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?
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Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
141–150 of 190 posts
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, they laid the cables first, a very expensive undertaking.
Thanks to huge government subsidies that they squandered. They have promised time and time again to build better infra for hundreds of millions in tax payer dollars and we still have total crap. People who work for them are morally bankrupt.
Maybe unrestricted government handouts aren’t the best way to stimulate a market...
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#143The 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 have fiber that’s not from google at 1 gig/sec for $85/mo in Austin and had it in Phoenix as well. Is it possible google is just an incompetent ISP?
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any chance some form of wireless can increase competition?
The "wireless competing with broadband" thing is mostly ISPs trying to claim that the two services compete with each other in order to claim that they have more competitors than they do. Wireless is slower, has higher latency, is less reliable (interference/obstructions), etc. But you can put in one tower and service every customer for miles under those conditions, which is much cheaper than wiring every building. It…
> But then the cost benefit evaporates. You need a tower on every street corner which has to be wired with fiber.
That’s simply not true, and it becomes obvious why when you account for fan-out. There is a reason why independent ISPs often do MDU installs. Running fiber to one point where you can service 100 customers is vastly cheaper than running fiber to 100 houses.
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "wireless competing with broadband" thing is mostly ISPs trying to claim that the two services compete with each other in order to claim that they have more competitors than they do. Wireless is slower, has higher latency, is less reliable (interference/obstructions), etc. But you can put in one tower and service every customer for miles under those conditions, which is much cheaper than wiring every building. It…
> But then the cost benefit evaporates. You need a tower on every street corner which has to be wired with fiber. That’s simply not true, and it becomes obvious why when you account for fan-out. There is a reason why independent ISPs often do MDU installs. Running fiber to one point where you can service 100 customers is vastly cheaper than running fiber to 100 houses.
Which is why you reuse the existing wires into the home. Coax or even telephone wire can get quite impressive speeds (faster than gigabit) over short distances, which is all you need to get in from the box on the street corner.
You would only need to bring fiber into the home for the users that need the full performance of fiber. But then fiber is the only thing with that level of performance. You're not reasonably going to get better performance out of wireless than you can get out of coax.
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#146Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It has not been proven that you can get those speeds consistently. You typically need line of sight, no trees, even no rain for the really small bandwidths.
Literally, even walls can break the 5G connection. Hope you don't live in a home that has any of those.
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#148When I interned at AT&T a few years ago, I asked a manager I respected whether they were worried about Google Fiber coming in and eating their lunch. "No", he said. "We'll sue them for every mile of fiber they lay down". I can understand why they would make that play. It's kind of the only play they have. AT&T and Verizon innovate enough to remain...okay...but they're not exactly Google. The only way they would win i…
I worked with the fiber team and I have to say this assessment is super accurate. We fought for every fucking mile, but Google is soft. It just doesn't have the pain tolerance for this fight.
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#149Fiber is probably a dead end and will ultimately be replaced by 5G point-to-point transmission for the last mile.
I live in a small village in Hungary. I have fiber because of a Eastern-European provider called Digi. They are cheap and reliable. But I don't really thing well have 5G here in short time. I suppose huge cities will be covered first and based on the tech requirements and number of base stations it will take years. In the meantime I can have 1Gb speed which is more than enough for me for everything.
Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville
#150I wish they provided some details on why the San Antonio and Nashville small trials didn’t scale to Louisville. If the issues were really so glaring and obvious it seems those efforts should have revealed them. Edit: Looks like it didn’t actually work in those cities either. One wonders why the Louisville representatives missed this. https://www.wsmv.com/news/repaving-streets-reveal-google-fib...
Maybe it was so soon after those trials started that the problems hadn't shown up yet?