Google Fiber Pausing Expansion; CEO Stepping Aside, Layoffs Coming

Fleat said:
You should do some research on modern 60/70/80 GHZ ultra low latency networks. I think you will be impressed at how far they have come in the last decade or so. High frequency traders and stock exchanges started using them which has really helped to push the technology forward. The microseconds they save over traditional fiber can mean hundreds of millions to them by year end. The endpoint latency has been reduced to an almost insignificant amount and is still improving.

Another big thing to consider is that fiber signal speed has essentially stopped improving by leaps and bounds because you are eventually limited by the refractive index of glass vs air (which is 1). PTP/RF/Laser based solutions are still improving significantly every year. As someone else mentioned in this thread, weather doesn't really impact the connection greatly any more.

With that said, I would still have a backup connection (or several) if I needed this for mission critical applications. That really isn't any different than today where you would have a fiber ring that you tie into with several different providers/backbones.
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Are they going the extremely high frequency route? That presents so many problems in a city...the would have to have a lot of towers on top of the tallest buildings because attenuation would be ridiculously high. Isn't the range something like a 1.5 kM at best on a good day with no rain/snow/blocking buildings structures/or coupling structures?

Edit: Looks like I was right after a quick google search

wiki said:
Millimeter waves travel solely by line-of-sight, and are blocked by building walls and attenuated by foliage.[2]
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DigitalGriffin said:
Are they going the extremely high frequency route? That presents so many problems in a city...the would have to have a lot of towers on top of the tallest buildings because attenuation would be ridiculously high. Isn't the range something like a 1.5 kM at best on a good day with no rain/snow/blocking buildings structures/or coupling structures?

Edit: Looks like I was right after a quick google search
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Webpass uses the 6, 11, 18, 23, 24, 60, 70, and 80GHz bands depending on the site/location and whether or not they get the FCC licenses. I think they even use the 2.4 and 5GHz spectrums in some cases. Companies that do this often do a site analysis, and base the signal link redundancy requirements on your site SLA for uptime availability.

With that said you are not wrong about the extremely high frequencies, but attenuation isn't quite as bad as you might think. Here is an interesting "corporate" white paper on this very topic.

Current technology allows a mesh network with many individual links in a city to work quite well. These can be a variety of frequencies and connection types. You can also trunk in at many of these individual links (which they often do). Unfortunately for those of us outside of the city and living in more rural areas... we are probably hosed for a while.

Either way, fascinating times we live in!
 
grtitan said:
So the monopolies won.

If our beloved government cared for us (which they dont, they belong to the monopolies), they would force last mile unbundling.

Fucking corporate owned government we have....
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Another reason to vote for Trump for improved infrastructure (y)
 
polonyc2 said:
sounds exactly like the FiOS expansion...seems like fiber is a tough sell to the average Joe
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cause its expensive, I was loling at the riddiculous deals they were offering in my area at the beginning, it was around basic cable speed for too much, even now its expensive to get anything over 120mbits
 
DrLobotomy said:
So Google is laying fiber in San Antonio and a month ago a work crew shows up in our neighborhood and start digging holes in peoples backyards. Eventually they get to my house to do this work and I go outside to talk to them and they tell me they are with AT&T and THEY are laying fiber.
Holes and little red flags and spray paint are all over my back yard and no work crew has been back. It is my assumption that AT&T just wanted to claim they were doing this fiber work so Google couldn't get into the easement since it is 'under construction'.

So while these 2 play games I get screwed (as do my neighbors). Who can I sue?
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AT&T has been changing from DSL to Fiber in most markets, including san antonio. Ther fiber crews are usually contract and AT&T may not be controlling their work schedules.

I assume the trenching is in the right of way, which you pay taxes on, but don't control...
 
DocSavage said:
Yeah it is horrible news that Google Fiber is slowing down and/or stopping rollouts. I wonder how much effort AT&T expended and what tactics they employed to get this result.
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Zero. This is Google looking at where they are spending their money and what they are getting for it. Building a physical plant is a whole different, much worse, business to be in than cloud oriented businesses. Lots of dollars and time spent to just split up the market with the incumbents for broadband.
 
Wierdo said:
That's what we get for not having line sharing laws. Guess we gotta keep paying double for half.
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Share what lines? Crappy copper? MSO cable plant? This made sense back in the early DSL days, but it wouldn't buy consumers much of anything at this point.
 
Doc Doc said:
Share what lines? Crappy copper? MSO cable plant? This made sense back in the early DSL days, but it wouldn't buy consumers much of anything at this point.
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The last mile where a small collection of broadband providers are holding our infrastructure for ransom. That part needs local loop un-bundling so companies can serve customers without each needing to lay their own line beside another and another, a ridiculous expectation.

It would buy consumers choice, and with that bring competition on service and prices similar to what many parts of Europe have demonstrated to be the superior approach - and their consumers have been enjoying for years.

The alternative is to nationalize it, which I would think of as a last resort. So instead I think - for our mismanaged model - that by just tightening common carrier regulations so that the providers provide "dumb pipes" again, spinning off their entertainment/media arm to operate on equal footing with the likes of Netflix - so it wont abuse its market position to kill competition - would sort this out.
 
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Wierdo said:
The last mile where a small collection of broadband providers are holding our infrastructure for ransom. That part needs local loop un-bundling so companies can serve customers without each needing to lay their own line beside another and another, an ridiculous expectation.

It would buy consumers choice, and with that bring competition on service and prices similar to what many parts of Europe have demonstrated to be the superior approach - and their consumers have been enjoying for years.

The alternative is to nationalize it, which I would think of as a last resort. So instead I think - for our mismanaged model - that by just tightening common carrier regulations so that the providers provide "dumb pipes" again, spinning off their entertainment/media arm to operate on equal footing with the likes of Netflix - so it wont abuse its market position to kill competition - would sort this out.
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The problem is, in the US, the last mile is 50 year old copper in most cases.
 
wizdum said:
The problem is, in the US, the last mile is 50 year old copper in most cases.
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We gotta work with what we got, there's no incentive to improve it if it's a monopoly so we're stuck with that.

But we can at least apply DSL line regulation to broadband infrastructure to promote similar service level competition, there's still allot of value in having the option of switching between a hundred service providers.
 
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Meanwhile where I live there are AT&T Uverse boxes around me (3 or 4 I think within 8 blocks, closest is less than 2 away), and all that is available to me is 6Mbps/1Mbps ADSL2(or whatever lie they refer to as "Uverse"), you would think that with the availability of Comcast (one promotional year I got nearly 200Mbps downstream) would push them to at least up to their 45Mbps Uverse VDSL2(??) stuff, but nope. There just is no competition that makes it worth wild, almost like they shook hands in a backroom and said "Ok this is what we'll offer, you don't offer in this area")
 
Last mile needs to be customer owned fiber, but communities need to get together and make it happen, this should could would break up the back end monopolies/ duopolies
 
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