Late last month, Google announced it’s super-fast internet, “Fiber”, was coming to Atlanta.
We were told it would be many years before it would come to full fruition, but the process was in motion. Google even has cute, little icons and FAQs on its website to appease you in the meantime. We discovered the super-fast internet service was competitively priced with Comcast and other current providers. We also learned you could get slower service free for 7 years after paying a $300 installation fee.
That’s all well and good, but will Google Fiber alter the larger Atlanta digital or business landscape?
Will we see tech startups begin popping up along Ponce or Peachtree Street? Will local cable providers catch up and improve their service? Will Fiber bridge the digital divide between upper and lower income households, as has been touted?
These are the questions the good folks at Fast Company recently looked into in an article, “Lessons from Google’s First Roll Out of Google Fiber“.
The article includes many interesting nuggets from studying the Google Fiber rollout in Kansas City, including:
How Google will determine which neighborhoods will receive Google Fiber buildouts…
In July 2012, a team of 60 Google employees with clipboards worked 80-hour weeks in a six-week blitz, chatting with neighborhood associations, going to town hall meetings and church meetups to spread the promise of Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. In order for a neighborhood to have access to the service, 5% to 25% of its residents had to sign up in advance to qualify as a fiberhood. (That fluctuation in percentage is driven mostly by population density, but also includes other factors affecting the cost of building fiber networks. In dispersed, suburban areas, for example, more people need to sign up.)
How Google has put a spotlight on the “digital divide”, but has struggled to bridge that gap with its “free” internet option…
The first is price. Even though Google Fiber offers a comparatively low price point for high-speed Internet service, it’s not low enough for many. “Google says they wanted to help with the digital divide, but I don’t think they realized what that meant and what little impact they would have,” said Michael Liimata, president of local nonprofit Connecting for Good. “Google Fiber is turning out to be a product for middle-class folks who are already using the Internet.” Liimatta said.
The second is access. Homeowners have to give permission for Google Fiber installation—something not all renters and nobody in public housing can do. Overall, poor people tend to rent more and move more. The Kansas City, Mo., school district anticipates 40% of their students—most of which who qualify for free or reduced lunch—will move at least once during the year, Liimata says.
How cable companies have responded to Fiber…
In August, both Comcast and Time Warner Cable (TWC) announced that they would be increasing Internet speeds for customers in Kansas City, among other cities, at no additional cost to the consumer. Customers who pay for 25 megabits per second (mbps) service will be upgraded to 50mpbs, customer who pay for 50mpbs will get 105mpbs, and customer who were paying for 105 will now see 150mpbs.
As for the tech start ups – despite a 3+ year head start, it still remains to be seen how prolific tech companies will become in Kansas City due to Fiber, according to Fast Company.
If you have a few minutes, check it out. The article provides a look ahead at Atlanta’s future with Fiber.
This is an excellent and thought provoking article. It really demonstrates that even Google Fiber is not necessarily a panacea for the communities chosen by Google for the service.
One of the best points regards access to the service by the very poor, a sector of the population that is supposed to be one of the major beneficiarys of the service. The problem pointed out is that renters may be unwilling to fork over $300 (in $25/mo installments) unless the landlord helps pay–because they are likely to move within the seven year window that is covered by the fee. Good point.
Bob, I see you do understand what is going on. 🙂
Google is NOT going to just install fiber, willy-nilly, all over the place The required up-front commitments have already been mentioned in the article.
You need to catch your breath, step back, and look at what Google actually IS. They are not a major ISP. They are not a major TV provider. They’re just playing with that. They are an information gathering company. They mainly want to provide content for you to consume whilst gathering as much data about YOU to sell. It isn’t a conspiracy theory, they just want information to sell.
That information goes to companies who want to market to you based on what you like. Similar to Facebook, they don’t care what you “like”. They do care that they can sell that information to people who DO care. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing. If you want to give up that information in exchange for watching YouTube, getting traffic maps, or doing web searches it is totally fine. I like the services and use many of them.
By all this talk of fiber, they will accelerate the pace that the existing companies will enhance their delivery networks. You probably already have a coaxial cable into your home from Comcast that either you use now or someone before you used. That wire is capable of 1 Gigabit ALREADY. You can already buy 300+ Mb/S. Comcast just has to enable DOCIS 3.1. And they are doing that. Probably you will see it sooner in Decatur and the other cities Google threw a bone to. But not everywhere. If you think you are going to see it “all over Decatur”, you are probably wrong. They have a lot of hurdles in the way. You’ll probably get it if you move to where the Dairy Queen used to be, and possibly in other new communities. That is because they can build the infrastructure more easily during new construction.
Will you see it on Mockingbird, Lamont, Emerson, Evans, Leyden, or any of the smaller roads in Decatur? What about the dirt roads like Green St? I don’t know. Do you want your street dug up? Do you want new aerial cables? Do you want a trench dug to each house? Do you want “Fiber Huts” sitting by the road. A fiber hut is one of those little buildings you see along the interstate, usually in the grassy area in the middle of interchanges. That’s where they connect the fiber for the traffic cameras. A fiber hut looks similar to the little building at the base of a cell tower. Google has to have all that stuff. So does anyone else who wants to run new facility based infrastructure.
Perhaps AT&T will figure out how to get some sort of decent speed out of their old copper wires. They did manage to create a service that is really just DSL they they call U-Verse now. They just made the hub boxes (DSLAMs) closer to you so they could get a bit more speed out of the copper.
I don’t work for Comcast, AT&T or even Google, but I am pretty up on the current ISP technology. I recommend not getting all caught up in Google-Madness. They have already pulled out of at least one city they announced. See http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article3477572.html
AT&T faked everyone off by announcing for Atlanta and a lot of other places and then pulling back http://www.eweek.com/networking/att-pulls-back-on-fiber-to-100-u.s.-cities-over-net-neutrality-fight.html
The landscape will certainly change, and we will get faster speeds. It is happening… slowly. Whether it will be $70.00 a month for 1 Gb/S or “free low speed” for $300.00, we will have to see.
Good summary of the realities.
Google has learned from the troubles it had in the Kansas City area. It has learned form Austin and Provo. For example, Google has admitted that doing an installation schedule solely based on the sign up percentage was lousy from a logistical and engineering perspective. They also have admitted that they need to involve community organizations and Non Governmental Organizations(NGOs) earlier. The failure to communicate earlier and better with residential rental property owners led to many of the refusals to consider Google Fiber(GF) as an option. The ridiculously long time period it took to come up with a small business option turned off many of the earlier business supporters. Those mistakes will probably not be done again in the Atlanta area.
As far as the subscription price, GF will probably keep to the same prices they have now for KCKS and KCMO. Too many howls of protest would occur if they increased it. There may be a change to 5Mbps down/5Mbps from 5 down / 1 up for the lowest cost option in order to humiliate the cable companies and make the FCC director somewhat happier. I could see them doing that for all existing GF locations once Atlanta begins to actually provide service to subscribers.
+1
The first thing I noticed was the culture/diversity difference between the areas they selected to get G Fiber. If you think about it, it’s for collecting different types of data in the spectrum of society.
Re the difficulty in providing broadband in poor neighborhoods, I’d be curious to know the breakdown of cable tv vs. internet. I’d bet a significantly higher percentage of poor households have cable or satellite tv than have internet in the home.