Google Fiber in Trouble: Second Biggest Expense After Search Engine

[patrickjp93]

38 minutes ago, Zeeee said:

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 .....

It's expanded to enough cities already it's nearly 10 billion in the hole. Redo your math, genius.

[patrickjp93]

14 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 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. 

 

 

New Zealand is small enough to do that. It doesn't work on a mass scale.

[Belgarathian]

2 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

New Zealand is small enough to do that. It doesn't work on a mass scale.

Not true. Your population density would make this a much more viable offering, if anything because of New Zealand's low population density the cost of infrastructure per household is massive. 

 

If you're talking about the policy, then it doesn't matter either as our Governments are very different in how they operate but there is no reason to suggest that it wouldn't work in America other than you'd somehow have to change the model of Government to get it passed and give the FCC some power. Good luck. 

 

 

[patrickjp93]

18 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

Not true. Your population density would make this a much more viable offering, if anything because of New Zealand's low population density the cost of infrastructure per household is massive. 

 

If you're talking about the policy, then it doesn't matter either as our Governments are very different in how they operate but there is no reason to suggest that it wouldn't work in America other than you'd somehow have to change the model of Government. Good luck. 

 

 

No it wouldn't! It's only in places like NYC that you could. Most of the country is fairly rural and spread out.

 

And in New Zealand's case both the population and the island size are small, and you don't have nearly the problem with mountain ranges the U.S. does.

[Lays]

28 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

Not true. Your population density would make this a much more viable offering, if anything because of New Zealand's low population density the cost of infrastructure per household is massive. 

 

If you're talking about the policy, then it doesn't matter either as our Governments are very different in how they operate but there is no reason to suggest that it wouldn't work in America other than you'd somehow have to change the model of Government. Good luck. 

 

 

You do realize new Zealand by itself can fit 2.6 times into Texas, that's just ONE state in the USA. 

 

8 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

No it wouldn't! It's only in places like NYC that you could. Most of the country is fairly rural and spread out.

 

And in New Zealand's case both the population and the island size are small, and you don't have nearly the problem with mountain ranges the U.S. does.

Im not sure he realizes how big the USA is, and how only certain areas are very densely populated.. 

[Belgarathian]

22 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

No it wouldn't! It's only in places like NYC that you could. Most of the country is fairly rural and spread out.

 

And in New Zealand's case both the population and the island size are small, and you don't have nearly the problem with mountain ranges the U.S. does.

No very true, we have no problems with mountains at all. </sarcasm>

 

 

• Fiber is only laid in cities. Small towns have fiber to the exchange and ADSL or VDSL to the home. 
• Fiber is being laid to all hospitals and education institutes. 
• Everything outside what's covered above is being provided a wireless network over 4G and other wireless technologies capable of delivering up to 1gbps per antenna. 

 

http://ufb.org.nz/

https://www.chorus.co.nz/

http://enable.net.nz/

 

There isn't an issue to implement this in America from a logistical or cost perspective, the issue is Government. 

[AlwaysFSX]

8 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

No very true, we have no problems with mountains at all. </sarcasm>

 

 

• Fiber is only laid in cities. Small towns have fiber to the exchange and ADSL or VDSL to the home. 
• Fiber is being laid to all hospitals and education institutes. 
• Everything outside what's covered above is being provided a wireless network over 4G and other wireless technologies capable of delivering up to 1gbps per antenna. 

 

http://ufb.org.nz/

https://www.chorus.co.nz/

http://enable.net.nz/

 

There isn't an issue to implement this in America from a logistical or cost perspective, the issue is Government. 

You really have no idea how much of a logistical nightmare it is here.

 

[Belgarathian]

1 hour ago, Lays said:

You do realize new Zealand by itself can fit 2.6 times into Texas, that's just ONE state in the USA. 

 

Im not sure he realizes how big the USA is, and how only certain areas are very densely populated.. 

Yup... You also have ~318 million people vs. 4.5m. 

 

New Zealand has the majority of our population in cities with rural living accounting for about 10%. When I say rural, I mean townships with less than 1000 people and a 'city' has more than 50,000 people.

