Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 190 posts

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#61

Post by Balvarez »

yingw787 wrote: post #37
yingw787 wrote: post #25

When 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 do think the significance of this is cities realizing there is no Disney prince riding in on a white horse to save them, and taking their own futures into their own hands. I'm hoping there's enough "anchor cities/regions", like Nashville/RTP/Kansas City, that have contingency plans and referendums ready for an infrastructure push at the local level if Fiber pulls out there, to prevent all white-collar talent from d…

Sadly I don't see Nashville creating a municipal ISP. Google fiber has been such a disappointment here. It's only available to a very small area.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#62

Post by newnewpdro »

paxys wrote: post #6

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?

At this point it's more noteworthy for Google to not abandon any project.

This is indicative of nothing more than Google behaving consistently.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#63

Post by peteradio »

duxup wrote: post #20
neom wrote: post #18

Grace Simrall the CTO over there is no n00b. They're a customer of ours and they're probably one of the most advanced cities we work with in terms of thinking about a "city stack". Google Fiber didn't abandon them, as far as I can tell they just have better plans that don't include being strong armed by google.

>that don't include being strong armed by google. What does that mean exactly? I would think getting more competition would be welcome.

Perhaps their terms were outrageous. That's not the kind of competition you'd want.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#64

Post by mjevans »

elliotec wrote: post #55
vb6lives wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m in Salt Lake City and they have the fiber coming to my house strung up on telephone poles, not sure what this “inches under ground” thing means or why it matters. Google fiber has been fantastic for us since day one and it’s sad they aren’t moving forward with it.

The use of trenches, micro of otherwise, is for running in locations that either don't have the poles or for which (most of the US) the poles aren't actually owned by the municipality and rented under FRAND terms to anyone that wants to hang a wire (by licenced and bonded independent contractors).

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#65

Post by tptacek »

paxys wrote: post #6

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?

The current telecom providers, who compete with each other? If you compare similarly dense areas in the US and Europe, we're doing pretty well on high-speed Internet access. I have multiple gigabit options in Chicago, and only got them in the last couple years. What's not working?

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#66

Post by ocdtrekkie »

notJim wrote: post #54
DanHulton wrote: post #42

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/…

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 build and unprofitable to operate. That's why ISPs don't want to build them out.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#67

Post by jedberg »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #44
gz5 wrote: post #21

Would it be surprising to see Google pivot to 5G for the tech solution? I believe their business goal is still to control the access. Anyone see a realistic unit cost analyis for 5G in urban environments at maturity? On the fiber side, I think cities need to build the infrastructure (and are often in a position to finance via low interest rate bonds etc), and then enable any party to lease/operate/compete on that inf…

I have WebPass (webpass.net) in Denver, which is a company that Google acquired. It's mainly for residential multi-unit apartment buildings, though. I've had it for several years and it works extremely well. It uses point-to-point radios from their main node in the city to the top of your building, then you get an ethernet hookup in your unit. I almost always get in the ~700-800Mbps up and down range on ethernet conn…

> And I believe even ATT only does fiber to a neighborhood and then coax to the home, right?

No, I have a fiber going right to my dmark. I watched them string it and terminate myself.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#68

Post by ocdtrekkie »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #44
gz5 wrote: post #21

Would it be surprising to see Google pivot to 5G for the tech solution? I believe their business goal is still to control the access. Anyone see a realistic unit cost analyis for 5G in urban environments at maturity? On the fiber side, I think cities need to build the infrastructure (and are often in a position to finance via low interest rate bonds etc), and then enable any party to lease/operate/compete on that inf…

I have WebPass (webpass.net) in Denver, which is a company that Google acquired. It's mainly for residential multi-unit apartment buildings, though. I've had it for several years and it works extremely well. It uses point-to-point radios from their main node in the city to the top of your building, then you get an ethernet hookup in your unit. I almost always get in the ~700-800Mbps up and down range on ethernet conn…

I know "fiber to the neighborhood and coax to the home" is how both Comcast and WOW operate. Note that coax can provide some fairly decent performance, with DOCSIS 3.1, you can do gigabit down a coax cable, though the networks are still built asymmetrically, so you're only going to see 50 Mbps back up on a connection like that.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#69

Post by jcims »

paxys wrote: post #6

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 don't know that Google is well positioned to offer this type of service. Operationally their customers are homogenized through the interfaces that their bread-and-butter services offer. This is not possible with a last-mile ISP. There is, relatively speaking, a lot of overhead per-customer and they simply have very little experience operating in that way.

Re: Visible signs left after Google Fiber abandons Louisville

#70

Post by walrus01 »

vb6lives wrote: post #11
paxys wrote: post #6

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.

There is micro trenched surface inlaid fiber with grouting ALL OVER downtown Vancouver BC. It's been in successful operation for 15+ years.

It is a lot deeper than 2 inches.

Google tried to do the backfilling/slot filling with some sort of rubber compound or something that was not proper pavement grouting.

Google and their contractor fucked up the OSI layer 1.

The way it's done with the "teraspan" (company name) method in Vancouver BC is not economical to service individual residences, or small buildings, it's a set of networks built for several different companies' last mile fiber access networks to service major class A office towers in the downtown core. The diamond blade concrete saw + microduct + cable + slot filling setup is way too costly in dollars per meter of installed fiber to be used for something like Louisville.

Post reply on HN