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Google Fiber To Pay Nearly $4 Million To Louisville In Exit Deal (wdrb.com)
As Google Fiber prepares to leave Louisville, Kentucky, Google has agreed to pay the city government $3.84 million to fix damage to city streets. "The payments, to be made over 20 months, will cover removing fiber cables and sealant from roads, milling and paving streets 'where needed' and removing Google's above-ground infrastructure," reports WDRB, citing a news release from Mayor Greg Fischer's office. From the report: Google Fiber also agreed to donate $150,000 to the Community Foundation of Louisville to support Metro's "digital inclusion" efforts, which include "refurbishing used computers for low-income individuals and the enrollment of public housing residents in low-cost internet access through other companies providing service in Louisville," according to the mayor's office. Google Fiber, a unit of the Silicon Valley tech giant, said Feb. 7 that it would abandon the Louisville market after running into too many problems with the micro-trenching technique it used to install its fiber-optic cables as shallow as two inches below the pavement surface of city streets. Louisville, which lobbied for years to get Google Fiber, has the distinction of being the first city to lose the super-fast internet service. The report notes that Google Fiber only reached a small slice of the city, estimating that the service was only available to, at most, about 11,000 households.
Sergey or Larry probably carry around that much in pocket change.
But this just ruined it for me.
I've worked with microduct under slots cut in the street. Done properly, it works well.
Two inches down? That's nuts. You have to pack sand on top of the duct so it stays in place and then seal the sand so it doesn't wash away. And the seal doesn't stay. You have to keep redoing it until the next time the road is paved.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Couldn't the city just have taken over the cables at least? Why do they have to be removed?
I can see repairing the damage but it seems excessive to go back and remove everything installed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
look like google got off easy. most likely it is going to cost more to fix the problems google caused. it is not cheap to fix city streets. wonder how much it cost google with off the record payments to get off so easy.
Loser News Site..... Nothing matters here.
Total incompetence by Google, and worse by the politicians for letting them get away with it.
USA, leader of the free world....and you can't even get fibre done properly.
2 inches? In the Midwest? Where one regularly drives past (and into) potholes that are over 4 inches deep after each winter?
Maybe the thought was if the cables were just 2in down, they would actually serve to reinforce the road. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cancer is coming for you.
From the rent free tenant in your head. Your insanity will backfire. Count on it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I can just see Dr. Evil slavering over the prospect of four <<>> dollars.
Don't spend it all in one place.
I wish Raleigh could get the same deal. Bastards tore up yards all over the city, but all we got was empty (and often poorly buried) conduits. They only sell access to businesses or apartment buildings it seems.
They dug holes all around an entrance to a greenway park, and left it like that for nearly a year. Rendered that end of the park unusable by the residents. City of Raleigh didn't lift a finger. I suspect they might have if they had known how Google was going to renege on their agreement to supply said residents with fiber.
Google is just another untrustworthy corp. Yet another reason to use DuckDuckGo.
My town has had Comcast for years. Around Y2K Verizon started wiring fiber, and RCN, who was expanding into all the neighboring towns, signed a deal with the town.
Then the 2000/2001 Dot Bomb hit. Verizon, to their minor credit, finished the job. RCN, who hadn't started anything, walked away from the deal.
I guess there wasn't a non-performance penalty, and nobody in town management gave a rat's ass, so, their reaction was "meh, let them walk away".
In the mean time though the town, which owns all the poles (because town owned electric company) said, "hey Verizon, you pay for telephone ines on the poles, but doesn't include the fiber too. Come talk to us about how much you're going to pay for that."
In the mean time, even with two cable providers, prices are the same as everywhere else. No competition driving prices down here.
Google pulling the fiber out can not be re-used. IOW, there is absolutely zero value to Louisville or Google in pulling that out. This could only be some local gov. idiots trying to punish Google. Sad.
The new normal is Google is an old fogey and Apple is Granny Smith Apple.
Apple is moving past iTunes, pay per song download towards streaming, retiring iTunes, will *speculate* stop supporting older hardware and turn off services
Google is cleaning out the old dirty shirts unused for months from the bottom of the closet and putting them in the retirement bin.
Both companies are well into or past middle age and struggling to have a new product produce meaningful new revenue beyond 5% of total revenue.
Expect flights of fancy to be shut down or currently free services, Youtube, Google Maps and Apple maps to become paid via either a content surcharge on your cell phone bill or some other sort of monthly micro-cost.
