Google Fiber in Trouble: Second Biggest Expense After Search Engine

[HalGameGuru]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

It also has to buy up the switch houses or rent/lease them. It has to lease every pole or underground line that it doesn't outright buy too. And like I said those fiber switches are damn expensive. Even a 32-switch fiber blade will set you back 25 grand, and that's on the cheap side.

No doubt. That bbpmag place does not have the "source" material where they linked it so we may have to contact them for whatever source they used for their article. I don't hold out hope though.

 

Should there be readily and openly accessible sources for such information? Would most companies actually doing this work make that publicly accessible? OR would that stay behind closed stockholder doors?

[HalGameGuru]

very much broken forum... Ignore this one

[patrickjp93]

1 minute ago, HalGameGuru said:

No doubt. That bbpmag place does not have the "source" material where they linked it so we may have to contact them for whatever source they used for their article. I don't hold out hope though.

 

Should there be readily and openly accessible sources for such information? Would most companies actually doing this work make that publicly accessible? OR would that stay behind closed stockholder doors?

They can do whatever they want. I'm just saying these pages are useless for drawing real conclusions from.

[HalGameGuru]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

They can do whatever they want. I'm just saying these pages are useless for drawing real conclusions from.

I can see that, I'm not really looking to make any conclusion though, I've just become interested in the topic from your back and forth. It would be interesting to know what the real cost for, say, a subdivision or small town to implement their own fiber rollout and then lease its administration to a backbone provider like Google or Level3 or something and have their own self-owned super high-speed network

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

I finished reading that, and I see claims for formulas, but I do not see the source work. Where are the construction costs tallied? Where is the nitty gritty work of tabulating these costs based on current fiber line, switch boards, construction, pole leasing, special entrenchment equipment rental/purchase? This is ignoring so much of the burden of proof it's laughable.

It's a summary article, so that isn't surprising... the original data link was listed in the article but it looks like the "journal" website went over a full reorganization of the website after 2012 (as format for earlier articles is quite different, and the link in question results in a 404).

 

I have yet to see even a smidgen of hard proof on the opposite side of this farcical 10k/household passed metric, so this is at least massively better than that (given all companies check out and proof the study was actually completely is verifiable by both first, second, and third party sources.)

[patrickjp93]

21 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

It's a summary article, so that isn't surprising... the original data link was listed in the article but it looks like the "journal" website went over a full reorganization of the website after 2012 (as format for earlier articles is quite different, and the link in question results in a 404).

 

I have yet to see even a smidgen of hard proof on the opposite side of this farcical 10k/household passed metric, so this is at least massively better than that (given all companies check out and proof the study was actually completely is verifiable by both first, second, and third party sources.)

1) Why would Google lie about its own costs when it obviously could make a killing by taking over telecom for the country in the long run?

 

2) I see no verification. I see a small group with an agenda and an unfulfilled burden of proof.

[Curufinwe_wins]

28 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

1) Why would Google lie about its own costs when it obviously could make a killing by taking over telecom for the country in the long run?

 

2) I see no verification. I see a small group with an agenda and an unfulfilled burden of proof.

I see no statement from Google in the article or its original source, or that source quoting above 10k USD per houshold passed...
 

I had no objections to saying it was prohibitively expensive.. But the argument I had issues with was @Mark77 's still completely unqualitifed statement of average cost per household passed in the US and AU of 10k/household.

 

Also that #2 is super rich coming from you...

[patrickjp93]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

I see no statement from Google in the article or its original source, or that source quoting above 10k USD per houshold passed...
 

I had no objections to saying it was prohibitively expensive.. But the argument I had issues with was @Mark77 's still completely unqualitifed statement of average cost per household passed in the US and AU of 10k/household.

 

Also that #2 is super rich coming from you...

I've held up my end every time I've been asked.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

I've held up my end every time I've been asked.

I did ask explicitly for you or anyone else to show me a 10k per household passed statement...

 

Also the Samsung V-nand layer thing? yea...

 

Anyways, I don't think we are actually disagreeing on the final conclusion here, just a wild statement I called out and that led you to believe I was suggesting Google magically didn't want to make money or something...

[patrickjp93]

8 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

I did ask explicitly for you or anyone else to show me a 10k per household passed statement...

 

Also the Samsung V-nand layer thing? yea...

 

Anyways, I don't think we are actually disagreeing on the final conclusion here, just a wild statement I called out and that led you to believe I was suggesting Google magically didn't want to make money or something...

That I missed.

 

I was right about the layers of VNAND. 

 

Fair enough.

[JAKEBAB]

10 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

I see no statement from Google in the article or its original source, or that source quoting above 10k USD per houshold passed...
 

I had no objections to saying it was prohibitively expensive.. But the argument I had issues with was @Mark77 's still completely unqualitifed statement of average cost per household passed in the US and AU of 10k/household.

 

Also that #2 is super rich coming from you...

It's pure garbage. In a mass rollout NZ is at $2400 i believe and Aus is at $4500 which would only continue to go down as we rolled out more fiber (which isn't happening anymore). For an individual house in Aus to be connected it can be anywhere from $15k to $100ks depending how far away the nearest FAN is. 

 

So for the USA you can conclude it would be much cheaper, i think i've seen figures of $800-$1500 thrown around but it's been awhile.

[KuJoe]

All I have to say is F*CK GOOGLE if they think bringing 1Gbps or 10Gbps to uninformed, non-technical consumers is a good idea for the internet.

[FakezZ]

On 8/27/2016 at 4:33 PM, Syntaxvgm said:

takes ~ 14 million payments of 70USD (with 100% profit, not considering upkeep, service call, equipment, ect) to make that kinda money up. 

