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I worked for Fiber for two years. It was both (wanting to succeed as a business and wanting to shift the industry), with a primary focus on succeeding as a bus

I worked for Fiber for two years. It was both (wanting to succeed as a business and wanting to shift the industry), with a primary focus on succeeding as a business, or at least that was what the internal messaging was. I won't comment on any possible changes in the last couple years or why they may have happened, except to say that to the best of my knowledge, at no point was the sentiment, "We've shifted the industry enough that we can stop pretending to want to succeed."

kyrra 9y ago
Google Fiber hit a lot of roadblocks along the way that slowed things down. You have the lawsuit from AT&T against local government in Louisville[0]. There was also a lot of arguments[1][2] around the country for Google trying to access utility poles to hang their wires. Incumbents tried their hardest to prevent Google from hanging new wires. Many of the laws in-place today make it difficult for new companies to hang wires, which I believe was a reaction from the telegraph days[3]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/att-admits-defeat-in-lawsuit-it-filed-to-stall-google-fiber/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/att-admits-defea... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-can-deny-google-fiber-access-to-its-poles-in-austin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/cable-lobby-says-google-fiber-doesnt-need-title-ii-to-get-pole-access/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/cable... [3] https://io9.gizmodo.com/photos-from-the-days-when-thousands-of-cables-crowded-t-1629961917 https://io9.gizmodo.com/photos-from-the-days-when-thousands-...
- rayiner 9y ago
  Your analysis is backwards. There aren't special laws that "make it difficult for new companies to hang wires." The issue was not Google hanging its own wires, but Google contractors moving AT&T's wires in order to make space on the poles. Louisville passed special laws to enable one company to relocate another company's property on utility poles. I think those laws are a good idea, but its hard to blame AT&T for not wanting Google contractors to touch its infrastructure. Also, pointing to a couple of lawsuits ignores the fact that Google got huge concessions everywhere else. It got waivers from build-out requirements (obligations to cover whole cities, instead of "fiberhoods" with sufficient demand), fast-track permitting, free use of municipal land for fiber huts, etc: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-taxpayers-support-google-fiber https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-.... I think Google rightfully gets the benefit of goodwill that say AT&T does not. But it's a real triumph of narrative over facts to suggest that Google Fiber didn't have the red carpet rolled out for it in nearly every Fiber city. (Incidentally, a team of four guys with heavy equipment have spent the last three hours trenching fiber 50 feet through my tiny yard. That's the second visit, and there will be one more, and that's not counting running the fiber down the main road which required months of permitting and surveying. I strongly suspect that's why Google pulled out of Fiber.)
  - axaxs 9y ago
    While I absolutely agree with you, that setup would have been untenable. I had an ATT line hanging about 6 feet off the ground(in Louisville, pole neighborhood). Took ATT multiple calls and visits, a total process of about a month, to adjust that one line on one pole. Now imagine a citywide rollout.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      I think the FCC should impose a nationwide “one touch make ready” regulation. Federal law already requires non discriminatory access to utility pole, and the FCC already has limits on how long utility line owners can take to do pole adjustments. The FCC has been considering taking that further.
      - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        That would be a massive grab of both state and private rights, mostly for the sake of a single company that has asked for it, which is already a monopoly in several other markets and does not need special government favors to help it achieve more.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      Is that because of legitimate difficulty in the work being done, or because ATT is completely bureaucratically incompetent? I'm all for having a set of processes and procedures in place, especially for an entity as large as ATT, but even by the standards of telecos their internal workings are a Franz Kafka nightmare.
      - axaxs 9y ago
        the latter. I had trouble even reaching them because I'm not an ATT customer. I tried emailing random contacts I could find, to no avail. Finally they sent a guy out, who was an installer but couldn't touch the pole. Said a different team handled that. About 2 weeks later, they took care of it at last. Not hard work - it was literally rebinding a 20 ft section of wire to the taught steel wire that already existed, which they appear to do with heavy wire ties.
- jiveturkey 9y ago
  > Google Fiber hit a lot of ^ roadblocks ^ entirely predictable
demygale 9y ago
GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier. Google won't save us any more than Musk will. It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. What?
  - ipsin 9y ago
    "launching cars into space" is a reference to the recent launch of a Tesla into space. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      I know that, but to the detriment of society?
      - core-questions 9y ago
        Sometimes it feels like some folks will only be happy when life is completely hive-like, when there is nothing to differentiate anything from anything else, everything is grey, nothing is whimsical, and nobody can put their mark on the world.
      - username223 9y ago
        I don't completely agree with this argument, but... All of that money came from somewhere. Do you wonder why most of your local retailers went out of business, and you can't visit a local bookstore or camera shop anymore? It's related to why Jeff Bezos has so much money that he has nothing better to do than shoot stuff into space. Preferably, he will shoot bigger stuff farther than Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or Paul Allen. It could also be used somewhere else. Is shooting suicidal volunteers at Mars really the best use of billions of dollars?
usefulcat 9y ago
> ... at no point was the sentiment, "We've shifted the industry enough that we can stop pretending to want to succeed." I don't doubt you, but I would definitely expect that sort of messaging even if the true primary goal for GF was to be disruptive, as opposed to profitable.
- endtime 9y ago
  Right, it's possible the executives weren't straightforward with us simple SWEs. But I don't have any particular reason/evidence for believing that in this case. My general priors for such things are somewhere between 0 and 1, exclusive. :) FWIW, if I were aware of other plausible explanations for the way Fiber has progressed, Occam's Razor would compel me to believe those explanations versus defaulting to cynicism.