Generationaly, how many Google or Apple managers have overseen a hugely successful new product in terms of total top line company revenue since 2014?
Headwinds are against both companies making significant revenue for new products as a percent of total revenue since total revenue is so large.
Combine with Amazon Bezos announcing a slowing growth rate and the FANG stocks are going to be much slower moving.
Google's last big consumer push was 2010~2012 with Google+, Google Voice, Android v4, ...
Apple's last big consumer push leading to revenue streams of size was iTunes 2005, iPhone/iPad 2009 and iphone China in ~2015
A new smart speaker selling 2 million at Christmas is so tiny as to not matter.
Self driving cars - far far away from the 5% threshold needed for mass mass market
Hybrid or all Electric cars - Same - far far away
Home automation gadgets - Niche with millions in revenue but not much impact in top line of a billion dollar company
One can look at the recent acquisitions to see which ones 3 years out have actually led to significant revenue for the company acquiring it.
When the professional managers and accountants take over....."shave a few cents off this number and profits go up by 5 million"
versus persons in charge actually being able to develop new products
I just got cited by an electrical inspector because a circuit that runs through buried PVC doesn't have its PVC buried deep enough between my house and my detached garage. It's probably 8" or so below the ground, with a concrete sidewalk running over the top of it. But the code states it must be buried a full 18".
So Google thought fiber was ok to just shove 2 inches below the roadway?!
I sometimes wonder if the Google Fiber project was MEANT to fail - so Google could experiment with a bunch of stuff related to deploying it and then pull out again?
How fucking hard can it be to dig a trench for a tube. Losers.
The company that makes trillions of dollars is only paying 4 million. They need to pay for everything the inconvenience the promises made. They need to pay 100 million to make it right. Plus the city should keep the infrastructure and build upon it.
Don't you have anything better to do in your $1 house than constantly post this spam? Are you really that desperate for attention that you feel the need to constantly stalk and harass SuperKendall, raymorris, and ShanghaiBill? The answer appears to be yes, though your efforts would be better spent completing a MacOS version of your toy string sorting program.
Your spam and harassment is unwelcome, Alexander. You've harassed many other users, too, including Subie, Ol Olsoc, webmistressrachel, c6gunner, Zontar The Mindless, amicusNYCL, Coren22, and so many others. Isn't it time you stop being such a bitter crybaby and do something useful with your life? Although your string sorting program (APK Hosts File Engine) is complete shit, working on it would still be better than crapflooding Slashdot.
Grow up, APK. You're 54 years old. Act your damn age.
is not the ISP you're looking for.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Paid forum disruption shitposter trolls sure do have weird sexual fantasies.
No surprised. ACs never read anything, not even the summary.
The payment isn't going to be a pay out as cash. From the summary, it is the total amount that they are going to spend over 20 months.
cover removing fiber cables and sealant from roads, milling and paving streets 'where needed' and removing Google's above-ground infrastructure,
refurbishing used computers for low-income individuals and the enrollment of public housing residents in low-cost internet access through other companies providing service in Louisville
cover removing fiber cables and sealant from roads
Can anyone figure out why the city would want them to remove the cables and sealant? Some other outfit could come along and make use the already laid cable, no?
It doesn't sound like the sealant was working well.
https://www.wdrb.com/news/google-fiber-announces-plan-to-fix-exposed-fiber-lines-in/article_fbc678c3-66ef-5d5b-860c-2156bc2f0f0c.html
Google was never in this to bring the people of Louisville faster internet. This was all about them trying a half-baked idea that they probably had reservations to try in a bigger city. Google abused the trust that the city of Louisville invested in them by leaving their garbage cable in the ground and only moved to do this after the local government started to squawk. Shame on them!
The citizens of Louisville got their hopes up just to be dashed. And now they are left with Spectrum Cable gloating about Google's loss on the radio and behaving as if they are the city's saviors.
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APK
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Can anyone figure out why the city would want them to remove the cables and sealant?
Because microtrenching doesn't work, it's only slightly more effective than using chewing gum to tack the fibre onto walls of buildings. So Google has ended up damaging roads and sidewalks, and now needs to undo the damage.
Just to put this into perspective, the regs for fibre here are buried at least 550mm deep in protective 20mm thick-walled conduit. If you suggested a microtrench you'd get laughed at. Literally laughed at, they'd think you were making a joke.