Google Fiber expansion moves fast; San Antonio approves construction

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/google-fiber-expansion-moves-fast-san-antonio-approves-construction/

by RougeFemme • 12 years ago

113 38 12 years ago

yeukhon• 12 years ago

I'd like to see government step up in their bureaucratic process more. I am not saying we should approve everything at the speed of light.

I feel bad when I read this article yesterday: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/in-9-years-of-w...

Only 3 public toilets go live in nine years. I hope we can break ISP franchise and monopoly too so I don't have to move a few blocks down just to get another ISP.

GabrielF00• 12 years ago

So is Google actually planning on running new aerial fiber themselves or are they just using existing fiber that terminates to city buildings?

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

They run new aerial fiber. They're asking for the right of way on the poles.

appliedluck• 12 years ago

Entrenched ISPs have complained that Google is getting special treatment. I find that somewhat disingenuous. It seems to me the difference between existing ISPs limp efforts to expand broadband and Google's is that Google did a decent job of telling municipalities what they needed to bring higher speed data to their constituents—and they did it in a very public way.

I think it's a good example of how one can bring attention to the senseless bureaucracy we all complain about. Instead of complaining, bring about actionable steps.

pekk• 12 years ago

How do they explain why Google is getting special treatment? It's not like cities have a special, irrational hardon for Google. It's that Google is making a reasonable deal to them. If Time-Warner wants to do the same thing, they can make the same deal.

They don't want to make this kind of deal with cities. They want the government to prevent this kind of deal from being made.

rayiner2• 12 years ago

Is Google making a reasonable deal? I.e. if they didn't have an advertising business to subsidize this with, would the terms still make business sense?

jsz0• 12 years ago

How do they explain why Google is getting special treatment?

Not exactly special treatment just the benefit of not being an incumbent telco/cable provider. They don't have to face the same regulations (both state/local) and that translates into lower costs to build infrastructure. Google's more likely to get special treatment because they are a very wealthy company. You can bet they are already dreaming up what regulations they will apply to Google once they have sufficient skin in the game. It also acts as a nice bit of leverage against the incumbent telco/cable providers. This is not exactly a bad thing overall. It probably is in the best interest of the tax payers and voters.

It's just ironic to see people cheering this on when it's the same exact strategy of self interest that created cable/telco monopolies. Why should we expect a different result here? I bet you 5-10 years down the road the exclusive rights to operate a 10G-PON FTTH network in San Antonio will be for sale to the highest bidder. Google will have to pay up to remain competitive or exit the market. The incumbent cable or telco provider will buy up the rights. The municipality will have a nice little payday. Rinse & repeat. I don't know why people are cheering.

wmf• 12 years ago

It's probably the case that nobody asked for the particular concessions Google asked for, so it's impossible to say that cities wouldn't have granted them. But it sure looks like Google is getting special deals that probably weren't available to either incumbents or smaller ISPs. I would be interested in hearing the perspective of ISPs that have already tried to deploy fiber.

tsotha2• 12 years ago

Google is really good at generating buzz, and instead of rolling out a plan which would have Google installing fiber in, say, every city over a certain size or everywhere east of the Mississippi, they're saying "we'll do this city, then this one, then this one..."

If the local politicians don't play ball, then there's no Google fiber. That's where the buzz comes in - "Why is Google installing everywhere else but not here?"

It's smart politics on Google's part, particularly since they're probably not willing to sink in enough capital to do more than a few markets a year anyway.

hrkristian• 12 years ago

Well made point. Combine that with chrissnell's point [1] and it makes even more sense in my mind.

Google Fiber isn't really necessary for the common household, yet. They might be mixing an investment in start-ups with a political agenda. For the latter, if they can push the competition in the rest of the U.S. to even 10% of their offering you'll still have a massive speed increase (and a brand spankin' new infrastructure).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7397174

a-priori• 12 years ago

The only reason Google is getting 'special treatment' is because they've shown that they're willing and able to spend the capital necessary to develop the residential telecom network in North America. The incumbent network operators and ISPs have been dragging their heels on that since the 90s, and since then it's fallen behind other parts of the world.

Google Fibre is good for customers (hence the media buzz) and it's good for municipalities (hence their cooperation). Put the two together, and it looks like Google has a red carpet laid out in front of them simply because they're Google.

But really it's just genuine excitement that someone -- anyone -- is bringing long-overdue upgrades to home internet connections.

izzydata• 12 years ago

Yes please. Start putting fiber in Leawood Kansas already.

infra178• 12 years ago

The reason why the customer service at most ISPs sucks is because arbitrary rules are imposed on them by local governments. For example, if the average call can't be over 9 minutes long, don't expect help with a problem that takes half an hour to diagnose. If the same rules aren't being imposed on Google, then there's a problem.

mayneack• 12 years ago

What's the context to that 9 minute example?

