What happens if you are abandoned by Google Fiber

Although it takes a challenge to make better things ...

Do you remember Google Fiber? It was announced about 10 years ago as an experimental project from Google that provides inexpensive broadband services. Since then, it has been gradually expanding mainly in medium-sized cities in the United States, and has a good reputation. However, only in Louisville, Kentucky, withdrawal in just over a year. Moreover, the cause was Google Fiber itself. As a result, the roads in Louisville are in dire straits. Why did this happen? This is a report by Adam K. Raymond, a reporter from Gizmodo in Louisville.

Highlands district of Louisville, Kentucky. Black rubber strings pop out in chunks from the ground at the intersection of Speed ​​Avenue and Fernwood Avenue. One block away from there, go to Rosedale Avenue, where the same sponge-like substance appears and disappears like a snake through the asphalt. This is a sealant to protect the Google Fiber cable buried in the ground.

Alphabet's gigabit broadband service, Google Fiber, began trading with Louisville in 2015. After a two-year delay and negotiations on deployment, Google adopted a quirky but cost-effective plan to bring high-speed Internet to Kentucky's largest city. However, in February of this year, just 16 months after it started, Google Fiber announced that it would stop the service. Since the introduction of Google Fiber in 2010, Louisville has become the first city to be out of service in just 19 cities. Traces of Google's blunder are rolling on this road everywhere.

Traces of blunder = cable sealant

"I've just been driving around the streets of Google Fiber," said city councilman Brandon Coan. His hometown was one of the places where Google Fiber laid cables before the cancellation was announced, and it seems that cable seals were rolling everywhere from the road outside the cafe.

Said him.

Roads are not the only damage the city has suffered. For Louisville, a small but big ambition, Google left discouraged consumers with unfulfilled promises of economic growth and letting tech companies use their city as a guinea pig. It is a newspaper headline with a rounded face of the city council.

I was looking for an inexpensive cable laying method

But it wasn't a complete loss for Google Fiber. I learned that nanotrenching, which digs only 2 inches from the ground and fills the cable, is a failure. "We don't currently have plans to dig a 2-inch groove. We're thinking of digging deeper in the main design," a Google Fiber spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email.

"It's a shame, considering that they wouldn't have had any problems digging two inches deeper," Coan said.

When Google Fiber began contracts in three districts of Louisville in October 2017, the company had resigned from its CEO, dismissed more than a hundred people, and had a one-year "pause." This was a result of learning how expensive it is for Google to make a difference in the telecommunications industry, it's full of helpless regulations, and there's a lot of resistance from existing companies.

The plan at Louisville, also known as Google Fiber 2.0, was to somehow revitalize Google Fiber's business. But that forced the city to agree that it was. Google wanted to see if it would be possible to scale up (deploy on a larger scale) an easy-to-construct, cheaper method than hanging from a utility pole when it comes to installing cables.

Fill the cable shallower than before

I've buried cables in the ground in other cities, but I planned to dig even shallower in Louisville. Nanotrenching digs only 2 inches (about 5 centimeters) deeper than the typical 6 inches (about 15 centimeters). We also used epoxy instead of common asphalt to fill the dug grooves. According to a Google Fiber spokesperson, the company "has already piloted a 2-inch groove on a limited basis in other cities and thought it would be useful as a new construction method." Louisville scaled it up to the city-wide level, but a spokesperson explains it was "ambitious and a big step towards innovation."

But the local city council was worried. So the city sent a research team to the city where the spokesperson's "test" was conducted and consulted with outside experts for advice.

That's what Grace Simrall, chief of the Civic Innovation Technology Division, Louisville, said.

City desperately attracts Google

Before that, Louisville did everything to attract Google. For example, we have created an ordinance that allows existing enterprise equipment to move when installing equipment on utility poles. However, because AT & T, a major telecommunications company, filed a lawsuit, he decided to pay $ 400,000 to win the case (although he didn't use utility poles after all). Anyway, the city couldn't say "no" by doing so far.

Simrall's predecessor, Ted Smith, has been trying to make the city "fiber friendly" since 2011. "Mid-sized cities in the United States have been left behind," he explained, and the origin of the activity was Greg Fischer, a Democratic Party who served the mayor for three terms (disclosure: Adam, reporter of this article). K. Raymond's wife is a Kentucky General Assembly member and representative of Louisville's areas that Google Fiber failed to respond to.)

"We've been working hard for years to explain that Louisville is a city that understands the value of cheap, fast broadband," she said.

A wish that once came true

So it's no surprise that Louisville made Google mess with the road. With a population of 600,000, Louisville has long competed with cities of the same size, such as Austin, Nashville and Raleigh, for total population and economic growth. By the way, Google Fiber runs through these three cities as well. Louisville had just joined the ranks.

