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Loon damaged the business case for FTTP installation because it gave CFO's a counter example which they used to argue that a widespread (rural) network could be

by sgt101 5y ago

Loon damaged the business case for FTTP installation because it gave CFO's a counter example which they used to argue that a widespread (rural) network could be outcompeted by a disruptive technology. Google fibre screwed things up by telling every CFO in telecoms that the price for doing an urban installation was padded; it was padded - padded with the money that stopped the fibres coming out of the pavement and getting ripped up. Apart from that minor detail Google fibre was great; apart from not actually having a business case Loon was great. I know that people love the idea of telcos being smashed up and turned over, but when your broadband skips a beat this week remember that Google is part of the reason. Of course the bigger reason is that Telco CFO's spend their lives looking for cash at whatever cost to the underlying business and the social purpose of telecoms, and that telco boards are spineless blobs of jelly who are terrified of the investors and the CFO.

dehrmann 5y ago
It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Starlink.
- erhk 5y ago
  0 plans to upgrade hardware in a modular fashion. Environmentalism?
- URSpider94 5y ago
  My guess is that Starlink is what made Loon throw in the towel. Who needs an emergency network made of balloons when there will be a 24/7 network spanning the globe made of satellites?
antiterra 5y ago
The shallow trenching of Google Fiber was meant to counteract telcos strong arming them out of pole attachment. If the regulatory problem was solved then the difficulties of shallow burial are no longer be a significant impediment.
- sgt101 5y ago
  Yup - but their PR was that it is better, cheaper and quicker than poles; which is total bollocks in urban builds. In rural settings I think that poles are bad due to those nasty tree things that fall through the cables, but mostly ducting is a better solution anyway.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    I asked my local company if they were bringing fiber in on existing poles or trenching, and they said they had to trench because fiber isnt flexible enough to go up on poles. Maybe it is specific to the ones we have- last year a bad storm with 60mph winds caused power lines to clack together and knock out power for several hours.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      uh, my fiber is literally just a cable coming down from the pole next to my house. fiber runs on poles all over, like oregon. https://www.michaelsinsight.com/2010/09/hunters-shooting-destroying-googles-fiber-connection-for-oregon-datacenter.html https://www.michaelsinsight.com/2010/09/hunters-shooting-des...
  - jayd16 5y ago
    If you count how hard it is to get onto the poles in the US then its not bollocks.
  - antiterra 5y ago
    The difficulties they had around pole attachment meant that shallow trenching was a last ditch (no pun intended) effort. If you attach to a pole in many jurisdictions you are at the mercy of foot-dragging by everyone else on the pole to make way. Google tried to change the rules but ran into significant and expensive opposition from those who were well entrenched (again, pun not intended.)
TeMPOraL 5y ago
That's what disruption is, isn't it? The ordinary meaning of the word is pretty negative - disrupting something means taking a process that's doing fine, and making it no longer work, or work worse than it was. It implies value and utility being lost. (Or, the other meaning of the word relates to disruptors - energy weapons from Star Trek, used predominantly by the bad guys in the series.) Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement. Meanwhile, the whole business world - it's no longer just the startup culture - is regurgitating the lie that all market disruption is unquestionably good. That we should want more, bigger disruption. We believe that, and close our eyes to companies that make whole markets worse. Some negative consequences are unavoidable. Maybe Loon made telco execs less willing to build networks in rural areas - but I wouldn't want R&D to stop just because the very notion of an improvement to the status quo makes some incumbents nervous. But on the other end, you have "share economies" companies that use VC subsidies to outcompete incumbents on local markets - but then subsidies run out, and/or companies get bought, and we're being left in a worse place than before the "disruption" happened.
- sgt101 5y ago
  Some good observations there. The other disruption in the telcom markets in the west has been the action of government - the 3G auctions sucked cash away from the infrastructure developers and providers, numerous interventions in the market promoted as creating competition have in fact resulted in whiteboxers coming in and cherry picking markets and subscribers. Both of these things killed R&D in vendors and infrastructure providers, meaning that Chinese tech is years ahead and the infrastructure providers have virtually no idea about what they are buying.
  - mcny 5y ago
    » the 3G auctions sucked cash away from the infrastructure developers and providers I don't know anything about wireless spectrum and I have no solid plans to replace what we have but I really dislike the model of spectrum auctions. Does the technology really not exist so that telecoms don't pay (just checked Google) USD 81B and in return we the people can hold them more accountable and allow new players easier access? I mean anyone can buy a WiFi router but there are still rules about what you can do with WiFi. Why can't we do the same with 5G? At least the real 5G if we can't figure out long range T Mobile sorta kinda 5G?
okintheory 5y ago
"The price for doing an urban installation was padded; it was padded - padded with the money that stopped the fibres coming out of the pavement and getting ripped up." If you think this is true, then you haven't been to almost any EU country* -- urban connections are usually better always much cheaper than in the US. * Well, I can speak to ~8 of them, I didn't check the rest.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  which ones? I don't remember DE being all that great, but that may have been a Berlin thing.
imglorp 5y ago
Despite the Universal Service Fund paying for decades, some $8 billion a year to telcos (plus more coming from Pai's FCC work) yet rural broadband is still far from universal. Those CFO's had a huge head start and a golden subsidy still arriving daily. They still aren't touching rural.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Not defending the behavior of the local telephone companies, but 8 billion dollars isn’t anywhere near the scale of investment that rural broadband would require in the USA.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 5y ago
    8 billion dollars a year, for many years
drcode 5y ago
By that logic, nobody should ever attempt to ever disrupt anything- the existing interests could use it as an excuse to do bad things.
bigcorp-slave 5y ago
I really can’t understand this reasoning. Google is part of the reason broadband is bad in the US, because they tried to fix it by competing with the telecoms? This like saying, a person has a gun pointed at your head, it’s really your fault if they shoot you when you try to get away.
toast0 5y ago
The lessons of Google fiber are roughly a) a bunch of money is not sufficient to build out a residential network; you need a workable plan to get on poles b) the incumbent telephone companies are capable of rolling out fiber quickly when they choose to c) if you have underground utilities, you're probably never getting upgrades d) shallow trenching only works for very specific climates. If Google had partnered/acquired to get better pole access, and hadn't spent so much effort trying to line up 15 (or whatever) cities simultaneously, they might have built a lasting business. I'm kind of bitter about their ditching of OpenAccess / unbundled local loops, but it doesn't matter much since they barely deployed anywhere. That said, their business objective was really to increase user bandwidth, and that happened, even if it was mostly done by the incumbent carriers.

