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The problem with laying fiber in the continental US (and I suspect also in Canada) is not typically cost. It's death by a thousand cuts with problems acquiring

The problem with laying fiber in the continental US (and I suspect also in Canada) is not typically cost. It's death by a thousand cuts with problems acquiring land rights, fighting incumbent ISPs and the local politicians and congressmen in their pockets, and simple will on the part of ISPs. Google tried to make fiber cheap and ubiquitous with Google Fiber and failed. If an organization with the power, resources, and clout of Google can't get it done, I don't know who can short of the federal government getting involved (which, thanks to lobbyists, is unlikely). LEO constellations bypass these issues almost entirely and ironically enough may motivate incumbent ISPs to try to compete and stop being so obstructive.

cbozeman 6y ago
Google didn't fail, they gave up. They have the money to do it, they didn't want to spend it. They thought everyone would start writing letters to their congressmen on their behalf and force the government into making the other big fiber ISPs play fair. That's how fucking dumb so the so-called "smartest people in the room" can be. Google should have budgeted $10 billion a year for 10 years for Google Fiber. And in 20 years' time, Google could have been the largest provider of fiber Internet service in the United States, possibly servicing almost every single address in the country. Instead, they did what they *ALWAYS* fucking do... it didn't "catch on" in a year or two's time and they abandoned it. I can't wait to see Google utterly fail as a company, given how shit they are at execution of everything but the most obvious, largest, and easiest-to-enter markets. Elon Musk entered the three hardest markets known to fuckin' mankind... automotive, orbital launch, and ISPs, and he's utterly destroying mother fuckers. If I was an executive involved with Google Fiber, I'd blow my brains out due to utter shame.

cbozeman 6y ago

Google didn't fail, they gave up. They have the money to do it, they didn't want to spend it. They thought everyone would start writing letters to their congressmen on their behalf and force the government into making the other big fiber ISPs play fair. That's how fucking dumb so the so-called "smartest people in the room" can be. Google should have budgeted $10 billion a year for 10 years for Google Fiber. And in 20 years' time, Google could have been the largest provider of fiber Internet service in the United States, possibly servicing almost every single address in the country. Instead, they did what they *ALWAYS* fucking do... it didn't "catch on" in a year or two's time and they abandoned it. I can't wait to see Google utterly fail as a company, given how shit they are at execution of everything but the most obvious, largest, and easiest-to-enter markets. Elon Musk entered the three hardest markets known to fuckin' mankind... automotive, orbital launch, and ISPs, and he's utterly destroying mother fuckers. If I was an executive involved with Google Fiber, I'd blow my brains out due to utter shame.