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Communications Television

Google Fiber Kills Its Traditional TV Service For New Customers (venturebeat.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the google-graveyard dept.
Google Fiber, the division of Google parent company Alphabet that provides fiber-to-the-premises service in the U.S., today announced that it will no longer offer traditional TV bundles with news, sports, premium, and local broadcast channels. From a report: Current subscribers to Fiber plans that include TV won't see their existing service modified or changed, but new customers won't have the option of signing up for cable content going forward. "As we return our focus to where we started -- as a gigabit Internet company -- we're also ready to challenge the status quo, to finally come right out and say it: customers today just don't need traditional TV," wrote Fiber in a blog post. "The best TV is already online. And we want to help you watch it, in the ways that work best for your budget and your own viewing preferences."
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Google Fiber Kills Its Traditional TV Service For New Customers More

Google Fiber Kills Its Traditional TV Service For New Customers

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  • Lot's of small cable systems are dropping TV

  • I've lost count of how long I've been waiting in North Austin for G Fiber to make its way to my territory. In that time, TW/Spectrum has vastly improved speeds and services. This reads as a de-facto price increase, as you can now just add YouTube TV for the low-low price of $19.95 or whatever they're charging per month. I'd say it's a cash grab, except they don't have a big enough install area for there to be any cash to grab. AT&T and the cable companies have won this battle.

    • Yes, the lines just got cut into the street in front of my house just a week ago. Original offer from Google Fiber was streaming TV with a DVR-like service able to store 2TB of content in their cloud. Was marginally attractive compared to our current provider, Grande Communications. With them keeping the same pricing, but dropping the content, it's a hard pass for us on Google Fiber.

    • I've lost count of how long I've been waiting in North Austin for G Fiber to make its way to my territory. In that time, TW/Spectrum has vastly improved speeds and services. This reads as a de-facto price increase, as you can now just add YouTube TV for the low-low price of $19.95 or whatever they're charging per month. I'd say it's a cash grab, except they don't have a big enough install area for there to be any cash to grab. AT&T and the cable companies have won this battle.

      I was curious and checked some of the pricing.. They want 49.99 a month. I think I will stick with Sling at less for the most.

    • Don't know where you live in N Austin, but if it was NW Austin, Google was never coming. It is limestone/underground utilites. Trenching is expensive in this part of town. A friend up the hill from me kept hoping and I kept saying never gonna happen. I have put in a fence, holes required a hydraulic jack hammer. I put in a pool, hydraulic jack hammer attached to the backhoe, and took a month of constant pounding. Church across from me is doing landscaping. Big bertha backhoe with various attachments to cut

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Megane ( 129182 )

        Back around 10 years or so ago, Time Warner buried conduit in my neighborhood up in the Anderson Mill area. They dug a pit in every other backyard on one side (not my side) and ran a hammer mole through between the pits. Then they pushed conduit behind it. It wasn't small conduit either, they used the bottom half of a soda can on the end of the conduit pipe when pushing it through. FWIW it seemed like there was at least 2 feet of dirt there, I dug an 18" or so hole for fence posts and never hit limestone. B

        • Just a reminder in case you aren't aware: We don't live in a perfect world.

          While an empty conduit is the perfect sell, it is nearly as expensive as fiber installed in a conduit (iirc, about 70% as much compared to conduit + fiber pulled), with the obvious drawback of no fiber. I've worked with my city on speeding up fiber rollout and one of the options we explored with just doing these 2" conduits and then letting private companies pull through them for cheap.

          Turns out, when you just lay empty conduit, goin

          • And just to toot my own horn, UTOPIA is the best internet I've ever paid for. I will not purchase a house outside its footprint, ever.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Fibre optic cable is narrow and requires no falls, the same depth trench all the way. Easiest way in stone, two parallel large diameter diamond saws, to cut to the right depth and then simply fracture the rock and lift it out. Drop some aggregate in the trench for a smooth surface and lay down the cable, backfill with aggregate and compact and you are down, really quite fast.

        Pool in rock, easy, don't be an arsehole to your neighbours for a month, simply have a concrete pool above ground with build up around

        • My yard is sloped. The shallow end is flush with the ground and the deep end is 6' above ground at the back of the yard. The design incorporated the slope of the yard to minimize hammering. And if I did have a flat yard, no way would I (or the HOA I am in) approve a blob that sticks 6 or 8' above the yard. And as to your first point, you keep forgetting about the existing utilities down there. The assisted living facility near me is adding I think fiber up to their building. It took 1 day to mark, and now

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        So how do you get your old landline phone service? And electricity. Poles?

