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Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#31

Post by ProllyInfamous »

wtallis wrote: post #2

Well, shit. Google Fiber has been the least-bad residential ISP I've dealt with. They put the fear of Competition in all the other ISPs in town, giving us an immediate free speed boost years before Google Fiber actually made it to our neighborhood. But more than most Google projects, it's always been clear that they could at any time get bored with it and give up.

>the least-bad residential ISP I've dealt with

It's because lobbyists have prevented your local community from implementing anything close to what Chattanooga/EPB [0] has done with their city-owned fiber infrastructure. They literally cannot expand outside their power delivery area (by court order), and were only initially allowed to offer internet services because "it helped monitor their smartgrid technologies for power delivery." National ISPs have spent millions campaigning against EPB-like ISP expansion.

It's a racket.

[0] Electric Power Board ISP, is incredible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPB> 300mbps synchronous fiber, $58.99/month (1gbps is ~$75; 20gps is $250), four-port fiber/copper bridge (supplied) direct to your techshed. EVERY service address gets one power-drop and one 4-fiber service drop, whether or not you use internet(s).

I don't even know why other national ISPs advertise here — they specifically lock certain apartment complexes into EPB-exclusion contracts... and don't tell potential renters this during leasing/contracts. It's shitty.

It's a racket.

Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#34

Post by pas »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #14

any ideas why they are selling this?

someone wants to increase some number in a spreadsheet and this department doesn't have the usual infinite money characteristics that software has (or the compounding network effects that building a cloud platform has)

Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#35

Post by dcrazy »

We’ve gone back and forth between GFiber and AT&T in SF. Currently on AT&T because they do FTTP while GFiber is microwave backhaul. Once the drought years ended it was impossible to work from home on rainy days.

Sonic keeps promising they will be lighting up dark fiber in our part of the city but it keeps not happening. They’ll happily resell us the same AT&T service we’re already paying for, though.

Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#37

Post by caminante »

kyle_t wrote: post #29

Google Fiber has been aggressively upselling us to a higher plan the last 6-12 months, prior to that in my 6 years with them I don't remember a single upsell. Guess I know why now, trying to grease the numbers for the highest possible sale price. I'll be sure to take this as a warning sign in the future with other services if aggressive upselling starts happening unexpectedly.

Ha!

I checked recent comps and see 6-10x EV/EBITDA multiples. Allegedly Google had been funding with cash and losing money. Go figure...

Every $1 they got out of you with upsell, gave them $10 more for AI.

Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#38

Post by layla5alive »

Simulacra wrote: post #25

I remember when Google fiber was all the rage back around 2013, and I so desperately wanted it to come to my neighborhood, anything to offset the Comcast regime. Deeply disappointed that there were so many barriers preventing its expansion. From pole access to just straight up anti-competitive behavior from Comcast, fiber could've really been something great but the law just wouldn't allow it.

I'm getting so tired of seeing "the law doesn't allow" x thing that is good for citizens but bad for corporations. We are supposed to have a representative government by the people and for the people and by gosh what we actually have is so far from that! When will we collectively say "enough is enough!" And rewrite the laws to actually be by the people and for the people!?

Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#39

Post by scoofy »

dcrazy wrote: post #35

We’ve gone back and forth between GFiber and AT&T in SF. Currently on AT&T because they do FTTP while GFiber is microwave backhaul. Once the drought years ended it was impossible to work from home on rainy days. Sonic keeps promising they will be lighting up dark fiber in our part of the city but it keeps not happening. They’ll happily resell us the same AT&T service we’re already paying for, though.

I'm currently on Sonic in SF. It's a quality product even though it's technically more expensive than I could get from Comcast. It's just less bullshit dark patterns like constantly having to re-up your contract.

Re: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company

#40

Post by herewulf »

xingped wrote: post #22
trivialities777 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big thing keeping me from switching from Google Fi is how easy international roaming is. For every country I've been to, I've just had it automatically work within ten minutes of landing, at my regular price, without buying any addons

Except if you happen to travel for more than 45 days, in which case Google Fi will promptly tell you to get fucked and cut off your service without warning, advanced notice, or spelling out anywhere when you sign up. Not my idea of a carrier I can trust. I deleted my account and service with them to move to a carrier that I can trust and actually respects me as a customer.

We've exceeded that by months on multiple occasions and fully expected them to cut us off after reading similar dire warnings but they never have.

That said, we keep data usage rather low because we're on the metered plan.

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