I worked directly on the San Jose and Sand Diego projects. I was brought in by one of the main contractors to help reduce costs and increase efficiency. Google had way too many “30 somethings” who failed to listen to experienced telecom professionals. That was one of their biggest faults. It was insane to try and build a network in San Jose that was going to have to be built mostly underground. That market already had new AT&T U-verse fiber and Time Warner with a very strong network. Heck I could get 100 meg speeds on Wi-Fi at the hotel I stayed in. Their Ego to build in their own backyard was pushing the build more than anything.
The concept of cherry picking neighborhoods actually drove costs up. When they wanted a citywide network design, that is what they were delivered, but then try and build out only neighborhoods they wanted while still trying to figure out how much of their backbones, huts and neighborhood distribution system needed to be put in place to service the piecemeal buildout approach, when you were already having to open ditches, while having to be a mostly underground build? Yea that was a nightmare too! Then let’s talk about how they had no clue how hard the MDU market is to secure. They gave no real consideration to existing deals in the buildings, or the cost of having to wire on their own because the building owner did not actually own the existing cable plant and such. These projects were not just a simple math problem to solve. They naively thought every city was going to welcome them with open arms like Kansas City did. They believed the political hype the politicians told them to lure them to their cities, then when actual laws both of physics and real came in to play, the numbers looked a whole lot uglier. Underground building in established cities is a nightmare in both costs, regulations, logistics and amount of work required. Just simple things like trying to gather data on all the existing underground infrastructure (that has no central source of documentation) was painful and costly. You can’t get drawings approved without first showing you will not be interfering with existing utilities already underground. In many cases you have to manually locate this stuff and then map it and then do your design around that information. Other issues to overhead builds were poles that would not pass loading calculations, pole owners who were less than cooperative or that pulled out new loading rules that they themselves don’t follow and you can see where it was not a simple process. The employee count to deal with all of this on a large scale at the pace they wanted to move was not small by any stretch. This was not new news. They pulled the plug on all of this stuff back at the beginning of July. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2016 7:32 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Google Fiber is no more As they should. Don't build where people who can't pay or don't want your service. ----- Mike Hammett <http://www.ics-il.com/> Intelligent Computing Solutions <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL> <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions> <https://twitter.com/ICSIL> <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> Midwest Internet Exchange <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix> <https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange> <https://twitter.com/mdwestix> <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> The Brothers WISP <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> _____ From: "Rory Conaway" <r...@triadwireless.net> To: af@afmug.com Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 11:28:52 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Google Fiber is no more In other cities, they cherry picked. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Sterling Jacobson Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 7:00 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Google Fiber is no more >From the director of one of the Google Fiber builds (in Provo) that is not the >case. He said they overspent on contractors MAJORLY. And that was just to expand the existing network to all homes in that area. He argued with his bosses about he extravagant added fees on construction but they just said to pay them, no questions asked. I had some of those figures from him at that conversation and some costs were over 80x what it should have been. My best guess is that all the fiber build in certain areas increased the contract cost of build into the stratosphere. And now they are reigning it in and going wireless to attempt to defray the costs. At least with Provo they were not allowed to cherry pick, it was build everyone. And it seems like they picked up a large portion of the communities, but I didn’t get overall take rate. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Rory Conaway Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 12:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Google Fiber is no more Absolutely they cherry picked. Then they went into MDU’s for pennies and lost their shirts. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Josh Reynolds Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 9:34 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Google Fiber is no more I'd love to see their overall take rates. I have heard numbers of 75-85% in more affluent areas. They cherry picked neighborhoods for sure though. On Oct 25, 2016 10:15 PM, "Rory Conaway" <r...@triadwireless.net> wrote: Big surprise there. They built it and no one came. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Tushar Patel Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 7:14 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Google Fiber is no more Their contractor are still hiring installer in Austin. Need to probably understand why those cities not others? Tushar On Oct 25, 2016, at 9:06 PM, Josh Reynolds <j...@kyneticwifi.com> wrote: New ones. They're still deploying existing networks. They just opened up a few new areas in Kansas City recently. On Oct 25, 2016 9:03 PM, "Jaime Solorza" <losguyswirel...@gmail.com> wrote: Moving folks to wireless.... Aye Dios On Oct 25, 2016 7:56 PM, "Gino Villarini" <ginovi...@gmail.com> wrote: https://gizmodo.com/google-fiber-halts-operations-in-ten-cities-1788214992?rev=1477443092657 <https://gizmodo.com/google-fiber-halts-operations-in-ten-cities-1788214992?rev=1477443092657&utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow> &utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
