Google Fiber’s Next Stop: Austin, Texas

http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/google-fibers-next-stop-austin-texas_9.html

by pash • 13 years ago

241 128 13 years ago

googlefiberblog.blogspot.com

pash2• 13 years ago

> Our goal is to start connecting homes in Austin by mid-2014.

The timeline Google's followed in Kansas City suggests it will be another year until service is available to a significant chunk of Austin, and likely well into 2016 or beyond before the whole city is hooked up. Fiber to whatever suburbs are invited to the party will likely follow after that.

But hopefully the build-out gets ramped up, both in Austin and KC, now that Google's had some time to work out some of the early kinks.

clauretano• 13 years ago

This is how it goes with most service roll outs. If the people in the suburbs are really miffed that they aren't one of the first areas picked for Google Fiber, perhaps they should consider the downsides of living in the sprawl.

Congrats to any Austin HNers on your freedom from [insert Austin cable monopoly here]

mayneack2• 13 years ago

I wonder if this timeline is slow enough for a given city's cable monopoly to respond with price/terms/bandwidth competition in time to head off google fiber.

Doesn't mean they will, but I would think that this is slow enough that they could theoretically ramp it up.

jseliger5• 13 years ago

>perhaps they should consider the downsides of living in the sprawl.

I'm sympathetic to this point of view, but in many places it's not possible for everyone to live in the city center because of development restrictions that drive up prices (see here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face... one discussion that I've posted before, albeit about California).

unwiredben• 13 years ago

We actually have a bit of a cable duopoly in a lot of the city. Both Grande Communications and Time Warner run systems here, although Grande's build-out area is a bit smaller.

Legion• 13 years ago

> Fiber to whatever suburbs are invited to the party will likely follow after that.

I'm interested to see where in the priority list some of the closer suburbs are. Round Rock, after all, is Dell headquarters. I'd have to imagine there is going to be some strong demand up there.

j4ustin2• 13 years ago

They said the roll-out was focusing on Austin City Limits, and more specifically they stated the desire to release Fiber in public buildings (offices, hospitals, schools, etc.).

This paired with the UT Austin teacher video they released leads me to believe it'll be available to the campus area, probably downtown as well (St. Davids main and Brackenridge Medical Center) and probably the surrounding neighborhoods.

Personally, I would be surprised if it went east of I-35, south of Capitol of Texas highway, west of Mopac, or North of 183 in its initial release.

johnwyles2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure that a technology company being in a location necessarily indicates demand. Sure there are some technology enthusiasts in Round Rock, but moreover I think everyone will want fast internet all over Austin and the surrounding areas. I think that demand is likely to be fairly equal throughout once word gets around.

pash2• 13 years ago

There's not much data to go on, but in the KC area the schedule for suburban build-outs looks like it's being driven by politics as much as by demographic or infrastructural factors. (Of course, the initial choices of the KC and Austin metros themselves suggest that sort of decision-making.)

In KC, Google's first announced suburban hook-ups were a couple of tiny, affluent suburbs adjacent to KCK and KCMO, likely due to the ease of negotiating the terms of construction. It then announced availability for Olathe, an large exurb on the Kansas side, skipping over the even larger suburb of Overland Park, which is home to Sprint and some other tech firms. Olathe has Garmin, etc., but I don't think corporate tech headquarters are a consideration.

Google has also so far left out North Kansas City, a municipality that's completely surrounded by KCMO, perhaps because it has its own municipal ISP that provides FTTH. I imagine that has made negotiations difficult.

dkhenry3• 13 years ago

I really want to see the ROI google is planning on having for theses projects. If my calculations[1] are correct they only need something like 200,000 customers to sign up to get a ROI of one year on both roll outs.

~ 100M for both rollouts @ $70 per customer per month

meritt• 13 years ago

I'd argue Google's ROI on the service itself a very small piece of the pie and almost irrelevant. Google gains most of their revenue from advertising on their properties. More people online + faster access = more advertising revenue.

Especially in a market like Kansas City which is dominated by TWC who is notorious for misrepresenting bandwidth, throttling against high bandwidth sites (youtube & netflix) and has noticeable capacity issues during peak usage times.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

I imagine they're aiming for a high multiplier effect, too. Even if Google Fiber never reaches a large percentage of the American public, its mere existence may spur action on the part of other ISPs. For every Fiber customer Google signs up directly, they might indirectly obtain much better internet (and thus more advertising revenue) for maybe 10 other people using other ISPs.

hadees4• 13 years ago

I still think this whole thing is to shame other internet providers who says this kind of service is impossible and there is no demand for it.

There is no way Google will be able to roll this out across the country. But if they roll it out to 10 or 20 cities then they might be able to force other internet providers into doing something.

intopieces4• 13 years ago

>There is no way Google will be able to roll this out across the country.

