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After Years Waiting For Google Fiber, KC Residents Get Cancellation Emails (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Some Kansas City residents who have been waiting years for Google Fiber to install service at their homes recently received e-mails canceling their installations, with no word on whether they'll ever get Internet service from the company. KSHB 41 Action News in Kansas City, Missouri, "spoke to several people, living in different parts of the metro, all who have recently received cancellation e-mails," the station reported last week. "The e-mails do not provide a specific reason for the cancellations. Instead they say the company was 'unable to build our network to connect your home or business at this time.'" While Google Fiber refuses to say how many installations have been canceled, KSHB said, "there is speculation the number of cancellations in the metro is as high as 2,700." "The company says it has slowed down in some areas to experiment with new techniques," such as wireless technology, the report also said. Google Fiber is still hooking up fiber for some new customers in parts of the Kansas City area. One resident who had his installation canceled is Larry Meurer, who was seeing multiple Google Fiber trucks in his neighborhood nearly two years ago, in the spring of 2015. "I'm left wondering what's going on," he told KSHB after getting the cancellation e-mail. Meurer lives in Olathe, Kansas, one of the largest cities in the Kansas City metro area. Residents only five houses away and around the corner have Google Fiber service, the report said. But Meurer said he and several neighbors who never got service were "terminated."
Fuck Google!
why spend billions of $$$ to run wires when you can use someone else's network to sell your stuff?
And Teh G and beta begets Megadeth!
Not just residents of KC that were sold a pig in a poke by Google. Look at a map of the Austin roll out, after many years very little coverage. Weak sauce.
Likely what is happening is the number of people signing up is lower that Google finnancial analyst would like or is in within acceptable targets, so they are investing in other areas. As time goes by and the inevitable desire for quality broadband increases (bluntly old luddites die of and are replaced by internet aware millenials, just one example), so they will increase investment in areas which will shift from low take up to high take up. When you a are wiring a whole country, that means, whole regions will miss out with low up take fore cast against regions with high up take, just the way it it.
Should you be bitter, well, bluntly yes, but bitter against your government and not google (that would be local, state and federal corrupt bias in favour of existing incumbent telecoms). Want access, then your only choice is to relocate to a home with google fibre access.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It seems to me that Google Fiber served its purpose. How many times did we hear stories of "Google Fiber comes to City Name, State. Incumbant internet providers increase speeds 10x for the same money!"
The two local cable providers (Spectrum and Wide Open West) start you out at 60 and 100 Mbps, respectively. Prices have (of course) gone up, but the $/Mbps has gone down dramatically. Sure, Google Fiber is 1 Gbps, but I'm struggling to use 100 Mbps.
It's an easy mistake to make when you've got guys using outdated paper maps and handwritten notes.
People need to learn not to rely on Google's Beta products.
Google had all sorts of issues, from gaining access to lay fiber to gaining rights to run lines on poles. Its more difficult than people think. Then you have to have a decent saturation of customers to help pay for this initial investment. With cable catching up to fiber in speed, I suspect many people felt the speed they had was plenty. Besides it was already available and in service, Google just dropped the ball on too many levels from doing the work on infrastructure quickly to securing enough customers.
I hate to rub it in like a jerk, but I got mine. Two years ago, in Austin, GFBR announced and TW offered 300Mbps/20Mbps service for $65/mo. Then, GFBR took forever to roll it out, so TW raised the price fo $75 and then $95/mo. I downgraded to 200M/20M and bought my own modem to keep the price to $80/mo. Now GFBR is here and I get 1000/1000 for $70/mo. TW keeps sending me offers to come back... sad.
Honestly, it's something we have come to expect of Google. They take a fail cheap fail fast approach to everything. So they try a lot of different stuff but also cancel almost everything. It's a good strategy as far as staying innovative and profitable.
But from a customer dependability view point Google has earned being at the bottom. You really can't build on top of google services and stick around. Eventually they will shell it and you will lose everything. This culture of theirs also makes it hard for enterprises to take them seriously. We are looking at Chromebooks and there are all these corner cases that Google has just never really thought about. They never built the services with an enterprise mindset. They just don't seem to know what a standard enterprise's needs are. Similarly they don't seem to understand the user's need for dependable and predictable services either.
Everything Google has ever made other than Adwords and Adsense.
You can totally reply on those never-be-evil text ads. /s
no bad they had good tv much better then most cable co's.
With very good bit-rates.
At the start you where able to buy added boxes with no outlet fees.
... is how the other ISP(s) in the area are handling this news, and how those other IPS(s) treat customers outside of this geographic area. Comcast's Latest Speed Upgrades Reach Kansas City, Minneapolis
Honestly, the purpose of Google Fiber seemed to be all over the map, worse, they only wanted to put it into communities that had little use for that much broadband.
After turning Detroit down, flatly, even with a considerable market, Dan Gilbert invested in an effort that has brought world-class internet speeds to Detroit. They now provide the backbone for tech startups and established companies coming to Detroit.
If Google couldn't figure out there was a market in Detroit and move on it, then it becomes obvious they never had any intention of making Google Fiber a real business. Kansas City? I can almost see Austin... but it moved too slow and had questionable goals. If they'd come to Detroit, they'd have enjoyed a regulatory green light and all the market they could want. They knew that... they were presented with real numbers and enough business to sustain it through full deployment - and they passed on it.
Good riddance. Google Fiber was a pair of middle fingers thrown at the rest of America anyway. About the only thing it brought about was more insular laws protecting the monopolies of the big cable providers and ramped up those companies' efforts to eliminate net neutrality.
Longmont, CO only proves that it wasn't an obstacle once upon a time in Longmont, CO. Not only does it not prove it isn't an obstacle anywhere else, it doesn't even prove that it remains the case in Longmont, CO.
Perhaps Google has discovered the costs of installing fiber to the home and it's a lot more than they first thought. Now Google will find out the cost of operating and maintaining their systems and those that have their service may find the price of continued subscriptions may go up, but I don't know that for sure. In addition, Google has reduced the number of folks involved in fiber operations, supposedly to investigate some kind of RF method for delivery of very high speed Internet and TV. How's that working out? I'm not anxiously waiting to see.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Before Google Fiber nobody in this area was offering affordable 100Mbps, much less gigabit. Now there are multiple carriers offering it at near-Google prices. They cracked the market open.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"The company says it has slowed down in some areas to experiment with new techniques," such as wireless technology, the report also said.
Uhm.. Wireless fiber..?
This is happening industry wide. Before the pen hit the paper on net-neutrality one company after another announced cancellations of their projects. They saw what happened to the health care industry after the government took it over and it was gone in a flash.
RTA: "The company says it has slowed down in some areas to experiment with new techniques," such as wireless technology, the report also said
Google: it's not new and fun any more. It's starting to look like a long-term commitment, with some serious resistance to overcome and some ongoing cost, so we've lost interest. See 'ya.
Anyone who thinks that a wireless solution can compete with fiber in the long run, is having a pipe dream.
SpaceX and Google have a plan for a planet-wide net coverage service via a large constellation of LEO satellites. There are some initial pieces of paperwork on it filed with the FCC.
and that is, was, and never will be a beta product for the Google folk.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
LEO satellites aren't worth it. You get high latency and high cost.
I expect Google will end up deploying a wireless network based on RFC1149. The latency sucks, but you can't beat the price.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.