 

You already have the majority of the infrastructure in place for this to work, you literally just need to open up your existing infrastructure to wholesale without restriction and on uniform pricing by area, and then further investment in fiber and copper is managed by a SOE or JV between ISPs. Wireless is capable of handling most of the rural expansion and delivering 50mbps. 

[Belgarathian]

10 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

You really have no idea how much of a logistical nightmare it is here.

 

 

Shit, who knew you already had fiber to the vast majority of places? All you're doing from this point is laying fiber to the door for areas with high population density, fiber to node and then copper to the door for not so dense populations, and wireless relays for everything else with the origin point being an exchange with a fiber backbone. Similar to the 4G network. 

 

I'm not proposing to create a new network, rather a unified network. 

 

The hardest part is getting the network acquisitions (or for all the ISPs with significant investment in infrastructure to sign over control to a JV, or SOE), compliance, and consents. 

[patrickjp93]

6 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

No very true, we have no problems with mountains at all. </sarcasm>

 

 

• Fiber is only laid in cities. Small towns have fiber to the exchange and ADSL or VDSL to the home. 
• Fiber is being laid to all hospitals and education institutes. 
• Everything outside what's covered above is being provided a wireless network over 4G and other wireless technologies capable of delivering up to 1gbps per antenna. 

 

http://ufb.org.nz/

https://www.chorus.co.nz/

http://enable.net.nz/

 

There isn't an issue to implement this in America from a logistical or cost perspective, the issue is Government. 

Those are hills, not mountains, and they're way out of the way of the vast majority of your population. We have the Rockies, the Appalachian, and the Sierra Nevada, not to mention the rivers and foothills. The issue is cost of construction. The government is the smallest part of that problem.

[Belgarathian]

2 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Those are hills, not mountains, and they're way out of the way of the vast majority of your population. We have the Rockies, the Appalachian, and the Sierra Nevada, not to mention the rivers and foothills. The issue is cost of construction. The government is the smallest part of that problem.

The Southern Alps run for 500km from top to bottom of the South Island, with a peak height of 3,700m. No, they're not hills at all. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Alps

 

I give up. Seriously. If you think that construction costs for your network are the biggest issue then you're beyond help (given that the majority of the network is already in place, we're only talking about unifying and extending). 

[patrickjp93]

3 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

 

Shit, who knew you already had fiber to the vast majority of places? All you're doing from this point is laying fiber to the door for areas with high population density, fiber to node and then copper to the door for not so dense populations, and wireless relays for everything else with the origin point being an exchange with a fiber backbone. Similar to the 4G network. 

 

I'm not proposing to create a new network, rather a unified network. 

 

The hardest part is getting the network acquisitions (or for all the ISPs with significant investment in infrastructure to sign over control to a JV, or SOE), compliance, and consents. 

That fiber is nearly 40 years old in most places and the backbones themselves usually can't handle more than 2Gbps. Having all the old infrastructure doesn't mean anything. To get everyone in the U.S. up to Gigabit speeds would require re-running ALL of it.

[AlwaysFSX]

4 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

Shit, who knew you already had fiber to the vast majority of places? All you're doing from this point is laying fiber to the door for areas with high population density, fiber to node and then copper to the door for not so dense populations, and wireless relays for everything else with the origin point being an exchange with a fiber backbone. Similar to the 4G network. 

 

The hardest part is getting the network acquisitions (or for all the ISPs with significant investment in infrastructure to sign over control to a JV, or SOE), compliance, and consents. 

Here's the thing you don't understand, there aren't many areas with a high population density. Yeah we have an "okay" fiber backbone but the majority of the country is essentially rural. There's only a few cities that are truly high density. And even that would be a logistical nightmare because we do have so many people. The biggest problem ISN'T regulation. It's money. You truly don't understand just how much fiber needs to be bought. Let alone digging up all of the old shit and installing the new lines.

 

And wireless? You don't know how big these areas you. You just don't if that's something you suggest.

[AlwaysFSX]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

That fiber is nearly 40 years old in most places and the backbones themselves usually can't handle more than 2Gbps. Having all the old infrastructure doesn't mean anything. To get everyone in the U.S. up to Gigabit speeds would require re-running ALL of it.

