GFiber and Astound Broadband To Join Forces (lightreading.com) 16
GFiber (a.k.a. Google Fiber) and Astound Broadband announced that they plan to merge into a deal backed by infrastructure investor Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. The resulting company will be majority owned by Stonepeak, with Alphabet becoming a "significant minority shareholder." Light Reading reports: Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners teamed with Patriot Media to acquire Astound in November 2020 for $8.1 billion. Stonepeak is Astound's largest investor. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The combined business will be led by the existing GFiber executive team. GFiber is currently led by CEO Dinni Jain. Jain, a former Time Warner Cable and Insight Communications exec, took the helm of what was then called Google Fiber in 2018.
"This agreement advances GFiber's mission of redefining internet connectivity and represents a major step toward its goal of operational and financial independence," the companies said. "GFiber will have the external capital and strategic focus needed to accelerate its next phase of growth, expanding its customer-first approach and pioneering fiber technology across the country." GFiber's combination with Astound represents "a strategic opportunity to scale our customer-focused approach to connect more households to a truly different type of internet service," Jain said in a statement.
"This agreement advances GFiber's mission of redefining internet connectivity and represents a major step toward its goal of operational and financial independence," the companies said. "GFiber will have the external capital and strategic focus needed to accelerate its next phase of growth, expanding its customer-first approach and pioneering fiber technology across the country." GFiber's combination with Astound represents "a strategic opportunity to scale our customer-focused approach to connect more households to a truly different type of internet service," Jain said in a statement.
Google Exits Yet Another Project (Score:4, Informative)
I'm quite disappointed with the expansion of GFiber. When Google first launched it, I really thought that they were going to disrupt the ISP business and spread high speed internet across the country. But, after a small handful of successes, their expansion and build out pace seems to have collapsed to nothing.
15 Years on Google Fiber -- a tiny niche player in the fiber and ISP space -- is being sold off to private equity. The end.
It saddens me. Especially when I look at my limited few options of mega-corp ISPs and their low speeds at stupid high prices.
Re: Google Exits Yet Another Project (Score:2)
Re: Google Exits Yet Another Project (Score:1)
As a capitalist, I think this is a win. We do not deserve nice things unless our masters (praise them!) can get a big windfall from them. So-called progress is for liberals and socialists; we want profit for the wealthy and if that comes from a payoff instead of infrastructure, thatâ(TM)s even better.
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I don't think that Google really had any real interest in becoming a major ISP. It just wanted to shame the telcos and cable companies who were offering 20Mbps "broadband" service at the time with a gigabit service option in order to force them to upgrade their offerings to meet international standards.
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There was a little of that, but I think they really wanted to be part of the industry and figured that their effectively unlimited bank account would make that relatively easy. Almost out of the gate, GFiber was complaining about the amounts of red tape that incumbents were imposing, ranging from high fees to use existing poles to to arguments over easements to lawsuits over trivial and even frivolous claims. They lobbied city, county, state, and federal governments to do everything they could to block Goog
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They've been expanding here in utah.
I think their growth is reasonably fast, just not everywhere. But I think the most is its about forcing ISP to not be dumbasses. As google was arriving they cleaned up a lot, and as they landed, comcast still cleaned up and is almost competitive.
Not going back.
Bad News! (Score:2)
Great timing. I just had my install a month ago (Score:2)
That's a bummer. I've been very impressed with Google Fiber so far. We got it installed at my office and my house within a week of each other. Running Wireguard, from my work desktop to my home offsite backup server pings average 1.5 - 2.5ms. It's insane.
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That's amazing. I didn't know that existed.
2gbps and 8gbps. Both overkill for what is needed...
so now google Fiber will call copper to home Fiber (Score:2)
so now google Fiber will call copper to home Fiber? when it's really fiber to the node?
Very disappointed (Score:2)
Private equity vampires enshittify everything (Score:2)
Probably not a benefit to Astound Customers (Score:2)
I'm on a cable ISP that got absorbed by Astound a few years ago.
I'd like to think that this merger would mean they'd finally build out my area with fiber. But that's probably unlikely to happen. More likely, this will just cause prices to go up even more.
this reminds me of the ATi ArtFX merger (Score:2)
At the end of the acquisition, and even though ATi was the bigger company, it was the ArtFX team xalling the shots post merger
This seems like an acqu-hireM the Astound board wanting a change of leadership team, while also increasing footprint and subscriber count...
Astound has been enshittifying for years (Score:3)
Astound + GFiber + Investment Partners will do nothing for existing homes; they're ALL about large apartment complexes and large developer projects -- it's the only way they'll monopolize their income streams regardless of local regulations that stipulate openness to ISP competition.
Of course, with AT&T acquiring Quantum Fiber, lord knows what direction the ISP landscape is going... and the anti-municipal fiber lobbying is forcing the corruption scheme to just keep on going...