71–80 of 190 posts
The failure of Google Fiber paints a very bleak picture of the future of internet infrastructure, or even all communication in this country. If Google cannot compete with the status quo, who can?
They tried to lay fiber in 2in trenches instead of typical 6in trenches. Then left when it didn't work. This isn't Goliath beating David. This is David throwing a rock, missing, and going home.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this, and I think the general slogan of "broadband for all" could be a winning one for a politician (though they have to actually deliver.) My parents live in a rural area and the fastest internet they can get can barely stream Netflix on a good day, and only as long as no one else is using it. Many people have it much worse. Access to high-quality broadband seems like an issue that could span the rural/…
This isn't likely to span the divide, when you consider that urban folks probably won't like having to pay drastically higher taxes to cover not their cheap connection, but to cover the hundred thousand dollar project to trench fiber out to one dude's cabin fifty miles from civilization. And then to do that over and over for every isolated place in the country. There's a reason rural Internet sucks: It's expensive to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this, and I think the general slogan of "broadband for all" could be a winning one for a politician (though they have to actually deliver.) My parents live in a rural area and the fastest internet they can get can barely stream Netflix on a good day, and only as long as no one else is using it. Many people have it much worse. Access to high-quality broadband seems like an issue that could span the rural/…
This isn't likely to span the divide, when you consider that urban folks probably won't like having to pay drastically higher taxes to cover not their cheap connection, but to cover the hundred thousand dollar project to trench fiber out to one dude's cabin fifty miles from civilization. And then to do that over and over for every isolated place in the country. There's a reason rural Internet sucks: It's expensive to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this, and I think the general slogan of "broadband for all" could be a winning one for a politician (though they have to actually deliver.) My parents live in a rural area and the fastest internet they can get can barely stream Netflix on a good day, and only as long as no one else is using it. Many people have it much worse. Access to high-quality broadband seems like an issue that could span the rural/…
This isn't likely to span the divide, when you consider that urban folks probably won't like having to pay drastically higher taxes to cover not their cheap connection, but to cover the hundred thousand dollar project to trench fiber out to one dude's cabin fifty miles from civilization. And then to do that over and over for every isolated place in the country. There's a reason rural Internet sucks: It's expensive to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, this is almost exactly the kind of massive public project that the government is there for.
I agree with this, and I think the general slogan of "broadband for all" could be a winning one for a politician (though they have to actually deliver.) My parents live in a rural area and the fastest internet they can get can barely stream Netflix on a good day, and only as long as no one else is using it. Many people have it much worse. Access to high-quality broadband seems like an issue that could span the rural/…
The Trump campaign advocated for it in their 5G-nationalization scheme that the Trump White House for some reason wasn't aware of ([0] ?) and likely wouldn't work because of the nature of 5G penetration.
The problem is "broadband for all" is it's an issue that doesn't register as much as the culture war.
[0] https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/03/trump-administrati...
Unfortunately, not everyone is having the same experience. The perception here is that they are operating a shell of what the previous ambitions were. Service has been active in my area for close to 3 years now, but I have neighbors who have been on waitlists for months or years to get their house on the network, still being told to call back every few months.
It seems like any houses that missed the initial sign-up (now many years ago) are a crapshoot to ever receive service in a timely manner. Some streets that didn't receive enough sign-ups were never trenched, while adjacent streets were. Sometimes fiber is installed all the way to the house with months-long delays connecting to the network (splicing issues, conduit clog, etc). I've loved my service and it's been rock-solid, but there are certainly a lot of obstacles compared with traditional telecom providers.
The failure of Google Fiber paints a very bleak picture of the future of internet infrastructure, or even all communication in this country. If Google cannot compete with the status quo, who can?
I now work at a different fiber ISP. The industry is fine, it's just that Google sort of gave up. Even if they went full-on "we changed our mind" after I left, it's not the original team anymore. A lot of knowledge has disappeared into the void. You hear "invest in teams, not in products," around here a lot. That's not what Google did.
Fiber is probably a dead end and will ultimately be replaced by 5G point-to-point transmission for the last mile.
Downvote all you want but this is why Verizon stopped rolling fiber out and why Google Fiber fails in most places. It doesn't make financial sense to hard wire every house with fiber when you can get higher speeds (20 Gps) over the air with the next generation of wireless technology. It will be cheaper to deploy and will have far broader reach.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I understand your question correctly, they used 2" trenches because shallower === faster. However, they were so shallow--and the surfacing material so brittle--that the fibers ended up getting damaged too often. So they corrected with slightly deeper trenches afterwards.
Shallower === cheaper