If you look at Louisville's enthusiasm when he received the Google Fiber offer, you can see that it was a long-cherished desire. Local lawmakers say the Gigabit Internet will make Louisville a "technically innovative community", evoke "big changes" and attract more "citizens with higher skills, enthusiasm and wealth" than ever before. I was praising it.

Cable laying ara

That didn't go. In March 2018, five months after starting the nanotrenching test, this technique began to appear. Not only does the sealant squeeze out of the road, exposing the cable, but the shallow grooves also put the cable at risk during road construction.

Is Jim Hayes, a veteran of the Fiber Optics Association who has been in the industry for decades.

According to him, the tire groove gets caught in the epoxy and easily peels off the ground. Another problem is that the shallow groove allows the sealing material to adhere to the asphalt in a small area. Microtrenching, the most common installation of optical cables, fills the cable in a groove less than 6 inches deep and less than 1 inch wide. Hayes says he has never heard of such a problem with microtrenching.

Google Fiber suggests a solution ...

Last summer, Google Fiber suggested a solution to a problem I created. It was to remove all the epoxy and turn it into asphalt. "It was like saying,'Oh, the best thing to think about is asphalt,'" Coan said.

According to Simrall, Google outsourced the work of replacing epoxy with asphalt, but the cable was damaged during repaving, causing users to be disconnected from the net, and they were forced to deal with that problem. that's right.

After all throw a spoon

And last month, Google finally threw a spoon. He said the number of users was "very small" compared to other cities, but did not disclose the specific number of users. Last summer, a local TV station reported that Google had permission to install cables to cover about 11,000 homes, but how much work was actually completed? I don't know.

Google Fiber explains the details of the matter on the blog. In summary, "The new construction method we experimented with in Louisville failed and the cost of the fix was too high, so we gave up on Louisville and used the lessons elsewhere."

"This was a tough decision," a Google Fiber spokesperson explained in an email.

"I seriously believed that Google Fiber would work," Simrall said, saying he would have adopted a two-inch groove in other cities if the attempt at Louisville was successful. However, when one of the world's leading companies came to the city with noise, smashed the road to experiment with unproven methods, and quickly walked away when it turned out to be a failure. It is not a comfort to the citizens.

Louisville citizens are disappointed

"It was shocking and disappointing," lamented Candace Jaworski, chairman of the Louisville Digital Association, a non-profit organization that promoted innovation in Louisville and attracted Google Fiber. He was looking forward to becoming a Google Fiber user, and above all, looking forward to the day when Portland, one of the poorest areas in the United States, will be transformed by Google Fiber. "If Google Fiber allowed people in the West End to use the Internet, they would have been able to catch up with other parts of the city. It seems that carrots were hung in front of us and eventually disappeared without being eaten. hey."

Ben Carter was one of the lucky ones to eat the carrot. According to him, a lawyer in the Highlands area, Google Fiber has provided extremely fast communication speeds and excellent customer service. So he was very disappointed to hear the news that Google Fiber would withdraw from Louisville. But it wasn't just because I lost my high-speed line that I was disappointed.

"I think Louisville has grown too tall to win Google Fiber, because Louisville is rarely mentioned on the list of such cities," he said.

Now that Google Fiber is gone, Coan is worried that Louisville's name will be scratched. "People who don't know the situation will think,'Louisville wasn't suitable for Google Fiber.' But it's not."

But in reality, Louisville may not have been suitable for Google Fiber. According to Matt Wood, director of policy at Free Press, a broadband promotion organization, Google Fiber has begun to shrink due to the limitations of fighting huge telecommunications companies and the development of wireless communications. I am. Looking at the experiments in Louisville, it's clear that they were looking for a new direction. However, like other ambitious projects called "Other Bets" within Google, such as life science "Verily", self-driving car development "Waymo", and Google Fiber's business unit "Access", Google Fiber failed. It seems that it was.

The aspect that the use of high-speed Internet has expanded

But there is no doubt that Google Fiber has significantly changed access to broadband. In Nashville, where Louisville envy, the introduction of Google Fiber has significantly increased the use of high-speed Internet. At the same time, thanks to competition with Google, existing telecommunications companies such as AT & T and Comcast have begun accelerating the spread of fiber optics, including Louisville. This means that more people are online, searching and watching ads.

"Their income comes from advertising, so providing the internet to more people is just a means to an end," Wood said.

City councilman Coan says the failure in Louisville is the beginning of the end for Google Fiber. "That's the fault for me, and so is all the citizens of Louisville."