Why not? The US is big, but the population is concentrated into a few areas.

wesray• 13 years ago

Love it, Austin is such a great tech bubble right now, this will just continue the trend for a long while, they picked a great spot to do this (mainly because I live in Austin, lol)

xradionut2• 13 years ago

Austin is in a state, (Texas), with a lot of pending issues coming to roost... education, traffic, migration, water/drought, social safety net. As much as I love my native state, I don't see any leadership addressing these.

dr_doom2• 13 years ago

It's important to note that California is just as bad or worse in a lot of those areas.

All the things you mentioned are pretty bad in California. Public education is terrible, traffic is outrageous, there is a huge immigration 'problem', and the forest fires are pretty bad. To each his own but Californian leadership isn't really that great.

I just can't decide who is worse Perry or Brown.

penny5004• 13 years ago

Your business-friendly state is the envy of many Silicon Valley leaders and entrepreneurs I know.

hadees4• 13 years ago

Which is why http://www.battlegroundtexas.com/ is so important. Texas needs some competition for it's top offices. Having a whole state run by one party is a terrible idea.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

I realize this is very much a "first-world problem," but I find it infinitely frustrating that Google Fiber will probably never be available where I live (Long Beach, CA). Apparently this is because the various environmental regulations in California make it prohibitively expensive to deploy it here.

On the one hand I like the environment. On the other, I'm on DSL. :(

kintamanimatt• 13 years ago

What environmental regulations?

wj• 13 years ago

Maybe the California Coastal Commission. They have a notoriously long approval process for almost anything.

DannyBee• 13 years ago

Remove environmental, and you've got it.

California in general has a ridiculous set of regulations for doing anything related to building.

Individual counties are even worse (often requiring fighting with county-paid or city-paid arborists to remove trees on your own property, etc)

For giggles, read the story of PEX tubing and California. PEX has been used in Europe with no issues since the 60's. For many years, California was the only state to ban PEX, for no reason.

After it's adoption into the 2006 UPC, california started to take steps to add it to the california codes.

This resulted in 3 environmental studies, two environmental impact reports, 2 lawsuits against California for trying to adopt it, and 5 years of work.

http://www.bsc.ca.gov/Home/New/PEX.aspx

This covers only the post-2009 part of the saga.

jseliger5• 13 years ago

CEPA, the California Environmental Protection Act, is the most obvious, and IIRC the most onerous state-mandated environmental act in the country. It's (one) part of what makes building in CA so difficult.

ericabiz• 13 years ago

The great thing about working for an Internet company (I'm assuming you do since you've been on Hacker News for a while) is that you can really live anywhere. I moved my most recent startup to Austin after living in the Valley for 10 years and SoCal for 2. I'm already ridiculously happy with the move. And it seems like much of California is following me here--we are even getting an In-N-Out Burger this year!

Austin is a great place to run a company. Lower cost of living, lower taxes, and now Google Fiber. Plus the people here are amazingly friendly. I'm happy to compare/contrast vs. the Valley or SoCal--shoot me an email (email in my profile) if you have questions.

bratsche• 13 years ago

I live in Dallas and I like the lower cost of living and everything. But now I wish I lived in Austin. :)

The thing I hate about both Dallas and Austin is driving. I used to live northeast and could walk everywhere much easier. Austin seems to be pretty bike-friendly though, and Dallas is becoming more so.

jseliger5• 13 years ago

>And it seems like much of California is following me here--we are even getting an In-N-Out Burger this year!

California has been driving people away for decades: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_71.htm#.UWRs1Bkhf... . My own family moved out of CA when I was 10 for the usual reasons: high housing costs and long commutes. Housing costs have stayed high and so have commutes; consequently, a lot of people are leaving for the usual places: Phoenix, Austin, Seattle. . .

gonzo4• 13 years ago

Shhhh! Don't tell him that Austin is great. Everyone will move here, then turn it into California.[1]

EVERYBODY: AUSTIN SUCKS, DON'T MOVE HERE! [2]

[1] it's possible that this has already happened, of course. [2] I just moved back (from Hawaii) in 2011.

msoad• 13 years ago

I think we won't see Fiber in California. They will use wireless technology to transfer data from final optical fiber node to homes. That way it won't need a lot of digging.

Wireless data is getting faster and faster, so it should be possible to transfer gigabit per second data over wireless transmitters.