And I've seen how the government spends money, take the total cost and add 250% minimum.

[Curufinwe_wins]

20 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Those are hills, not mountains, and they're way out of the way of the vast majority of your population. We have the Rockies, the Appalachian, and the Sierra Nevada, not to mention the rivers and foothills. The issue is cost of construction. The government is the smallest part of that problem.

I don't know if I completely agree with that assessment. Not that the federal government is to blame or anything (or even state really), but a shocking number of local municipalities have non-compete clauses added to bylaws for god only knows what reason (I mean I know what reason, but it isn't a good one) which stifles the shit out of competition (particularly in the Midwest and West Coast).

 

Which defacto discourages large infrastructure investments as well.

 

That said, rivers/lake navigation is by far the biggest immediate fiber placement in the Upper Midwest on a large scale (although there are some interesting ways certain groups piggyback onto the University fiber systems that go across the states.)

 

 

http://www.ntnc.org/images/maps/NTNC_map_2016.pdf

[Belgarathian]

54 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

That fiber is nearly 40 years old in most places and the backbones themselves usually can't handle more than 2Gbps. Having all the old infrastructure doesn't mean anything. To get everyone in the U.S. up to Gigabit speeds would require re-running ALL of it.

I may be very wrong here, but the cable isn't the issue - it's the hardware on each end? The cable is, in layman's terms, a conduit for light to pass through. Sure, the cables that we use today are more flexible, durable, have better internal reflection, and better shielded, but there is no reason that with new hardware that an older cable can deliver higher bandwidth (within reason). 

 

Obviously, you have degradation of the cable with age which may alter the attenuation and dispersion properties.

 

The fact that the fibre network hasn't been updated in all these years tells me that it isn't being utilised to its full extent, or is uneconomical to update, but I wouldn't put my money on this. For reference the cost to lay fiber using Chorus as the contractor is approx. $1000 NZD per meter (Chorus makes money on this, probably between 20-30% NP). The USA is ~4,500km wide and if we octuple that to account for all the twists and turns, then the cost to lay fiber from one end to the other would be $36,000,000,000 NZD.

 

<sarcasm> That's horribly expensive, I take back all my arguments. </sarcasm> 

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

I don't know if I completely agree with that assessment. Not that the federal government is to blame or anything (or even state really), but a shocking number of local municipalities have non-compete clauses added to bylaws for god only knows what reason (I mean I know what reason, but it isn't a good one) which stifles the shit out of competition (particularly in the Midwest and West Coast).

 

Which defacto discourages large infrastructure investments as well.

 

That said, rivers/lake navigation is by far the biggest immediate fiber placement in the Upper Midwest on a large scale (although there are some interesting ways certain groups piggyback onto the University fiber systems that go across the states.)

 

 

http://www.ntnc.org/images/maps/NTNC_map_2016.pdf

I will agree those non-competes need to go. That's still just not a big problem when discussing the issue as a whole.

 

49 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

I may be very wrong here, but the cable isn't the issue - it's the hardware on each end? The cable is, in layman's terms, a conduit for light to pass through. Sure, the cables that we use today are more flexible, durable, have better internal reflection, and better shielded, but there is no reason that with new hardware that an older cable can deliver higher bandwidth (within reason). 

 

Obviously, you have degradation of the cable with age which may alter the attenuation and dispersion properties.

 

The fact that the fibre network hasn't been updated in all these years tells me that it isn't being utilised to its full extent, or is uneconomical to update, but I wouldn't put my money on this. 

Not necessarily. Some of those lines are literally only 10 fiber strands built with less than optimal glass. Switches can be a problem, but much of the fiber backbone was built in the early 80s and was considered to be way more than we'd ever need. Obviously, they were wrong.

 

It's not economical. The transatlantic cables haven't been rerun since the time they were laid for the exact same reason.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

I will agree those non-competes need to go. That's still just not a big problem when discussing the issue as a whole.

Not in cities sure, but moving between cities is often affected by it. It isn't the largest issue, just saying it is one (as we both agree).