        There is a good case for allowing other utilities to use those poles, namely that you only want so many poles in an area for aesthetic and practical reasons. In Japan they were unbundled and now everyone has fibre.

        • The original utilities are all underground. That is part of the problem. Once laid down, trenchers now have to avoid the existing lines, (gas, juice, telco, cable, water, sewer) so even more expensive. When I had the fence put in, of course they came out to mark everything. The marking people still missed a pipe which was unused. If it had been live, anything from an explosion to waterspout could have happened when the jackhammer hit it. This is all part of the expense of trenching.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      North Austin? I used to live up by 183 and 620, then I moved back to San Antonio. At this rate I could get GF sooner than I would have in Austin, but there's been an effective blackout of build-out progress here for at least a year. Anyhow, no TV service is fine with me, I have an antenna in an attic of a 2-story house (gets everything but KCWX) going into a MythTV box. If this helps them focus on building plant, that's great.

    • Re:Goodbye Google Fiber (Score:4, Informative)

      by k0nane ( 1132495 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @10:28PM (#59691856)
      It isn't a price increase. Google's support docs stated [googleusercontent.com] that Fiber TV service was $105, on top of your internet rate. YouTube TV is $49.99/month [youtube.com].
  • They are right about this. In 20 years TV will be like printed news today.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You mean 'sorely missed'?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        I think hviezda14 means dead/ dying, and yes sorely missed by a few but not by most ( esp not here :) )

  • Then DO IT (Score:3)

    by nnet ( 20306 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @06:03PM (#59691118) Journal

    ...And we want to help you watch it, in the ways that work best for your budget and your own viewing preferences.

    Then provide my area with service. I'd sign up in a NY minute.

  • Newsworthy only if Google did not kill something (Score:5, Funny)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @06:04PM (#59691120)
    Google shutting down service X or removing feature Y is the everyday normal. News articles should only be posted when a Google product reaches its 5th or 10th anniversary.

  • While not everybody wants a traditional cable bundle, for some people the offerings on services like DirecTV Now and Hulu are just a bit too "skinny". If they really wanted to compete with the likes of the big cable companies, I don't see how you can omit traditional cable bundles, especially since the cable companies typically make their combo packages (Internet+TV) more attractive price-wise than buying the services from two different providers.

    If Google Fiber persists in this policy, they're either plann

    • After what seemed like a prolong layoff of expansion, in the last couple month they have been installing new fiber lines in Salt Lake City.

    • since the cable companies typically make their combo packages (Internet+TV) more attractive price-wise than buying the services from two different providers.

      The cable companies do make their bundles more attractive .... but then they tack on their bullshit fees ("local broadcast fee", "local sports fee", etc.) and, when you actually get the bill, it's too late. By then, they may have conned you into a 2 year deal.

      In any sane country, a contract with a 2 year term under which one side doesn't disclose the fu

    • I think it's more a vicious circle of Google being unable to get a good price for licensing the content owing to an extremely low customer base. I suppose Big Cable "won" in holding off a challenge to their declinging Bundle, but it was a pretty feeble challenge. Whether it makes sense for Google to be in a pipes business is an open question, but compared to their "moonshots" it's a pretty grubby arena to be playing in. The bigger battle unfolding is how "Big Content" will recover the revenue being lost

  • I guess they just want people to sign up for Youtube TV instead. The only reason not to come right out and say it, must be they want the current sucker paying the current service to continue paying for it as long as possible.

  • Media company ownership and licensing has gone CRAZY over the past few years or so.

    Just like with Youtube, the advert dollars have been swimming around and downward, threatening bottom lines, and now everyone's scrambling to cross-negotiate with streaming providers to get the most they can between them for exclusivity.

    I can only imagine what it's like for a TV service provider trying to select individual channels for a bundle.

    That, and living without cable for several years now - it just seems stupid to wan

    • Media company ownership and licensing has gone CRAZY over the past few years or so.

      True dat. Things keep going until they can't and I think we're seeing the traditional "pipe and content bundle" coming apart. It's quite clear that the pipe and the content can be provided by separate organizations.

      Watching the market evolve may be more entertaining than most of the shows. Well, most of the shows produced pre-2000. Today anyone can find more fabulous shows than you can find time to watch. Even better, my fabulous shows don't have to be (and probably aren't) your fabulous shows.