Avenger422• 12 years ago

I thought they just wouldn't go over 9 minutes due to internal rules (e.g., you'll get written up if your average call time goes over a certain level). Do you have a source for the "local governments" claim? I'd be very interested at yelling at my city council for imposing stupid rules like that.

(My main source for this goes back to Joel's article on Measurement[1].)

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020715.html

StillBored• 12 years ago

What I don't understand is why google didn't bid on Time Warner.

With very little effort (compared with rolling out fiber in a couple cities) they could have completed the rollout of DOCSIS 3, and provided everyone with 343/143 Mbps using modems available today (zoom 5341j) and in a couple years when the 24 channel modems become more wide spread upgrade everyone to Gigabit operations.

In ten years will google fiber have cost them more than $45 billion? Will they have 1/10th the penetration that TW has today?

kev0092• 12 years ago

Speculative, but culture?

Look at how the Motorola acquisition played out. Motorola was a company that had a pretty damn good (maybe just a bit heavy) engineering culture.

If you buy out a culturally bankrupt company infested with assholes, you have to root out all those assholes while simultaneously continuing operations and developing the future. I dare say this would be much harder than a new build out.

kokon• 12 years ago

Also speculative, but Google probably has a set of equipments that don't work well with others. When you play in the access and transport space, there usually a set of standard that you have to follow, in order for it to work together with others.

If Google owns the entire infrastructure, they can build their own equipments that are a lot simpler/cheaper to build, because they don't have to deal with all the standard-crap that other manufacturers have to deal with.

If they bought TWC, then they need to integrate all those devices, including all of the OSSes that are guarded by bureaucrats.

kirubakaran• 12 years ago

Yeah, they probably learned that the hard way from their DoubleClick acquisition.

tsotha2• 12 years ago

I work for a company that was cobbled together from a bunch of smaller companies. It's a huge pain in the ass. Different technologies, different billing systems, different corporate cultures... you'd have to get an absolute fire sale price to make that worthwhile.

adventured• 12 years ago

I wouldn't buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion solely on the fact that they're in a declining business (traditional cable tv) that is likely to lose millions of subscribers over the next decade (so I'm paying 23 times earnings for the NY Times in 2003 basically). I also wouldn't buy them for $45 billion because they're carrying a massively borked balance sheet, at $23b in long term debt and -$22.3b in net tangibles. The true cost of buying them is a lot higher than $45 billion.

mattquiros• 12 years ago

Google Fiber is taking over and people will choose it over their regular ISPs because it's better. And soon enough it won't matter what OS your mobile device is running. For as long as you're connecting via Google Fiber, Google has your data.

greglindahl2• 12 years ago

I was a user of Google WiFi in Mountain View, and indeed the terms of service (which no one reads) allowed Google to collect information by watching what you did on the Internet. No PII, of course, but we all know that metadata is enough to identify people.

I solved this problem with a VPN, just like you need with AT&T or Comcast.

magicalist• 12 years ago

No they don't. Maybe you were confused by "We may record information about your usage of Google WiFi, such as when and for how long you use the network and the frequency and size of data transfers"?

https://wifi.google.com/privacy_and_security.html

chrissnell• 12 years ago

Go, hometown! As someone who grew up in what used to be an incredibly lame and mostly uneducated city, this makes me so happy. San Antonio has come so far. A huge driver behind this is the success of Rackspace and the leadership of it's chairman and co-founder, Graham Weston.

I hope that founders of startups will consider forming their companies in SA. San Antonio has so much going for it: the hometown of one of the world's largest cloud hosting companies, fast Google Fiber coming soon, the booming Pearl district, Geekdom, low cost of living, great weather, awesome food, and so much more. I believe strongly that the future of the tech economy will happen outside of the SFBA and I feel that Google Fiber's bets point strongly to that.

dictum• 12 years ago

I hope that founders of startups will consider forming their companies in SA

Which makes me wonder: can businesses use Google Fiber? I was under the impression it's a consumer-only service.

Would they allow servers not for personal usage for startups?

(I really hope more startups appear in cities where many households have Gigabit connections. I can't wait to see what could be done with fast Internet access.)

masklinn• 12 years ago

I was under the impression it's a consumer-only service.

You're correct:

We are currently focused on our Fiber-to-the-home network, which is for residential consumers. We hope to be able to offer Fiber to small businesses at some point in the future. To stay updated on any new developments, please follow our blog http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/

but that mostly means there's little uptime guarantee, a small business/startup could use GF either eating potential downtime or with a backup stabler line in case fiber goes down.

walesmd• 12 years ago

As a San Antonio resident paying out the ass for AT&Ts 40Mbps tier, all I have to add to the conversation is this: fuck yes.

kclay• 12 years ago

YES!! When can I give you my money.

Google Fiber expansion moves fast; San Antonio approves construction

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