Google Fiber Ends Service in Louisville

I know in portland the commissioners wouldn't privide them pole access because Comcast and Verizon had some under the tabke exclusion deal worked out, so they left.
Funny the next day they approved access and google left their dumb asses hanging.
 
I know in portland the commissioners wouldn't privide them pole access because Comcast and Verizon had some under the tabke exclusion deal worked out, so they left.
Funny the next day they approved access and google left their dumb asses hanging.
PGE, PP&L and Century Link own most of the poles in Portland, not the city.
 
As someone who works on fiber all the time, that looks like a complete pain in the ass to fix. Where the hell are you supposed to put the splice cases?

vault in the middle of the road. Using the same type of lid you would for a normal man hole. It isn't that uncommon around me to have man hole covers for all types of utilities. Personally we don't put anything in the road like that as why the hell would you given that repaving or pot holes in general would take out everything. However I know we had to access a vault in a city to connect our fiber to a long haul carrier and they had their fucking vault right in the dead center of a damn intersection. I have no idea why they thought that was a good place for it. We ended up boring from a corner into the vault, then having to have traffic shut down in all 4 directions one night for us to get our fiber spliced in.

To all those who are hating on Google for pulling out... could it be that that is the only thing they could get approved to do?

Kinda sounds to me like somebody in the town has a stake in the other providers and did what they had to to make it go south for Google.

Anybody know the whole story behind why they went with these laughable micro-trenches?

Only get approved to pull out? Google never actually wanted to get into the ISP game to start with. Then once they did and realized how much it cost kept trying to save money as much as they could and in the end started dropping out of the game because it cost too much.
 
vault in the middle of the road. Using the same type of lid you would for a normal man hole. It isn't that uncommon around me to have man hole covers for all types of utilities. Personally we don't put anything in the road like that as why the hell would you given that repaving or pot holes in general would take out everything. However I know we had to access a vault in a city to connect our fiber to a long haul carrier and they had their fucking vault right in the dead center of a damn intersection. I have no idea why they thought that was a good place for it. We ended up boring from a corner into the vault, then having to have traffic shut down in all 4 directions one night for us to get our fiber spliced in.



Only get approved to pull out? Google never actually wanted to get into the ISP game to start with. Then once they did and realized how much it cost kept trying to save money as much as they could and in the end started dropping out of the game because it cost too much.

I meant.. only approved to use the lame micro-trenches which anybody with half a brain could tell you wouldn't work long term.
 
The lesson to be learned here...

Sometimes you don't go as deep as you should and your sealant still pops then leaks.
 
I meant.. only approved to use the lame micro-trenches which anybody with half a brain could tell you wouldn't work long term.

oh. That or they tried to sneak out in the middle of the night and put in into the ground real quick and couldn't cut any deeper than that. It is crazy how often fiber and cables just magically appear on poles and in the ground in some places.... ;)
 
seems google applies their model from software on other stuff as well - "abandoning it" =)), I would have given them the extra props if they said they would fix everything no matter how long it takes.
 
Wow burying cable in a 2 inch trench on concrete, who the hell thought that was a good idea? Thats just plain stupidity.
The guys in finance, likely. Gota cut costs somehow right?

They must have been related to the people who laid the main and backup power lines to one of our data centers literally right next to each other. I bet you can guess what happened when a construction crew dug in the wrong spot? Yep, full power loss to the data center and millions of $$ lost in equipment, data, and downtime.
 
I'm speculating here but I also know getting the leasing rights for arial and underground wiring deployments is crazy complicated and very political(corruption? I didn't say that.). Knowing them I suspect the local government made the entire project an uphill battle. I suspect Google would have been better off leasing arial, but I guess that would make their service kind of an oxymoron.

Stuff like this makes me want to punch people who claim free markets don't work. How could we? No - we don't have free markets!
 
It sounds like approximately zero engineers were involved with this deployment.
 
I line about an hour and a half east of the 'ville. My tiny town is building out a fiber network. We have no idea what it's to be used for.

I don't understand this micro trenching.. How stupid do you have to be?
 
How in the hell did a company like Google think cutting a trench 2-3 inches deep in concrete/asphalt would ever work. That is some interesting idea experimentation on something that is constantly shifting and brutalized by vehicles/weather.
That part of Kentucky does get snow/ice during the winter - which eventually results in potholes from the freezing/melting/plows.
 
How in the hell did a company like Google think cutting a trench 2-3 inches deep in concrete/asphalt would ever work. That is some interesting idea experimentation on something that is constantly shifting and brutalized by vehicles/weather.

