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Advancing our amazing bet

googlefiberblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#71

Post by toast0 »

fowlerpower wrote: post #25
yabatopia wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just for new cities. Reading between the lines they're basically saying that they're shutting down and current assets are up for sale. I wonder who will pick up the pieces?

ISPs need to be disrupted so badly. This was actually one of the few initiatives that I thought would really force everyone to change.

ATT is rolling out new fiber (and running fiber they already had at decent speeds), Comcast has their 2G offering and a 1G doccis offering.

Speeds have changed, but the fundamental issue is still there: It's impractical to have robust competition in the last mile, and nobody wants to wholesale last mile and make competition an option. Google fiber's early press releases included it, but stopped before they started building. The 1996 telecom act included it, but the FCC abandoned it in the last decade.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#73

Post by cobookman »

olegkikin wrote: post #69
cobookman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its really the same cost. the actual fiber itself is cheap compared to the costs of laying it.

Yes, that's what I said. But you can hook up 5 times the customers at that same cost.

How do you hook those 5 customers up? Are you doing fiber to the curb. If so then you might as well give them each 1gbps as fiber is cheap.

Now if you do what webpass did in sf, you'd avoid the cost of laying fiber to those 5 customers, but still provide them internet connections albeit at a lower speed.

I think google found out, why would you lay fiber to the home. And is re-thinking their plans.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#74

Post by nixos »

Again Google is shooting themselves in the foot.

Google Fiber, like Android, is a moonshot to keep their line of business alive. Failure doesn't mean that Google doesn't profit off a new line of business. Failure means that Google can be shut down.

Google lives off open internet. Their profit is primarily off:

1. Android 2. Search 3. AdSense, AdWords.

A closed internet means that 2 out of 3 is dead. All they have in Android.

If AT&T and Cable monopolize the internet (which they are close to doing) without strong net-neutrality laws, they can (and will) slowly migrate to the internet being limited to the top 100 sites (curated by them).

In such an internet, search and AdWords/AdSense is useless.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#75

Post by stomato »

I was a big supporter, however now I wonder whether the cities that they've started rolling out to will get half-assed because their budgets are cut or morale has dropped. It's freaking Google- I don't understand how they didn't do the due diligence ahead of time to prepare budget for costs adequately.

But, if they ever come, I'll probably buy in, because I can't believe that AT&T is saying things like this- do they actually understand that PR 101 is you don't gloat?: http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/fcc/broadband-investmentnot-f...

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#77

Post by nostrademons »

Inconel wrote: post #58
nkw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Regard…

I'm suspect of the CapEx arguments. The whole reason for the "fiber rally" procedure, and for offering free 5 MB/s Internet, was to get every house on the block to sign up. The marginal cost of a contractor going next door and wiring their house up is significantly less once they're already out there than if the contractor has to make a trip out to each home; it wouldn't surprise me if Google's CapEx costs were almost an order of magnitude less than Verizon or ComCast. (How much time does the cable guy actually spend installing cable, vs. driving to the place, making sure he got the right house, and context-switching between tasks?)

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#78

Post by toast0 »

olegkikin wrote: post #69
cobookman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its really the same cost. the actual fiber itself is cheap compared to the costs of laying it.

Yes, that's what I said. But you can hook up 5 times the customers at that same cost.

I'm sure 100 mbps (or whatever) fiber has cheaper equipment on both sides, so if you ran that instead of 1g, you'd be spend the same money and build out to more customers, but I would be shocked if that was five times the customers. Most of the time, expense and headache is spent in getting sites for your equipment, surveying and planning the runs, and getting access to run the fiber near the homes (poles or underground). Running the drops to the homes is also time consuming.

You might as well spend a bit more on equipment and run 1G, so you you're competitive with what the incumbents will upgrade to next.

Edit to add: The bandwidth out to the internet from the wherever the access goes to really isn't a major cost factor. Access from a decent exchange point isn't that expensive, and you can oversubscribe by a significant factor.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#79

Post by [deleted] »

ajmurmann wrote: post #67

There is no good money in delivering bits. That's why AT&T wants to buy Time Warner and that's why Google Fiber is shutting down. The only way to make money is price gauging in areas where there is a competitive market. There is really no way to stand out from the competition other than a better price per bit. Obviously there isn't much money in that. There also is really no way to make your customer actively happy o…

[deleted]

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#80

Post by paulsutter »

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…

This is why I read the comments first, just avoided another painful article.

Do people who communicate in spin-speak start to think that way on the inside too?

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