Yeah but that is per month. With a subscriber-base of about 1.7 million, monthly cost of $100.000 and charging each customer $50 a month they would make the cost up in a year, if my calculations are correct.

[TidaLWaveZ]

On 8/27/2016 at 9:44 AM, Michael McAllister said:

Competition solves a lot of problems.  Google is just one company.  If other companies started offering gigabit fiber at affordable prices in areas which Google doesn't serve, there would be a drastic change.  Comcast is interested in making profits.  If other companies threaten their business model, they will have to adapt in order compete within the market.

 

I've said it once and I'll say it again, ISPs are one of the areas in which true competition does not exist.  If Comcast and other large companies have the legal resources, it stands to reason they would try to find any loophole to prevent others from entering their markets.  Having the option between cable or DSL in a given area or DSL and satellite is not a true option as they are vastly different levels of service.

^Spot on

 

I live in Louisville KY and Google announced plans for fiber over 2 years ago.  The city unanimously voted to begin construction to place the cables and Time Warner and ATT brought the vote back at least twice.  I'm not sure what has even happened but I know construction has been at least halted if not completely stopped because the current ISP's threatened to sue/did sue/are suing if Google tried to use any of the cities shared utility poles which they needed to at certain points.  At this point I'm pretty sure the deal is off in Louisville, which is sad because there was a huge backing for it.

 

 

[♠FlamieMeister♠]

Good thing googles is in my city  Getting it installed soon in my humble dwelling. Can't wait to get rid of TWC

[Paragon_X]

Meh, I don't think so. Laying infrastructure, is expensive Google knew it. and its an investment that will work at loss for some years (maybe a decade) before it returns some profit. I don't think its in any trouble. It will give a lot of power to google and their services to have their own fiber network that (hopefully) will run across the USA.

[MadOver]

On 8/27/2016 at 2:46 PM, SnakeDrone said:

If they get 500k customer per city and let say 50% of the income ($70/month/customer) goes to upkeep, service call, equipment, ect.

Then the fibre will pay it self back in 5 years.

That's not bad at all.

 

Exactly, these companies dont think on short term returns.

Also Google want's to make sure everyone has speedy internet access. The faster users browse, watch videos, the more they make also in the long run. 

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, MadOver said:

 

Exactly, these companies dont think on short term returns.

Also Google want's to make sure everyone has speedy internet access. The faster users browse, watch videos, the more they make also in the long run. 

Their shareholders do, and that means the companies have to respect them to an extent.

[Belgarathian]

On 8/28/2016 at 1:44 AM, Michael McAllister said:

Competition solves a lot of problems.  Google is just one company.  If other companies started offering gigabit fiber at affordable prices in areas which Google doesn't serve, there would be a drastic change.  Comcast is interested in making profits.  If other companies threaten their business model, they will have to adapt in order compete within the market.

 

I've said it once and I'll say it again, ISPs are one of the areas in which true competition does not exist.  If Comcast and other large companies have the legal resources, it stands to reason they would try to find any loophole to prevent others from entering their markets.  Having the option between cable or DSL in a given area or DSL and satellite is not a true option as they are vastly different levels of service.

The problem with the USA is that there isn't competition, or enough of it anyway. No one shares networks, and the FCC is trying to create change but they just get sued and then everyone in congress and from a local body tries to cut off their feet. 

 

To really start things rolling we shouldn't have to have companies like Google roll out their own fibre network, why not open the whole lot up by creating a law that forces all ISPs to wholesale connections to any ISP at a fixed rate (set by the FCC or government). That way you no longer need 5 networks in the same city, one shared network reducing the cost of infrastructure and increasing competition.

 

___________

 

There are way too many people to quote here - Google has said that it's not returning the ROI that they wanted, that doesn't mean that it's not profitable, it just means that it's hurting their capital utilisation as the money spent on infrastructure development would have a higher return if spent on other projects. 

[Zeeee]

On 8/27/2016 at 7:34 AM, patrickjp93 said:

14 million people per city? Good luck with that. I think the total subscriber count is still under 5 million.

holy shit, do you people even math??? NO shit they wont make the money back in only ONE MONTHLY PAYMENT. Its 70/MONTH!!!! So 5 million people city a million people will buy fiber theoretically speaking then that means 70mill/month in revenue. That means itll take them 14 months a little over a year TO GET THAT COST IN REVENUE. IN two years its profitable by a lot and not to mention more people get it as it goes on .....

[HalGameGuru]

53 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

-snip-

Government intervention and overreach is why we have most of the issues we do. If you want to know how to handle internet right look at Romania.

[Belgarathian]

14 minutes ago, HalGameGuru said:

Government intervention and overreach is why we have most of the issues we do. If you want to know how to handle internet right look at Romania.

Or New Zealand... Where we have heaps of government intervention and 93% of NZ has access to 1000/500 fiber by 2020 and one network (1 fibre, 1 copper for each area, with exceptions, that are shared Government oversight). 

 

Most of the issues you have are not from Government intervention, but from commercial entities lobbying for Government intervention. There is a massive difference. 

 

 

[suicidalfranco]

3 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

Or New Zealand... Where we have heaps of government intervention and 93% of NZ has access to 1000/500 fiber by 2020. 

 

 

impossible, the US has thought us that government ruin everything and hinder competition instead of boosting it /s

[Belgarathian]

2 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

impossible, the US has thought us that government ruin everything and hinder competition instead of boosting it /s

Well to be honest, your Government & business culture does make me laugh. A lot. 

[suicidalfranco]

Just now, Belgarathian said:

Well to be honest, your Government & business culture does make me laugh. A lot. 

don't offend me, i'm not from America