SAN FRANCISCO — Google Fiber is halting its rollout in 10 cities and laying off staff as its chief executive, Craig Barratt, steps down, dealing a major setback to the Internet giant’s ambitions of blanketing the nation in super-speedy Internet.
Barratt, CEO of Alphabet’s Access division who had been in charge of Google Fiber, said in a blog post that he would stay on as an adviser. Continue reading
BOULDER — The city of Boulder has so far been passed over for coveted Google Fiber broadband Internet service as the company has set up shop in cities such as Kansas City; Austin, Texas; and Provo, Utah. But it appears the company might be targeting the city for some form of next-generation wireless broadband network.
According to a recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Boulder is one of 24 cities where Google Inc. is seeking to test wireless broadband technology in the 3.5 GHz band. Continue reading
English: 5.2 GHz ‘Canopy’ wireless internet antenna with passive ‘Stinger’ antenna (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Broadband wireless is a time-honored way to fill gaps in a wireline network and improve the overall economics, and emerging LTE-A Pro and 5G technologies will enhance those capabilities. Google is acquiring a US ISP called Webpass to add a wireless element to its Google Fiber platform and accelerate roll-out in some urban areas.
Until now, Google Fiber has mainly built its city networks from scratch, harnessing close relationships with municipal authorities. Webpass expands Google’s deployment options in some interesting locations – primarily Greater Miami, Chicago, Boston and several Californian cities (San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley and San Diego). Google Fiber is live in Atlanta; Kansas City; Provo, Utah; Nashville, Tennesee; and Austin, Texas; and the company is working in San Francisco. It has also said Chicago and San Diego would be potential “fiber cities”, so Webpass could provide it with an earlier entry point. Continue reading
The problem here is not the desire to open up the set-top box market, but Google and others’ use of crony capitalism through the Obama Administration to circumvent the standard FCC process to make an informed decision. The FCC has already started the NPRM process where Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and others can participate. They don’t need to put political pressure on a supposedly-independent department. There is no question that both sides of the argument have a vested interest, but Silicon Valley should follow the processes outlined by the FCC.
From net neutrality to municipal broadband, to new broadband privacy rules and a quest to open up the cable set top box to competition, we’ve noted repeatedly that the FCC under Tom Wheeler isn’t the same FCC we’ve learned to grumble about over the years. For a twenty-year stretch, regardless of party control, the agency was utterly, dismally apathetic to the lack of competition in the broadband space. But under Wheeler, the FCC has not only made broadband competition a priority, but has engaged in other bizarre, uncharacteristic behaviors — like using actual real-world data to influence policy decisions. Continue reading
Google Fiber ended 2015 with just north of 53,000 video subs, according to a blog post from MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett that pointed to fresh data from the U.S. Copyright Office.
The number’s a bit of a mixed bag. In Moffett’s view, Google Fiber’s rate of video growth is strong, but should be stronger. Continue reading
Huntsville is doing it right. They can attract Google and other service providers to utilize their fiber infrastructure while seeing a modest return on investment. Citizens benefit from better services and price competition. I hope that more municipalities start utilizing this model.
Google Fiber said on Monday that it plans to bring its gigabit Internet service to Huntsville, Alabama. But instead of laying its own fiber, Google will offer service over a network that is being built by the city-owned Huntsville Utilities. Huntsville will lease space on the network to Google so it can offer Internet service. But it’s not an exclusive deal, so other Internet providers could offer broadband over the same fiber. Huntsville, a city of nearly 190,000 residents, has been planning the fiber build for more than a year.
City officials “see it as a low-risk investment, as compared to administering the gigabit Internet themselves, which would require a massive increase in personnel in an arena where they have limited expertise,” local news station WHNT reported today. Google Fiber should be available to the first Huntsville customers by the middle of 2017, but it could take a few years to extend service throughout the city, the report said. Continue reading
A number of Google’s high-speed Internet subscribers received invitations to an experimental telephone service, hinting that Google Fiber tests the waters of telephonic services.
Dubbed Google Fiber Phone, the service might remind observant users of another famous Google product, the Google Voice. Voice connects multiple telephones of a user (be it mobile or landline) into one unique phone number.
According to reports, Fiber Phone packs certain features from Google Voice, such as auto call screening and voicemail transcriptions. The call screening takes into account the time of day to function properly. Continue reading