by sgt101 5y ago

dehrmann 5y ago

It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Starlink.

erhk 5y ago
0 plans to upgrade hardware in a modular fashion. Environmentalism?
URSpider94 5y ago
My guess is that Starlink is what made Loon throw in the towel. Who needs an emergency network made of balloons when there will be a 24/7 network spanning the globe made of satellites?

antiterra 5y ago

The shallow trenching of Google Fiber was meant to counteract telcos strong arming them out of pole attachment. If the regulatory problem was solved then the difficulties of shallow burial are no longer be a significant impediment.

sgt101 5y ago
Yup - but their PR was that it is better, cheaper and quicker than poles; which is total bollocks in urban builds. In rural settings I think that poles are bad due to those nasty tree things that fall through the cables, but mostly ducting is a better solution anyway.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  I asked my local company if they were bringing fiber in on existing poles or trenching, and they said they had to trench because fiber isnt flexible enough to go up on poles. Maybe it is specific to the ones we have- last year a bad storm with 60mph winds caused power lines to clack together and knock out power for several hours.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    uh, my fiber is literally just a cable coming down from the pole next to my house. fiber runs on poles all over, like oregon. https://www.michaelsinsight.com/2010/09/hunters-shooting-destroying-googles-fiber-connection-for-oregon-datacenter.html https://www.michaelsinsight.com/2010/09/hunters-shooting-des...
- jayd16 5y ago
  If you count how hard it is to get onto the poles in the US then its not bollocks.
- antiterra 5y ago
  The difficulties they had around pole attachment meant that shallow trenching was a last ditch (no pun intended) effort. If you attach to a pole in many jurisdictions you are at the mercy of foot-dragging by everyone else on the pole to make way. Google tried to change the rules but ran into significant and expensive opposition from those who were well entrenched (again, pun not intended.)