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, Belgarathian said:

The Southern Alps run for 500km from top to bottom of the South Island, with a peak height of 3,700m. No, they're not hills at all. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Alps

 

I give up. Seriously. If you think that construction costs for your network are the biggest issue then you're beyond help (given that the majority of the network is already in place, we're only talking about unifying and extending). 

Those are hills by comparison to the mountains of the U.S. They're also softer stone.

 

The majority is not in place and the fiber backbone is already very close to capacity because it was built in the 80s.

[HalGameGuru]

5 hours 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 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. 

 

 

Those commercial entities only exist as they do via government fiat. A corporation cannot force anyone to do anything without the state. McDonald's selling BigMacs at gunpoint would be hilarious though.

 

As an aside, after looking into it NZ is more of a backroom single provider system than a market. Especially on fiber. A government mandated corporation owns the backbone and retailers distribute cost controlled subscriber lines. Not a big issue so long as the people involved are OK with it. I find it interesting Romania has a lot more people spread less densely (overall) but is leading the charge on the internet side. Ranked 10th in the world and 1st in Europe compared to NZ's 42nd. But as NZ only pushed this current single holder system recently they may well catch up.

[HalGameGuru]

The VAST majority of people in NZ live along the coast. And the nation is small enough they could run along coast and lowlands almost the whole way. America is too dispersed and geographically diverse to be able to cookie cutter the NZ system. And too many groups have claim over much of the existing infrastructure, different levels and departments of government lay claim to much, corporate entities don't want to invest only to have issues dealing with the state, and getting new right of ways or leasing existing would be a headache and a half for all the jurisdictions and boundaries they would have to cross to connect any major population centers.

 

EDIT: If memory serves most of what Google is doing it making use of dark fiber, stuff that's already been installed and not being fully utilized, I believe they are primarily pushing Fiber the last few hundred yards to the poles in the neighborhoods from central nodes. They aren't laying all new infrastructure. @patrickjp93 Am I correct or mis-remembering?

[Eniqmatic]

Huh. Not read the comments but I'm surprised more people haven't signed up to it. I expected a lot more subscribers since it does seem to kill everything else out there, especially at the price.

 

I wonder if it is because not enough non-technical people will probably have ever heard of it?

[patrickjp93]

35 minutes ago, HalGameGuru said:

The VAST majority of people in NZ live along the coast. And the nation is small enough they could run along coast and lowlands almost the whole way. America is too dispersed and geographically diverse to be able to cookie cutter the NZ system. And too many groups have claim over much of the existing infrastructure, different levels and departments of government lay claim to much, corporate entities don't want to invest only to have issues dealing with the state, and getting new right of ways or leasing existing would be a headache and a half for all the jurisdictions and boundaries they would have to cross to connect any major population centers.

 

EDIT: If memory serves most of what Google is doing it making use of dark fiber, stuff that's already been installed and not being fully utilized, I believe they are primarily pushing Fiber the last few hundred yards to the poles in the neighborhoods from central nodes. They aren't laying all new infrastructure. @patrickjp93 Am I correct or mis-remembering?

You're right for the most part, but unless Google can buy the switch houses (the nodes along the backbone), they have to build their own and run more and splice into the old lines. And many times ISPs are not willing to sell/lease, so the costs are much higher than many seem to believe.

[HalGameGuru]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

You're right for the most part, but unless Google can buy the switch houses (the nodes along the backbone), they have to build their own and run more and splice into the old lines. And many times ISPs are not willing to sell/lease, so the costs are much higher than many seem to believe.

Well I thought that was how they were choosing which cities to move into, available dark fiber and willing backbone lessors. Ignoring the roadblocks and exorbitant costs is there a demand for backbone infrastructure that Google could make a parallel fiber network and become a lessor as well? Or is it a situation where the established players are the only ones that could reliably stay profitable?

[handymanshandle]

I really wanted to see Google Fiber take off, but I think Google could've probably charged a bit more for their service. I mean not saying that the current prices aren't bad, but I think for Google to see a higher ROI they probably could've charged a bit more for their service.