Proof: finance industry's wide use of microwave towers. https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cables-oh-my.html https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2017/05/lines-radios-and-cab... There was another set of articles describing microwave towers in Europe, quite fascinating. Not sure if this was the one: https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-part-i/ https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba...
- seattleeng 9y ago
  Doesn't weather adversely affect these, though?
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    What of it? If you have an advantage half the time that's better than not having it, as long as benefits exceed costs.
    - 9y ago

knowaveragejoe 9y ago

Maybe it's because I live in a wealthier and more dense metropolitan area where there is actually still some semblance of competition between them, but over that same time period both major ISPs in the area have stepped up the speeds they offer and prices haven't risen to match(as far as I can tell). Their lowest tier service is 50mbit, which was just a few years ago one of the highest. Both are offering gigabit to the home now, and one offers 2 gigabit in certain areas.

zpallin 9y ago
But the technology for these speeds were available 15 years ago. The ISPs did not offer them or build them out to consumers, and this attributed to the lack of competition. Without Google trying to enter the scene, most internet consumers would not have realized they could get better. Also, these ISPs are overcharging for their service. Google's pricing allowed people to peer into the fact that they were being cheated. I'm not a Google lackey by any means, but they did a huge service to internet consumers, who are now much more aware of the quality of service they should be getting from ISPs like Comcast and AT&T.
- knowaveragejoe 9y ago
  Well, what I was getting at is that Google did seem to have a tangible effect. Either they did or some other parties in the area, I'm not sure. But based on the jump in available speeds and prices remaining roughly the same, someone at the big incumbents was worried about disruption.

vermontdevil 9y ago

Seems Google is banking on SpaceX and Starlink. I think this is a better outcome than continuing to invest in the last mile to homes.

brian_herman 9y ago

Google is a faint echo of the disruption promiced.

mcguire 9y ago
Disruption is a faint echo of the disruption promised.

zpallin 9y ago

This might be a bit off topic, but it seems folks still want to use the word "disenfranchised" in the wrong context. To be disenfranchised, it means you have lost the political privilege to vote. It is not a synonym for "disillusioned".

bfrog 9y ago

I feel like this is almost everything google does now... do they actually have a growing profit outside of digital advertising? Digital advertising seems like a growing quagmire of difficulties and skepticism.

stcredzero 9y ago

Vice Media itself is a creature of the old media. It may successfully transform itself into a new media company. I've noted a lot of Far-Left ideological bias there, however. In my estimation, it's the 2018 equivalent of Fox News, just on the other side of the political spectrum.

twostorytower 9y ago

Today, I am able to get Gigabit fiber (1000/1000) in my area for $80/month. It's not from Google, but from a major ISP. I am pretty confident if Google Fiber never existed, it would not have pushed other ISP's into fiber expansion at such an affordable consumer price. Hopefully the fall of net neutrality is stopped before all this progress goes to shit.

throwaway84742 9y ago

That’s because google rewards launching and doesn’t reward improvement. People launched, got their brownie points, and now things are staffed by two kinds of folks: a). Those who don’t yet know they’ll get nothing for their effort, and b). Those who do. So things deteriorate on their way to getting canceled. This happens all the time there.