The rebirth of Google Fiber?
After a long pause on network expansions and reducing some of its original commitments in 2016 (including Santa Clara, CA), Google Fiber has once again building out it fiber network. Google Fiber CEO Dinni Jain [1.] wrote in a recent blog post:
“We’ve been steadily building out our network in all of our cities and surrounding regions, from North Carolina to Utah. We’re connecting customers in West Des Moines – making Iowa our first new state in five years – and will soon start construction in neighboring Des Moines. And of course, we recently announced that we’ll build a network in Mesa, Arizona.
And that’s just the stuff we’ve been talking about. For the past several years, we’ve been even busier behind the scenes, focusing on our vision of providing the best possible gigabit internet service to our customers through relentless refinements to our service delivery and products.”
Note 1. Dinni Jain is a former cable industry executive with MSO’s such as Time Warner Cable and Insight Communications,
Google Fiber says it’s talking to city leaders in the following states, with the objective of bringing Google Fiber’s fiber-to-the-home service to their communities:
- Arizona, starting in Mesa as announced in July
- Colorado
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- Idaho
Jain also opened the door to communities interested in building their own fiber networks, pointing to the municipal-focused model Google Fiber has established with cities such as Huntsville, Alabama, and West Des Moines. “We’ll continue to look for ways to support similar efforts,” wrote Jain, who took the helm of Google’s access business unit in 2018.
Google Fiber’s current high-end service provides 2 Gbit/s down by 1 Gbit/s up for $100 per month. Google Fiber has all but phased out its own managed IPTV service, but instead promotes several virtual multichannel video programming distribution (vMVPD) services, including DirecTV Stream, FuboTV, Sling TV and Google’s own YouTube TV.
Google Fiber’s current and planned network and service deployments using FTTP or Webpass, its fixed-wireless platform is depicted in the table below:
| Google Fiber Market | FTTP or Webpass |
| Atlanta, Georgia | FTTP |
| Austin, Texas | FTTP |
| Charlotte, North Carolina | FTTP |
| Chicago, Illinois | Webpass |
| Colorado | FTTP* |
| Denver, Colorado | Webpass |
| Des Moines, Iowa | FTTP |
| Huntsville, Alabama | FTTP |
| Idaho | FTTP* |
| Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri | FTTP |
| Miami, Florida | Webpass |
| Nebraska | FTTP* |
| Nevada | FTTP* |
| Nashville, Tennessee | FTTP |
| Oakland, California | Webpass |
| Orange County, California | FTTP |
| Provo, Utah | FTTP |
| Salt Lake City, Utah | FTTP |
| San Antonio, Texas | FTTP |
| San Diego, California | Webpass |
| San Francisco, California | Webpass |
| Seattle, Washington | Webpass |
| The Triangle, North Carolina | FTTP |
| *Google Fiber FTTP deployments coming to cities yet to be announced. (Source: Google Fiber) |
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References:
https://fiber.googleblog.com/2022/08/whats-next-for-google-fiber.html
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/google-fiber-taps-former-twc-exec-jain-as-ceo
https://www.wired.com/2017/03/google-fiber-was-doomed-from-the-start/
Google Fiber drops 100Mb/s; Goes ‘All In’ on 1 Gig Internet Access
2 thoughts on “The rebirth of Google Fiber?”
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It is amazing that Google is continuing this effort, given all the other facilities based network operators overbuilding fiber. One would have thought that it wouldn’t have enough margin for Alphabet to pursue.
With that said, T-Mobile had a booth at the Fiber Broadband Association’s Fiber Connect Conference in June and indicated they would also be providing fiber to the home.
It is a good time to be selling fiber.
FT-Europe needs a more robust optical fibre supply chain, says Corning chief:
The head of the world’s biggest producer of fibre optic cable said the EU needs a “much more resilient and self-sufficient” supply chain to tackle a tight market as the rollout of 5G and rapid growth in data centres drives soaring demand for the crucial material.
“You don’t really have a robust supply chain here in Europe,” said Wendell Weeks, chief executive of Corning, in an interview with the Financial Times.
“The global supply chain is not what we thought it was and manufacturers like us need to take on the responsibility of producing closer to our customers.”
On Thursday, the US-based company opened one of the biggest fibre plants in the world in Poland, which aims to meet 30 per cent of demand in Europe over the coming year.
Optical fibre is made of glass as thin as a human hair. Once produced, the fibre is often sent to cable manufacturers who wrap it in a plastic coating and protective tubing for use in telecoms networks.
European cable manufacturers currently import more than half of their fibre from Asia and North America.
Demand for the material has surged over the past three years driven by the rollout of 5G infrastructure, which requires around 100 times more fibre than existing networks. Meanwhile, tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft have pumped billions into expanding their data centre estates, including laying huge international fibre networks under the ocean.
Europe and North America still lag behind Asia in terms of the scale of fibre rollout. Only a third of households in Europe currently have a fibre connection, compared with more than 90 per cent in China.
“It’s not so much that the price is a significant issue for our customers. The issue primarily is supply,” Weeks said.
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https://www.ft.com/content/33197e36-b2c9-4c96-8dc7-60446f7abd6c
However, an executive at Prysmian Group, currently Europe’s largest fibre producer, contested the view that there was a significant shortage in the continent, arguing there was only a temporary tightness in the market caused in large part by higher input costs.
“The fibre supply chain is tight but I don’t see any shortage,” said Philippe Vanhille, executive vice-president of telecoms at the Italian group.
Vanhille added that Europe was viewed as a “paradise for business”, with the UK, Germany and Italy currently seen as particularly attractive markets to sell to because they had lagged behind European peers in updating their network infrastructure and were now massively accelerating their fibre rollout.
The price of fibre has decreased precipitously over the past decade. However, it has increased again in Europe this year, driven in part by shortages of some crucial components, including helium, octamethyl and silicon metals.
According to industry data provider Cru Group, prices in Europe have risen to €6.5 per fibre/km from record lows of €3 in January 2021. “Prices in Europe continue to be supported by tight availability and elevated production costs,” they wrote in a note.
Fibre accounts for between 5 and 20 per cent of the cost of building a terrestrial network.
https://www.ft.com/content/33197e36-b2c9-4c96-8dc7-60446f7abd6c