Right now my iPhone's LTE is faster than my home Comcast cable connection. I hope wireless gets cheaper and faster to replace Comcast in future

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

Wireless data is getting faster and faster in terms of providing what would previously be considered massive bandwidth but generally the latency still sucks for things like fast-paced online gaming. I still want fiber.

jsz02• 13 years ago

There's also DOCSIS 3.1 on the horizon for cable providers. It will allow for a quick and dramatic increase in download speeds over existing cable HFC infrastructure. All the big market cable ISPs will be offering 1Gbit/sec download speeds in the next 2-3 years at least in some competitive markets. Within 3-5 years it will be pretty widespread. Within 5-7 years it will be fairly universal to have multi-gigabit/sec broadband just about everywhere in the country that is serviced by cable ISPs.

penny5004• 13 years ago

California, once one of the friendliest states to do business in, has turned into a nightmare. The entrepreneurs I know are already looking for exits to Austin.

intopieces4• 13 years ago

The people might by friendly, but aren't the taxes quite high? Last I read, the state+federal together added up to almost 50%.

sodomizer• 13 years ago

It could be that laws in general need to be more flexible, and to keep in mind the end goal more than the boundaries of strict limits in the language of the rules. That way, you don't have this one-or-the-other decision.

BryanB552• 13 years ago

I'm in Austin and can't wait. Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to continue to pay TimeWarner for another 1-2 years at least.

I'm interested to see where the first 'fiberhood' is going to be in Austin. South Austin, 78704 would be awesome. Any Austin people on here have any guesses?

j4ustin2• 13 years ago

I would bet you'll be in the first (or second) roll out of fiberhoods. My best bet is UT Austin and downtown first, plus surrounding neighborhoods. Then they'll move West, then South.

mildweed• 13 years ago

If not longer. I live in KC and am probably going to have to wait another 1-2 years.

christopherscot• 13 years ago

born & raised in Austin, just might have to move back (from Silicon Valley) :)

DoggettCK2• 13 years ago

Announced the day after I signed a contract on a house outside the service area. It was clearly me holding you back the whole time, Austin. I'm so sorry.

iamdave• 13 years ago

You can redeem yourself by washing your car and summoning the rain gods. That little sprinkle we got last week was a bit of a tease.

DoggettCK2• 13 years ago

I literally did get my car washed last week, and the next evening, we had water 10 feet past the doors at work. Willie Nelson never should've built this place below the parking lot.

This is the worst superpower.

specialp• 13 years ago

Google here is doing what they do best which is sticking to their core business of advertising/search while spending a bit here and there to disrupt businesses that they see as threatening to their core business. It is to Google's advantage to have fast pipes to their users.

Right now they are getting their intended result from people in the USA. If Kansas City can have gigabit internet for a low price why can't I? The consumers then will pressure their provider to do the same. However it is not as easy for every other telco.

1. They need to be profitable. 2. They cannot cherry pick areas with high density yet low costs of rollout/living like KC and Austin.

So I do not think Google will ever do this nationwide as it is a bad business to be in with enormous red tape, capital expenditures and geographic distribution. It is a smart move on their behalf to do this but people should not get their hopes up for a nationwide distribution, it will never happen.

brd• 13 years ago

"In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats" - Warren Buffett

I completely agree that its in Google's interest to have faster pipes. But I think Google Fiber may just be another moat for Google, another way for them to hinder their perceived threats.

This was an excellent write up on Google's strategy to build business moats (from 2011): http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-an...

loganfrederick• 13 years ago

I tried search for a direct link and didn't immediately see one, but Buffett himself has said before that he likes Google and, if it were older and had a slightly less risky profile for him, it would be the ideal company. It's core business is vitally important and is very capital efficient.

OGinparadise3• 13 years ago

But I think Google Fiber may just be another moat for Google, another way for them to hinder their perceived threats.

When FB was asked about a phone they said that any phone user they'd get it wouldn't move the scale given their 1 billion+ users. Same with Google, it's extremely expensive to wire a significant number of their users, so they are doing this hoping AT&T, Comcast etc upgrade their connection and match the price. Which they might--in the areas where Google is entering. Personally, I would not count of the price being, say $70 for a long time.

dragonwriter3• 13 years ago

> So I do not think Google will ever do this nationwide as it is a bad business to be in with enormous red tape, capital expenditures and geographic distribution.

Until and unless network neutrality is a secure market principle (and its not in the US now with weak regulation for fixed broadband and even weaker for mobile, and carriers fighting the FCC's authority on even those weak regulations), the revenue from Google's services face a permanent risk from carriers adopting rent-seeking policies (this is much the same kind of risk that Google faced from the potential of a mobile OS monopoly or a browser monopoly); as such, as much as being a carrier is a bad business to be in in general, its potentially an even worse business for Google not to be in.

6thSigma• 13 years ago

Now AT&T is announcing that they are building a 1Gbps fiber service in Austin as well.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/att-1gbps-fiber-internet-...

k3n2• 13 years ago

I've heard a lot of things from AT&T customers, and "satisfied" is never one of them. This is too little too late, and I'm pretty sure that most of their current customers can't wait to jump ship -- regardless of whatever carrots that they bring out at the last minute.

kyrra3• 13 years ago

Uverse has been solid for me. I've had them for 4 years now and they've had very limited downtime (a lot less then I had with TimeWarner). I'll happily move to Google Fiber, but Uverse has treated me just fine. While I wish their upload speeds were faster, but I haven't really had any options that were faster.