kyrra 9y ago

Google Fiber hit a lot of roadblocks along the way that slowed things down. You have the lawsuit from AT&T against local government in Louisville[0]. There was also a lot of arguments[1][2] around the country for Google trying to access utility poles to hang their wires. Incumbents tried their hardest to prevent Google from hanging new wires. Many of the laws in-place today make it difficult for new companies to hang wires, which I believe was a reaction from the telegraph days[3]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/att-admits-defeat-in-lawsuit-it-filed-to-stall-google-fiber/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/att-admits-defea... [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-can-deny-google-fiber-access-to-its-poles-in-austin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/why-att-says-it-... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/cable-lobby-says-google-fiber-doesnt-need-title-ii-to-get-pole-access/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/cable... [3] https://io9.gizmodo.com/photos-from-the-days-when-thousands-of-cables-crowded-t-1629961917 https://io9.gizmodo.com/photos-from-the-days-when-thousands-...

rayiner 9y ago
Your analysis is backwards. There aren't special laws that "make it difficult for new companies to hang wires." The issue was not Google hanging its own wires, but Google contractors moving AT&T's wires in order to make space on the poles. Louisville passed special laws to enable one company to relocate another company's property on utility poles. I think those laws are a good idea, but its hard to blame AT&T for not wanting Google contractors to touch its infrastructure. Also, pointing to a couple of lawsuits ignores the fact that Google got huge concessions everywhere else. It got waivers from build-out requirements (obligations to cover whole cities, instead of "fiberhoods" with sufficient demand), fast-track permitting, free use of municipal land for fiber huts, etc: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-taxpayers-support-google-fiber https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-.... I think Google rightfully gets the benefit of goodwill that say AT&T does not. But it's a real triumph of narrative over facts to suggest that Google Fiber didn't have the red carpet rolled out for it in nearly every Fiber city. (Incidentally, a team of four guys with heavy equipment have spent the last three hours trenching fiber 50 feet through my tiny yard. That's the second visit, and there will be one more, and that's not counting running the fiber down the main road which required months of permitting and surveying. I strongly suspect that's why Google pulled out of Fiber.)
- axaxs 9y ago
  While I absolutely agree with you, that setup would have been untenable. I had an ATT line hanging about 6 feet off the ground(in Louisville, pole neighborhood). Took ATT multiple calls and visits, a total process of about a month, to adjust that one line on one pole. Now imagine a citywide rollout.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    I think the FCC should impose a nationwide “one touch make ready” regulation. Federal law already requires non discriminatory access to utility pole, and the FCC already has limits on how long utility line owners can take to do pole adjustments. The FCC has been considering taking that further.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      That would be a massive grab of both state and private rights, mostly for the sake of a single company that has asked for it, which is already a monopoly in several other markets and does not need special government favors to help it achieve more.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    Is that because of legitimate difficulty in the work being done, or because ATT is completely bureaucratically incompetent? I'm all for having a set of processes and procedures in place, especially for an entity as large as ATT, but even by the standards of telecos their internal workings are a Franz Kafka nightmare.
    - axaxs 9y ago
      the latter. I had trouble even reaching them because I'm not an ATT customer. I tried emailing random contacts I could find, to no avail. Finally they sent a guy out, who was an installer but couldn't touch the pole. Said a different team handled that. About 2 weeks later, they took care of it at last. Not hard work - it was literally rebinding a 20 ft section of wire to the taught steel wire that already existed, which they appear to do with heavy wire ties.
jiveturkey 9y ago
> Google Fiber hit a lot of ^ roadblocks ^ entirely predictable

demygale 9y ago

GF suffers the same fate of every other Google initiative: new exec decides it can't advance his career so it's starved to death in favor of something shinier. Google won't save us any more than Musk will. It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society.

conanbatt 9y ago
> It's billionaires launching cars into space and fighting for personal wealth at the detriment of the rest of the society. What?
- ipsin 9y ago
  "launching cars into space" is a reference to the recent launch of a Tesla into space. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falc...
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I know that, but to the detriment of society?
    - core-questions 9y ago
      Sometimes it feels like some folks will only be happy when life is completely hive-like, when there is nothing to differentiate anything from anything else, everything is grey, nothing is whimsical, and nobody can put their mark on the world.
    - username223 9y ago
      I don't completely agree with this argument, but... All of that money came from somewhere. Do you wonder why most of your local retailers went out of business, and you can't visit a local bookstore or camera shop anymore? It's related to why Jeff Bezos has so much money that he has nothing better to do than shoot stuff into space. Preferably, he will shoot bigger stuff farther than Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or Paul Allen. It could also be used somewhere else. Is shooting suicidal volunteers at Mars really the best use of billions of dollars?

usefulcat 9y ago

> ... at no point was the sentiment, "We've shifted the industry enough that we can stop pretending to want to succeed." I don't doubt you, but I would definitely expect that sort of messaging even if the true primary goal for GF was to be disruptive, as opposed to profitable.

endtime 9y ago
Right, it's possible the executives weren't straightforward with us simple SWEs. But I don't have any particular reason/evidence for believing that in this case. My general priors for such things are somewhere between 0 and 1, exclusive. :) FWIW, if I were aware of other plausible explanations for the way Fiber has progressed, Occam's Razor would compel me to believe those explanations versus defaulting to cynicism.