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The Internet Communications

Google Fiber Plans 5-State Growth Spurt, Biggest Since 2015 (reuters.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Google Fiber plans to bring its high-speed internet service to multiple cities in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska and Nevada over the next several years in its first big expansion since it spun out as an independent Alphabet unit in 2015. From a report: In his first media interview since becoming chief executive of Google Fiber in February 2018, Dinni Jain told Reuters on Wednesday that his team was finally prepared to "add a little bit more build velocity" after over four years of sharpening operations. The anticipated expansion to 22 metro areas across the United States from 17 today includes previously announced projects to launch in Mesa, Arizona and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The choices were based the company's findings of where speeds lag. "There was an impression 10 years ago that Google Fiber was trying to build the entire country," Jain said. "What we are gesturing here is, 'No, we are not trying to build the entire country.'"
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Google Fiber Plans 5-State Growth Spurt, Biggest Since 2015 More

Google Fiber Plans 5-State Growth Spurt, Biggest Since 2015

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  • Understatement ... (Score:4)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @02:30PM (#62778082) Journal

    "There was an impression 10 years ago that Google Fiber was trying to build the entire country," Jain said. "What we are gesturing here is, 'No, we are not trying to build the entire country.'"

    I think we were pretty clear Google wasn't after nation-wide expansion for a LONG time now. I'm glad they're doing something here, but in the grand scheme, I find the whole thing a huge disappointment. I mean, not every company is big enough to undertake as big and costly a project as a high speed fiber roll-out that sells bandwidth to people at a fair price. Google has burnt through so much money hiring teams for projects they just kill off, etc. This could have been a worthwhile project to focus on instead of dozens of other not-so-useful experiments.

    • Re:Understatement ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WankerWeasel ( 875277 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @02:41PM (#62778104)
      They're only going to go into places that are underserved with current options. They don't want to fight Comcast and other big providers. It costs a TON of money to build out, so they need to be able to capture a large market share. They can't do that in a place that Comcast already covers because despite tech nerds wanting it, the majority of existing cable modem users aren't going to switch. Unless they can get capture a large percentage of the market, it's not financially worth it to them. There's a reason we don't see other companies pushing similar. It's simply not profitable in a way that's worth the investment to do so when the potential market is too small.

      • despite tech nerds wanting it, the majority of existing cable modem users aren't going to switch.

        Unfortunately, true. I have 200Mbps -- usually only get 150Mbps -- And don't even notice. Everything works fine and its fast enough for what I do. I guess I'm just not as much of a tech nerd as I used to be.

        • tech nerds can calculate their needs and know when something is orders of magnitude better than those needs
        • Too many here assume their own desires (crazy high speeds) are what everyone wants. And too many assume everyone hates Comcast. It's much like cellphone providers. The reality is that the vast majority of users don't hate their service. It works fine and people are lazy and unlikely to bother to switch. The extra speed and couple dollars savings isn't going to be enough to get most to bother with the hassle of having to switch out equipment and deal with an install.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
            You have a point, but this us 2022, a few hundred megabits is nit crazy fast any more, with sw updates regularly being several GB (not to mention initial downloads). And the continuing trend tf putting everything in "the cloud" allso increases data transfer needs. Multiply all this with several people in a household and those megabits soon shrink. If you would have said 500+ Mbps i wouldsay that would be ample even for 5 years of growth in bandwidth usage.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          Well that's a consistent under delivery of 25%, I would call it significant, if competition had worked in your area that would have meat a consumer less ( or many costumers if your issue isn't unique). I wish SLAs where a thing on non business connections, that would actually incentivise isps to actually deliver what they sell. But i know ( at list fir the us) this is a pipe dream

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )
        its a shit show. They got kicked out of Louisville. they cut huge grooves in the road and filled it back in with shitty spray foam. When winter came it really fucked up things with the salt and brine. If you want your fiber network built on a foundation of bailing wire and duct tape, by all means, go with Google.

      • Google Fiber came to my town last year. We hated Comcast and dumped them. Google Fiber has had no outages so far. We've had no problem with speeds and the upload speed means I can access my home server like it's in the next room. Cost is $70/month. For about 10 years I paid more than that for DSL that only was 0.7Mbps up and 7Mbps down.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )

        There are PLENTY of under-served places in America. Google doesn't have to fight the big providers to expand into literally hundreds or even thousands of such areas, if that was really the goal.

        When I lived in Western Maryland in the outer "greater DC metro area", there were a number of communities that couldn't get anything "broadband" but microwave relay from a local ISP, based on ability to get a signal if you put their box on your roof.

        The reality is, yeah - it's hugely expensive to roll out high speed

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Fiber? Google can't be trusted or depended on for anything.

