The secret weapon of Google Fiber in its return in gigabits failed

Google's tip to deploy faster and cheaper its very fast Google Fiber project is hitting a wall, putting a damper on the company's broader attempt to restore its gigabit service Across the country.

Titan had been banking on a "shallow trench" experiment that had allowed him to deploy gigabit in Louisville in just five months and radically outstripping his AT & T Fiber rival. But a spokesman for Google Fiber said process-related issues would force Google Fiber to shut down in Louisville. Google informs customers Thursday that their service will end on April 15th.

This is a huge setback for Google Fiber, which "suspended" its operations in October 2016 but was deployed to Louisville and San Antonio in 2017 as part of a return to Gentle on Google Fiber 2.0, using advanced techniques to control costs and overflowing traditional telecommunication companies. The service was supposed to be a faster and cheaper alternative to your cable or standard telephony provider, but Google faced the same problem as everyone else: the insane costs of laying fiber optic lines.

In the other 10 metropolitan areas where Google Fiber is still operational – Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Huntsville, Alabama; Kansas City, Missouri; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Orange County, California; Salt Lake City / Provo, Utah; and San Antonio – it will continue to put more fiber in the ground and recruit new customers. A spokesman for Google Fiber also told CNET that he would learn of Louisville 's failure and improve its deployments in other cities.

The Google Fiber team cited the experimental construction methods used in Louisville as the reason for the failure. This deployment technique, called "nanotrenching", allowed Google Fiber to deploy fiber faster and cheaper.

The Google Fiber construction crews in Louisville dug trenches two inches deep at the roadside, laid the fiber cables, and filled the trench with a rubbery liquid that would solidify upon drying.

A few months later, however, some fiber optic cables began to come out of the trenches and were exposed in the streets. In other cities, such as San Antonio, Google Fiber has adopted the technique of "microtrenching", which uses a similar technique but whose depth reaches at least six inches. The deployment of Google Fiber will continue in San Antonio.

It should be noted that AT & T has been using various forms of shallow trenches since 2009 and has not experienced similar problems. The manufacturing quality and customer service of Google Fiber were also questioned when a number of Kansas City customers lost their service for more than a week during a storm of snow in January.

The Google Fiber team said it was not considering continuing operations in Louisville because it would have to completely rebuild its Louisville network to bring it to the same level of service as its other counterparts. gigabit cities.

By informing customers in Louisville of the closure, Google FIber also tells them they will not be billed for the last two months of service. This could be of little comfort to consumers who were happy to upgrade to an Internet connection with upload and download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second – much faster and more consistent than cable and DSL of most users. will have to return to.

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AT & T Fiber operates in some of the neighborhoods where Google Fiber has been deployed in Louisville. It can therefore be a comparable alternative for some customers. A spokesman for AT & T confirmed that AT & T Fiber would continue to expand its network in Louisville. AT & T also noted that by the end of 2018, Louisville was one of the first 12 cities in the world to deploy its 5G network with mobile wireless access points, which can compete with some of the fiber connections low speed optics.

When Google Fiber goes to a city, this usually encourages competition from other Internet service providers to increase the speed of their connections and to provide better customer service. This has been the case in Louisville, where AT & T and Spectrum have intensified their operations and offered their own forms of gigabit service, although AT & T is charging more for its version and Spectrum's service offers faster speeds. download well below.

With nanotrenching for Google Fiber, we will have to play long game more like a traditional telecommunications provider. Companies like AT & T are taking a much slower, more measured approach to deploying new networks, and AT & T sees fiber as a profitable investment over 100 years.

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