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Advancing our amazing bet

googlefiberblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#51

Post by Inconel »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
Inconel wrote: post #14

I won't be surprised if this news is met with the usual sentiment that Google abandons everything that isn't immediately hugely successful, and while I often share that criticism of Google, I can't really fault them too much in this case. Getting a nationwide ISP up and running from scratch just seems like an almost impossible task. This is disappointing to me nonetheless. Can someone with knowledge of the industry e…

I worked briefly on the Fiber team when it was very young (basically from 2 weeks before to 2 weeks after launch - I was on loan from Search specifically so that they could hit their launch goals). The bottleneck when I was there were local government regulations, and in fact Kansas City was chosen because it had a unified city/county/utility regulatory authority that was very favorable to Google. To lay fiber to the…

It's very interesting that you say the biggest hurdle was regulatory capture, that is certainly depressing.

This leads me to another question that maybe you or someone else can answer, although I understand if you can't for various reasons. There seems to be a ton of very smart people working at Google and I can't imagine that they would go about trying to set up their own ISP without taking into account the huge pushback they would get from existing telcos, so I would imagine they had plans to deal with all of this. Did Google underestimate the amount of pushback they would receive, did they feel they could effectively lobby for changes which turned out to be unsuccessful? Or has something else changed in the proceeding years since Fiber originally rolled out that makes Google think it is no longer worth the fight?

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#52

Post by a-no-n »

So when will Google Fibre fix the embarrassing Starbucks WiFi at:

    247  reviews$$$$
    3605 El Camino Real
    Santa Clara, CA 95051
It's slower than communicating with smoke-signals in a hurricane, or boxing up each bit and sending via the post.

Alphabet/Google needs to work on finishing an actual business that they start and scaling faster. Search, email, maps are mobile are pretty good, but the million other areas lack business drive, passion, hustle and focus, competing in areas with much deeper pockets (ATT+DirecTV+Time Warner+..., Verizon+AOL+Yahoo+XO+..., Level3, ...)

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#53

Post by ryandrake »

sgnelson wrote: post #46

This may be one of the worst PR releases I have ever read. Others have already complained/translated/etc. so my comment is redundant. But I'm jumping on the bandwagon anyway. Because I want Google/Alphabet to know my displeasure at being treated as an ignorant child incapable of recognizing doublespeak when they see it. But frankly, as this is a surprise, yet one more half-assed Google project that gets killed off wi…

Leave it to PR department to take 50 words of bad news and obfuscate it into 450 positive-sounding words that barely deliver the real message.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#54

Post by interurban »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #5

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. "We're not yet profitable." > We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our busine…

It certainly does sound like a riff on the "our incredible journey" format.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#57

Post by cr0sh »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
Inconel wrote: post #14

I won't be surprised if this news is met with the usual sentiment that Google abandons everything that isn't immediately hugely successful, and while I often share that criticism of Google, I can't really fault them too much in this case. Getting a nationwide ISP up and running from scratch just seems like an almost impossible task. This is disappointing to me nonetheless. Can someone with knowledge of the industry e…

I worked briefly on the Fiber team when it was very young (basically from 2 weeks before to 2 weeks after launch - I was on loan from Search specifically so that they could hit their launch goals). The bottleneck when I was there were local government regulations, and in fact Kansas City was chosen because it had a unified city/county/utility regulatory authority that was very favorable to Google. To lay fiber to the…

> "Here's a box, a wire, and a map of other customers' locations. Plug into their jack, and if you can convince others to plug into yours, we'll give you a discount on your monthly bill based on how many you sign up."

How would that break any laws? It's essentially doing a commercial mesh-net of sorts, like many are already doing in Europe and elsewhere.

If instead, they gave you a box and a map - and that box supported wifi - then a mesh network or something would be feasible. Wired could be done by running the wires along the fence or trenching inside the property line (neighbor to neighbor - if your neighbor is willing).

Otherwise, point-to-point mesh wifi (or maybe even free-space optical - like the Ronja system).

Not sure where any of that would be illegal as long as no other carrier's TOS was infringed or such...

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#58

Post by Inconel »

nkw wrote: post #44
Inconel wrote: post #14

I won't be surprised if this news is met with the usual sentiment that Google abandons everything that isn't immediately hugely successful, and while I often share that criticism of Google, I can't really fault them too much in this case. Getting a nationwide ISP up and running from scratch just seems like an almost impossible task. This is disappointing to me nonetheless. Can someone with knowledge of the industry e…

Only speaking with knowledge of their first market (Kansas City), I would guess it is a combination of three things: * Buildout costs Google was using the same contracts as everyone else for the fiber infrastructure install. The guys running the trenchers and directional drills where the same guys that do it for AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, whomever. Google built at such a pace they certainly were not getting any deal…

Very interesting regarding CapEx and Google blindly writing checks. So it would appear that in addition to the regulatory hurdles Google also made some poor decisions in the rollout and signup process. Would Google have been better served targeting smaller cities that might have been more receptive to Fiber than the ones they ended up building in? Or is there not enough money to recoup costs in smaller cities?

Regarding utility pole access being handled at the Federal level, is there any lobbying campaign at the national level to rewrite the rules governing access to make the situation less skewed towards incumbent telcos? In my area here in LA county, it seems most utility poles are on public right-of-ways, I would think it would make a lot of sense to have those poles available for any company that wants to compete to offer services. Is there any meaningful reason this isn't done aside from cronyism on the part of the telcos?

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#59

Post by petra »

nkw wrote: post #44
Inconel wrote: post #14

I won't be surprised if this news is met with the usual sentiment that Google abandons everything that isn't immediately hugely successful, and while I often share that criticism of Google, I can't really fault them too much in this case. Getting a nationwide ISP up and running from scratch just seems like an almost impossible task. This is disappointing to me nonetheless. Can someone with knowledge of the industry e…

Only speaking with knowledge of their first market (Kansas City), I would guess it is a combination of three things: * Buildout costs Google was using the same contracts as everyone else for the fiber infrastructure install. The guys running the trenchers and directional drills where the same guys that do it for AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, whomever. Google built at such a pace they certainly were not getting any deal…

It seems that a lot big players are betting fixed wireless for the urban market(instead of the smaller rural market) . It's probably the main purpose of 5G. And there's some nice technical innovation(cohere promises to solve fading, tarana talks about working in urban non-line-of-sight) . And even LTE-A offers nice capacities in that context.

So why are you betting against it ?

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