      October 19, 2017 - "Google Fiber is now in Louisville thanks to new fiber deployment strategy"

      https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]

      Less than 2 years later:
      April 16, 2019 - "Google Fiber exits Louisville, pays city $3.8M to clean up the mess it left"

      https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]

    • Google doesn't really want to roll out fiber. It was more a way to pressure the telecoms to start doing it or be left behind. Once the telecoms ramped up, Google stepped back. Google has a vested interest in making sure that people's home Internet connections are as fast as possible.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Google is too big and has too much money and suffers from Billionaire Corporate ADD. They start something, and if it doesn't immediately generate a gazillion dollars they shut it down and move on to something else.

        Lather
        Rinse
        Repeat

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by srwood ( 99488 )

        Exactly, they rolled out Google Fiber in Austin. AT&T immediately offered Gigabit service and Google's expansion has been glacially slow

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Ten years ago they claimed they were going to build Arizona. I even went so far as to buy a proper router that could handle their speeds, only for it to go nowhere.

      So pardon me if I take this with some skepticism. Let's see them actually go through the permitting process, place the fiber in the ground, and get the GPON NIDs installed onto subscribers' residences.

      • Afaik they went through the process for Tempe, and cox filed a lawsuit against the city to delay it while they rolled out their own fiber in the area. Immediately after Google withdrew, Cox halted all brownfield fiber expansion.

  • It would sure be nice if they had some focus on expansion on the markets they're already in. There are ample areas in their existing markets they don't reach, and it feels as if they don't care to reach.

  • and his evil minions. This is mostly down to a ton of new subsidies. I don't really like how we pay corporations to build infrastructure that they own instead of building it ourselves and just, you know, owning it ourselves. But that's a heck of a lot better than just not having it in the first place.

  • Light it up! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by haggie ( 957598 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @03:04PM (#62778160)

    Google Fiber was run thru my front yard two years ago. Not a word from Google about lighting it up.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ejr ( 2998 )

      Yup. I have a bunch of GFBR holes in the ground nearby. And I had to call and complain to get them to clean the graffiti off their hut.

  • I'll wager that Google gets paid to run fiber and there is no requirement for them to light it up.

  • AT&T is setting the woods on fire here in our county. They are doing it on the cheap by utilizing a contractor(s) who doesn't have to pull permits by hand-digging rectangular holes about every 20 feet. They use a generator and a small drill that digs from hole to hole. Spectrum with their 200ish down / 12 up, is losing customers hand over fist.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Burdell ( 228580 )

      Putting anything in the ground in the right-of-way requires permits. That's a typical way to install residential buried fiber.

      AT&T here was dumb. After the city-owned utility ran fiber down the street, and Google Fiber ran in to the houses and offered gig service for $70/month with no contract/fees/taxes/etc., AT&T came along and ran their fiber too. Cut the utility fiber in some places (sure it was an accident) and generally made more of a mess of people's yards. Then their service offer was $90/mo

  • More communities should do it like Huntsville, AL (Score:3)

    by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @05:59PM (#62778484)

    Our utility company (a not-for-profit owned by the city) was interested in smart meters and monitoring and such, and took the opportunity to build out a fiber network to every address in the city, with the intent to offer service on it to any company that wanted. They got Google Fiber as the initial partner, to be available at every address.

    So far, I don't think anybody else is doing anything city-wide, but I know there are business services on it in some areas from other providers.

    This IMHO is the ideal combination - have a municipal-owned last-mile to the curb, handling the hardest and most expensive to build, and also so you don't have yahoos digging up every yard in town regularly, but do NOT have the government involved in actually selling Internet services. Let anyone that wants to follow the rules (rules being technical for putting equipment in the huts) light up strands and run it to the house. If Google decides to bail on it, I'm sure someone else would jump in to fill the gap.

    It's been very reliable for the 4 years I've had it. I have the 1gig service (up and down), with no caps and no contract, and I really get my 1gig. Steam games come down at 920+ megabits per second (Xbox games top out around 550 Mbps), and I can upload VM images at that speed too. I use my own router (no lock-in to some crappy and/or unmanageable CPE) with no problem. If you like Google cloud storage (useful for encrypted backups), 1TB of space is included.

  • What does it mean to "ground" fiberoptic cable in the following sentence from the article?

    Fiber had to pare its hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses, which had gone toward construction, experimenting with new ways to ground fiberoptic cables and subsidizing some service.

    Do they mean to "grind" (like grind and polish) the cable? Or "ground" as in electrical ground? And if the second one, why does a fiberoptic cable need an electrical ground, at either end?

    • Fiber is usually installed underground in either conduit or armor-jacketed cables. Having a metallic jacket many blocks long requires grounding the jacket for safety reasons. I guess Google was experimenting with quicker/cheaper/easier ways to do it and still meet code requirements.

      https://www.cablinginstall.com... [cablinginstall.com]

  • This is the 3rd Fiber provider to say Colorado springs is getting fiber Internet: MetroNet, Colorado Springs Utilities, and now Google. BIWISI

    Why?

    Will this mean Centurylink finally abandons (V)DSL? Comcast can wither on the vine? Priced less than $50 for 1 Gig asymmetrical? Yet Boulder with a higher population density is still stuck with no other options.

    More importantly, who wants every single packet snooped and analyzed for the great AdSense cloud?

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