Google Fiber’s 2016 Expansion Freeze May Be Coming To An End
from the a-little-something-called-competition dept
When Google Fiber launched back in 2010, it was heralded as a game changer for the broadband industry. Google Fiber, we were told, would revolutionize the industry by taking Silicon Valley money and disrupting the viciously uncompetitive and anti-competitive telecom sector.
Initially, things worked out well; cities tripped over themselves offering all manner of perks to the company in the hopes of breaking free from the broadband duopoly logjam. Google got endless free press for doing something truly disruptive. And in markets where Google Fiber was deployed, prices dropped thanks to this added competition (fancy that!).
The fun didn’t last.
In late 2016, a new era of Alphabet execs began getting cold feet about the high costs and slow returns of the project, and effectively mothballed the entire thing — without admitting that’s what they were doing. The company blew through several CEOs in just a few months, laid off hundreds of employees, froze any real expansion, and cancelled countless installations for users who had been waiting years.
And while Google made a lot of noise about how it would be shifting from fiber to wireless to possibly cut costs, those promises also remained stuck in neutral.
But there are some faint indications that the Google Fiber freeze might be thawing somewhat. Last year, Google announced it had started working with officials in West Des Moines, Iowa on a potential expansion into the city. More recently, the company indicated it was expanding into Mesa, Arizona. And it’s also pushing harder into select portions of Utah:
“We’ve expanded to a bunch of new cities around our Utah footprint. We’ve also expanded to Smyrna, for example, around Tennessee, within our Nashville footprint,” Strama told Government Technology. “We’ll continue to be expanding around our existing footprint for the long term.”
To be clear, many of these efforts remain somewhat… modest, and it’s clear Google Fiber’s overall ambitions have scaled back. In a country where 83 million live under a broadband monopoly, and somewhere between 20-40 Americans lack any broadband at all (see our recent report on this), some scattered deployments in limited portions of mid-tier cities can only go so far.
Still, it’s good to see Google trying all the same. For a while there after the freeze, it seemed entirely possible the company could pack it in and sell the network (much like it sold out its principles on concepts like net neutrality). And while Google Fiber (much like Google) isn’t the same disruptive force it was in 2010, when it comes to mediocre U.S. broadband, every last bit helps.
Filed Under: broadband, competition, digital divide, dirsuption, fiber, google fiber, high speed internet
Companies: google
Comments on “Google Fiber’s 2016 Expansion Freeze May Be Coming To An End”
Rah, rah-ah-ah-ah
Roma, roma-ma
Gaga, ooh-la-la
Don’t want that Fiber
In this instance, they sold out their principles on Open Access. The original plan was that they’d build a network, and any ISP could sell service on it. Which, if you think about it, is perfect for Google: they’d set up some technology and then provide no customer service whatsoever, as seems to be their preference. Whereas, now, people can only deal directly with Google.
To their credit, it seems okay so far: they’ve avoid the standard bullshit like mandatory Google Plus integration, arbitrary user lockouts, and total shutdown with a month or 3 of notice (could you imagine if they changed fiber technology as often as they changed instant-messaging technology? 17th time’s the charm, right?). People seem happy with the service. But it’s not what was promised, and isn’t going to transform the market to the extent the original plan might have.
Isn’t Google the company that was doing a totally crappy job of installing fiber? Burying it just a few inches deep and ending up with a lot of it exposed?
Re:
Well.. that was the contractor they used in that specific city. They didn’t have that issue in other deployment areas. In any case, while Google Fiber may not be the big success everyone claimed it would be, they certainly inspired a lot of other ISP startups to start rolling fiber with reasonable success. I live in a pretty rural area of California that was begging Google to come install fiber here – and when that fell through, some locals started an effort to create a fiber ISP (which also failed), and that project was eventually purchased and completed by another small ISP in California. I now enjoy 1gbps/1gbps symmetric fiber in the rural mountains of California with no caps and it’s glorious.
Mesa AZ
I read that Mesa AZ is providing the fiber backbone; google will be leasing space from the city. This is great, no fiber install worries for google and Mesa has a core fiber backbone that is extensive. Will be great for the city, great for the citizens, suck for Cox and Centurylink. Welcome to Mesa Az.
So, Google’s providing service on someone else’s network? How bad do you have to suck at customer service to have people excited about dealing with Google instead? If the city ran that as an open-access network, I suspect we’d get some decent competitors.