      I'm really cu

  • Google Fiber sure does like making statements about how bold and modern it is everytime it shrinks its service, which is the only thing it's ever done or seemingly ever will do. It's just another abandoned Google pet, being kept on a drip feed since it's bringing in a small amount of actual money.

    • People don't grasp that Google became a significantly different company once Ruth Prorat/Sundar Pichai took over the management of Google (once Brin/Page's proxy Schmidt left). It stopped being a company of "moon shots", of creating non-existent markets, and started being a company willing "to be evil" to show a healthy quarterly profit statement.

      Google Fiber was a company looking to create a non-existent market (one where gigabit ethernet service could be sold to residential subscribers). Their entire ma

  • gives an ad company can take away again...
    An experiment to pass on more ads can be changed back to other networks that support the flow of their ads...

  • Makes sense (Score:3)

    by phalse phace ( 454635 ) on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @08:21PM (#59691538)

    new customers won't have the option of signing up for cable content going forward.

    How many new broadband subscribers bundle the service with tv content? There are more people cutting the cord (for cable tv) than signing up.

    Comcast lost 149,000 video subscribers [fiercevideo.com] during their most recent quarter, bringing their full-year 2019 total to 733,000 losses. And they warned to expect even greater losses for 2020.

    Meanwhile, AT&T lost 1.16 million video subscribers [fiercevideo.com] during their recent quarter. Total losses for 2019? 4.1 million.

    Over at Charter, they lost 105,000 video subscribers [fiercevideo.com] which is a pretty big jump from the 22,000 they lost during the same quarter a year ago.

    • I wonder how many remained with them as an ISP, potentially getting a data cap plus losing the bundle discount? The cable company’s bottom line may take a smaller hit than revenues.
    • While it's true that traditional cable TV is a relatively trailing-edge business that's been losing customers for some time, it's still a pretty big business. Not offering some equivalent is leaving money on the table, which doesn't make sense if Google wants to remain in the residential space.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Over at Charter, they lost 105,000 video subscribers [fiercevideo.com] which is a pretty big jump from the 22,000 they lost during the same quarter a year ago.

      Last week, Charter sent me an offer for free TV service for a year. Even at that price, I was not interested.

  • Current subscribers to Fiber plans that include TV won't see their existing service modified or changed, Yet

  • "we're also ready to challenge the status quo, to finally come right out and say it: customers today just don't need traditional TV"

    It's been true for awhile. The cable industry has been running on inertia for years. It's time for the TV Tray generation to realize they don't need cable TV anymore.

    • The problem is that if you like some of the less popular channels (which are usually not included in the "skinny bundles" from the likes of Hulu and DirecTV Now), you are currently out of luck. Some of these even still explicitly target cable plans (or satellite, its moral equivalent) rather than TV-over-Internet providers.

      A perfect example of what I'm talking about is Hallmark, which does not appear to be available at all on Hulu and Sling, and while the main Hallmark channel is available on DirecTV Now, H

      • The problem is that if you like some of the less popular channels (which are usually not included in the "skinny bundles" from the likes of Hulu and DirecTV Now), you are currently out of luck. Some of these even still explicitly target cable plans (or satellite, its moral equivalent) rather than TV-over-Internet providers.

        A perfect example of what I'm talking about is Hallmark, which does not appear to be available at all on Hulu and Sling, and while the main Hallmark channel is available on DirecTV Now, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is not. Personally I don't care, but I'm married to someone who cares very much, and that missing channel alone is why we didn't ditch Spectrum in favor of DirecTV Now.

        In the long run I don't think the business model of such channels will continue to work as more and more people cut the cable cord, but for now the market is still in a rather awkward place.

        That's an issue, but it needs to be solved on the head end. As Hallmark loses customers, one would assume that they'll either (a) go out of business (always a possibility) or (b) find a different way to deliver content, for instance, cutting a deal with Hulu or creating their own streaming service.

        In the meantime, your wife might be out of luck for a space of time.

        I know what you're going through. I don't watch TV much but my wife watches pretty much everything. When I stopped paying for cable TV, she ne

  • I've currently got Google Fiber and their TV service, and both are great. The TV service, in particular, is better than what I had with Time Warner Cable, er, Spectrum previously.

    I would be sad to see them go.

  • I would like to know where the elusive Google Fiber lives. I live in the Portland, OR metro area which is a tech hot spot so you would expect it to be high on the list, but they just say "we are exploring the possibility of bringing Google Fiber to this city" and have said that since the beginning. I checked some random addresses in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle and all said "service not available in this area". Meanwhile, the incumbent providers have upgraded their networks and even though I li

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