[rayiner]

Why is broadband so shitty in the heart of Silicon Valley? Why doesn’t Google just wire the whole place up as a tech demo?

Comcast just upgraded my fiber to 7 gbps. It’s spendy ($300/mo) but I also have gigabit Fios available for $80/mo.

[toast0]

> Why is broadband so shitty in the heart of Silicon Valley? Why doesn’t Google just wire the whole place up as a tech demo?

Google couldn't figure out how to get on poles. When they announced their batch of 20? or so real Google fiber cities, AT&T rolled out fiber to a good number of them before Google got city council approval to do anything. Comcast announced a loss leader 2Gbps symmetric for $300/month program [1], etc. It's not too hard to roll out fiber if you've got access to the poles and enough clout to put your fiber boxes wherever you need to. (sure, you gotta pay the property owner a little bit, but not it's not too bad)

[1] IIRC, it was always delivered as 10G metro ethernet, originally limited to 2G, but I think they increased that over time (I thought I had seen 6, but you're reporting 7). You've got to be close enough to their existing fiber that they're not losing too much on the buildout with their $1000 installation fee cap.

[bad416f1f5a2]

Google wired my city up as a tech demo. Their microtrenching approach was atrocious and resulted in frequent service interruptions and significant traffic disruption as they patched the same spots multiple times.

Eventually they decided the network was so damaged that they’d have to do a total rebuild, and that wasn’t interesting. They threw up their hands up and left, giving the city a few million to clean up the mess.

So, careful what you wish for.

[cbozeman]

That's because Google has shitty leadership that doesn't understand playing the long game. This is why Google's only real source of income is search, and by that, I mean of course, ads.

Google kills any project that's not profitable within a year. They kill any project that doesn't become a 100x'er in a few years.

Microsoft lost $4,000,000,000 to $7,000,000,000 on their Xbox division until the Xbox 360. That's the kind of loss that Google executives and directors can't stomach, for whatever reason, but it's the kind of loss you have to suffer through to get fiber out to a whole state. Google could slowly conquer state after state with fiber, which would be an enormous benefit to them, but they're too cowardly and short-sighted to see it through.

[google234123]

It worked in SLC. Maybe they dug deeper trenches?

[bad416f1f5a2]

3x deeper - Louisville got 2” trenches. This went as well as you’d expect.

[rayiner]

Why do you have to trench? Have you ever seen Tokyo? Outside some very high density areas, all the fiber is on poles.

[tadfisher]

Pole ownership isn't a clear cut thing, and cities are cagey around erecting new poles. So using existing poles requires paying someone money, or is impossible due to local telecom monopolies. Either way, microtrenching is very cheap and attractive, though it has maintenance issues in areas with large climate swings.

[bad416f1f5a2]

A grab bag of federal/state/local rules and widely varying ownership of those poles.

First, are you in a FCC regulated state, or one of the 21 that have passed their own pole regulations and have very different rules?

Have you negotiated a pole access agreement with the owner of the poles - which might be an electrical company, a municipality, or a Baby Bell? Some of those entities would love to see fiber internet in their community; others will be sure to make your life difficult because you are a competitor. And in some cases the ownership dictates the regulatory framework: a rural electric coop’s poles are handled differently from a municipalities, which are different from a telco.

Does your agreement/regulatory body allow you to do make ready work, or are you depending on the pole owner to do site surveys & line up engineering crews for the other utilities attached to the pole - likely telco, cable, maybe some existing fiber too? Are those poles also running electrical, in which case you’ve got even more headaches to deal with? Is the pole owner or anyone attached to the pole going to try to slow you down by claiming your changes are complex and need additional oversight?

Are you willing to wait, if you are required, for each other utility on the pole to send their engineers out to move their lines so you’re ready to place yours?

Alternatively: you negotiate an agreement with a city to trench in their right of way. One set of local regulators to work with. Looks appealing in comparison, no?

[inferiorhuman]

Depends on the city I'm sure. If a city's already invested in undergrounding utilities there may not be any other option.

[ausbah]

was that kansas city?