This is most definitely an experimentation like many of Google things, it is sad that real people got affected by this and sounds like city waste a lot of money. Just a though about installing fiber this way makes anyone who even vaguely heard about fiber cringe. Absolutely instance idea to install fiber or pretty much any network in such a manner. Just wow! I guess they got their shitty low bidder and that's the end result. Definitely sad that this is how Google did it as they sure should know better but given how fast this was deployed, I'm not terribly surprised to find this bit of know how info.
 
???.
I've never heard of this before.
I moved from Florida to Kentucky about 3yrs ago, and have never experienced a power outage that lasted longer than 3mins (not during a storm) where I live (Ashland).
And during the last 3 hurricanes that Florida had, I was in touch with my parents who live in Deltona. Have I not lived here long enough to experience this?

I was getting ready to post something similar, I work in Ashland, but live out in the county, the only power outage of any significance was the Derecho of 2012, we were without power for several days. Snow and ice storms will sometimes take out lines and leave us without power for up to a day, but that's fairly rare. I don't recall any of the residual hurricanes affecting us in any significant way.
 
I understand micro trenches not working and I understand how they might have convinced themselves they would work.

What I don't get is why abandon completely? You've already done... Most of the work? I'd imagine? Can't they just go the necessary depth and solve everything at minimal cost.
 
I understand micro trenches not working and I understand how they might have convinced themselves they would work.

What I don't get is why abandon completely? You've already done... Most of the work? I'd imagine? Can't they just go the necessary depth and solve everything at minimal cost.
Supposedly micro trenching can work, they just did a crappy job.
At 2 inches deep, or whatever, they would have been better off creating a flat rubbery strong whatchamacallit encasement and just nail that along the road, jeez.
 
No... They already have that. It's called satellite and it's shit. WISP isn't any better.

WISP can be quite a bit better. The problem is that they are usually small companies and the switching and backend links to make the connections fast and stable are really expensive. Not to mention peering with the big boys who would rather you don't exist. My brother owns an ISP that also provides WISP and they offer 100 Mb/s wireless connections, and switching and peering are always what are consuming their budgets. Also, because they are small they don't get the subsidies the big boys get. Even though they are the ones actually providing internet to areas the bigger companies can't/won't go.
 
WISP can be quite a bit better. The problem is that they are usually small companies and the switching and backend links to make the connections fast and stable are really expensive. Not to mention peering with the big boys who would rather you don't exist. My brother owns an ISP that also provides WISP and they offer 100 Mb/s wireless connections, and switching and peering are always what are consuming their budgets. Also, because they are small they don't get the subsidies the big boys get. Even though they are the ones actually providing internet to areas the bigger companies can't/won't go.

There are lots of technologies that "Can be" better. The problem is, in theory and in actual practice are very different things. In general, wireless technology implementations at least in the US are god awful. The biggest two problems being latency and reliability. Sure I've pulled incredible numbers off Wisp, 4g, Satellite and I expect the same off 5G. The problem is you cannot get those numbers reliably as location and the service administrator can basically make or break the service. Until we force a breaking up of the ISP monopolies and force competition where customers have a real choice, that isn't going to change.
 
I understand micro trenches not working and I understand how they might have convinced themselves they would work.

What I don't get is why abandon completely? You've already done... Most of the work? I'd imagine? Can't they just go the necessary depth and solve everything at minimal cost.

Microtrenching works just fine when done right. They do it all over a lot of major cities such as Chicago, Detroit, etc. The difference is that they normally do so at a depth of 4 inches, and do a much better job of covering it. You also have places to do there where traffic won't be as heavy. So either down a sidewalk, or for roads right down the middle of the road or along the very edge by the curve. Not 2 feet out where tires will be driving right over this day in and day out. So it was jus their way of doing microtrenching that was the issue.

As for having done "most of the work" sadly the only way to fix this is to start all over. you can't magically cut under the existing fiber and push it down. They would have to put new fiber next to the existing at the correct depth, cover it, and then resplice everything. So they would have to respend whatever the cost for labor and material was to do this the first time to do it again. So you are still lookin at millions to fix this fuckup. There is no minimal cost at this point. Sure any drops could stay, but the entire core if done like this would have to be redone.
 
The guys in finance, likely. Gota cut costs somehow right?

They must have been related to the people who laid the main and backup power lines to one of our data centers literally right next to each other. I bet you can guess what happened when a construction crew dug in the wrong spot? Yep, full power loss to the data center and millions of $$ lost in equipment, data, and downtime.
Wow......i'm speechless.....no one can get to that level of stupidity......oh wait...
 
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