TeMPOraL 5y ago

That's what disruption is, isn't it? The ordinary meaning of the word is pretty negative - disrupting something means taking a process that's doing fine, and making it no longer work, or work worse than it was. It implies value and utility being lost. (Or, the other meaning of the word relates to disruptors - energy weapons from Star Trek, used predominantly by the bad guys in the series.) Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement. Meanwhile, the whole business world - it's no longer just the startup culture - is regurgitating the lie that all market disruption is unquestionably good. That we should want more, bigger disruption. We believe that, and close our eyes to companies that make whole markets worse. Some negative consequences are unavoidable. Maybe Loon made telco execs less willing to build networks in rural areas - but I wouldn't want R&D to stop just because the very notion of an improvement to the status quo makes some incumbents nervous. But on the other end, you have "share economies" companies that use VC subsidies to outcompete incumbents on local markets - but then subsidies run out, and/or companies get bought, and we're being left in a worse place than before the "disruption" happened.

sgt101 5y ago
Some good observations there. The other disruption in the telcom markets in the west has been the action of government - the 3G auctions sucked cash away from the infrastructure developers and providers, numerous interventions in the market promoted as creating competition have in fact resulted in whiteboxers coming in and cherry picking markets and subscribers. Both of these things killed R&D in vendors and infrastructure providers, meaning that Chinese tech is years ahead and the infrastructure providers have virtually no idea about what they are buying.
- mcny 5y ago
  » the 3G auctions sucked cash away from the infrastructure developers and providers I don't know anything about wireless spectrum and I have no solid plans to replace what we have but I really dislike the model of spectrum auctions. Does the technology really not exist so that telecoms don't pay (just checked Google) USD 81B and in return we the people can hold them more accountable and allow new players easier access? I mean anyone can buy a WiFi router but there are still rules about what you can do with WiFi. Why can't we do the same with 5G? At least the real 5G if we can't figure out long range T Mobile sorta kinda 5G?

okintheory 5y ago

"The price for doing an urban installation was padded; it was padded - padded with the money that stopped the fibres coming out of the pavement and getting ripped up." If you think this is true, then you haven't been to almost any EU country* -- urban connections are usually better always much cheaper than in the US. * Well, I can speak to ~8 of them, I didn't check the rest.

bobthepanda 5y ago
which ones? I don't remember DE being all that great, but that may have been a Berlin thing.

imglorp 5y ago

Despite the Universal Service Fund paying for decades, some $8 billion a year to telcos (plus more coming from Pai's FCC work) yet rural broadband is still far from universal. Those CFO's had a huge head start and a golden subsidy still arriving daily. They still aren't touching rural.

jeffbee 5y ago
Not defending the behavior of the local telephone companies, but 8 billion dollars isn’t anywhere near the scale of investment that rural broadband would require in the USA.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 5y ago
  8 billion dollars a year, for many years

drcode 5y ago

By that logic, nobody should ever attempt to ever disrupt anything- the existing interests could use it as an excuse to do bad things.

bigcorp-slave 5y ago

I really can’t understand this reasoning. Google is part of the reason broadband is bad in the US, because they tried to fix it by competing with the telecoms? This like saying, a person has a gun pointed at your head, it’s really your fault if they shoot you when you try to get away.

toast0 5y ago

The lessons of Google fiber are roughly a) a bunch of money is not sufficient to build out a residential network; you need a workable plan to get on poles b) the incumbent telephone companies are capable of rolling out fiber quickly when they choose to c) if you have underground utilities, you're probably never getting upgrades d) shallow trenching only works for very specific climates. If Google had partnered/acquired to get better pole access, and hadn't spent so much effort trying to line up 15 (or whatever) cities simultaneously, they might have built a lasting business. I'm kind of bitter about their ditching of OpenAccess / unbundled local loops, but it doesn't matter much since they barely deployed anywhere. That said, their business objective was really to increase user bandwidth, and that happened, even if it was mostly done by the incumbent carriers.