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Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption We Were Promised (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Some eight years on and Google Fiber's ambitions are just a pale echo of the disruptive potential originally proclaimed by the company. While Google Fiber did make some impressive early headway in cities like Austin, the company ran into numerous deployment headaches. Fearing competition, incumbent ISPs like AT&T and Comcast began a concerted effort to block the company's access to essential utility poles, even going so far as to file lawsuits against cities like Nashville that tried to expedite the process. Even in launched markets, customer uptake wasn't quite what executives were expecting. Estimates peg Google Fiber TV subscribers at fewer than 100,000, thanks in large part to the cord cutting mindset embraced by early adopters. Broadband subscriber tallies (estimated as at least 500,000) were notably better, but still off from early company projections. Even without anti-competitive roadblocks, progress was slow. Digging up city streets and burying fiber was already a time-consuming and expensive process. And while Google has tried to accelerate these deployments via something called "microtrenching" (machines that bury fiber an inch below roadways), broadband deployment remains a rough business. It's a business made all the rougher by state and local regulators and lawmakers who've been in the pockets of entrenched providers like Comcast for the better part of a generation.
...how much of the US was pretty much given on a silver plate to the current ISP monopolies, and how much ISPs are still paying politicians for things to remain that way... it's just sad.
For anyone thinking this is Google's fault, you really need to search around and read articles that explains it from the company's side.
To put it very simply, it was taxpayer money that paid the entire infrastructure to handle the Internet, rights to it was haphazardly given up to ISPs, now everytime Google needs to pass fiber through existing infrastructure (which sometimes is the only way), it needs to gently ask permission to the likes of AT&T and Comcast to do so, which of course will do everything not to let them, including suing Google when the local government tries to expedite the whole thing.
Google Fiber failed because the government gave US infrastructure on a silver platter to existing ISP monopolies. That's why. It's the same reason why the FCC is working the way it is right now. You guys have an effective telecommunications mafia up there and it's gonna stay that way.
It's why Google caved in and started working on the next high speed transmission technology instead of wasting time and money in something that won't work out. Don't take it from me though, just search around for the information.
The city is largely bending over backwards to try to help Google Fiber. The problem is our state legislature, which is flaming red and never misses an opportunity to fellate AT&T for more bribes, sorry, "campaign contributions". Our legislature has never seen a broadband bill favoring AT&T that they didn't like, nor a broadband bill helping Google or municipalities/utilities that they wouldn't go out of their way to squash.
The people living in cities are being held political hostage by the people in rural areas who voted (R) without thinking. I'd imagine Kansas is in a similar predicament.