What issues have you had with them exactly?

caw4• 13 years ago

My Uverse internet only service has been great. They messed up my bill 3 months (not so great), but it only took 5 minutes on the phone to fix. When I called to get my iPhone activation fee waived, they told me it hadn't hit yet, so they'd call me back on my billing date. They did (surprised!) they said they automatically credited the activation fee (super surprised!).

Not sure I've been this excited about utility/telco service in a while.

jseliger5• 13 years ago

AT&T and existing telcos need to announce these kinds of initiatives before their crappy service invites competitors, not after.

intopieces4• 13 years ago

Actually, they don't "need" to because they don't have any competition. Why invest (which is always a risk) when you can continue to rake in profits by doing nothing?

kyrra3• 13 years ago

For those wondering where Google will roll out, we don't have exact details, but we have some information.

1) They said they will stick to Austin City Limits, which means within these boundaries [1].

2) For those that followed up with how KC operated, Google runs their lines on electrical poles and all places the city power company has lines. This is one of the big things KC and Austin have in common: city owned electric utility. With that google can run all their lines much easier. So, if you get electricity from Austin Energy, you will likely be eligible to get Google Fiber at some point.

3) Beyond that, it will be up to people like us to advocate in our neighborhood to get people to sign up for the service. Whatever areas have a large # of people pledge to sign up will be more likely to get it. To me this means south and east Austin. But at the same time, north austin has a lot of tech employees from Dell, Freescale, PayPal, and other large companies (though many of those people may live in Round Rock).

[1] http://www.zipmap.net/Texas/Travis_County/Austin.htm

[1.1] (easier on the eyes map) http://www.maptechnica.com/us-city-boundary-map/city/Austin/...

bretthoerner• 13 years ago

> To me this means south and east Austin.

Why is that?

kyrra3• 13 years ago

Thinking about it now, I'd say south Austin more than east.

Check out the population density map of austin (PDF): http://www.austinchamber.com/do-business/files/maps/PopDensi...

If I were google, I would want to deploy to the more dense places (that could afford the service).

South Austin seems to be the more "hip" place to live, and I think people in their 20-35 age range would be more likely to want to jump on Google Fiber. I could be totally wrong, but it's just a guess.

deltaqueue• 13 years ago

I spoke with someone in Grande's (competing ISP) network planning division and he explained that getting into new buildings downtown was very expensive / difficult given Austin's telco requirements (have to dig up streets, etc.). Is this also the case for Google's fiber layout, or is there any speculation that buildings (condo and apartment) downtown will see this service?

beachstartup• 13 years ago

what's expensive to the local isp is probably not to google.

gonzo4• 13 years ago

It's really the landlords who want to be paid.

stephenhuey• 13 years ago

Google, come launch in a small subset of Houston! I'll bet the city would love to make a deal for you to deploy in EaDo. START Houston is there and it'd attract significant investment to an underutilized area literally a few blocks from downtown that Houston is eager to develop.

phireph0x• 13 years ago

Google, Tulsa, Oklahoma is waiting with open arms.

juddlyon• 13 years ago

This is going to be awesome, I feel lucky to live here (double lucky that my neighborhood is a prime target).

I'd love to connect with some hackers in KC to hear how Google Fiber has affected them. Does anyone have any resources about KC startups, what Google Fiber opens up, etc.?

sarde• 13 years ago

Google, Chicago wants gigabit speeds:P

BryanB552• 13 years ago

This is kind of funny... AT&T suddenly decided to offer a 1gb network: http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=24032&cdvn=news...

clavalle3• 13 years ago

"This expanded investment is not expected to materially alter AT&T’s anticipated 2013 capital expenditures."

This is what pisses me off. Telcos have the capability and it won't even hit them that hard, financially. They just want to drag their feet to eek out whatever extra sliver of profit they can out of the current status quo.

caw4• 13 years ago

In big-co speak that could mean either it's close to free, or they're rearranging their capex to prioritize Austin in order to compete (e.g. someone else isn't getting upgrades)

aspensmonster• 13 years ago

So they're aiming for the suburbs (where they already have FTTN) before Google has a chance to roll out from the city. This is gonna be good. Microwaving my popcorn already.

ippisl• 13 years ago

I wonder if we'll see a counter measure by cable companies: offer google to run their tv ads and build them set top boxesand share profits, while google stops this broadband stuff ? That would be interesting.

rdl• 13 years ago

I wonder how hard it would be to get both AT&T gigabit and google gigabit in the same place.

yoster• 13 years ago

I'm so jealous.

Google Fiber’s Next Stop: Austin, Texas

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