ftth

Silicon Valley drops off of Google Fiber roadmap

10 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Google has scrapped seemingly imminent plans to start laying fiber in Silicon Valley. According to a story yesterday in the San Jose Mercury News, Google has told officials in Palo Alto and Mountain View that the project is on hold, and the group that was to do the work has been disbanded…

The company was set to begin digging in San Jose last month, but nearly 100 employees hired to install Google Fiber were pulled into an office and told the project was being delayed, according to workers.

… More

More delays for Google Fiber hopefuls

22 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Limited potential.

Google is putting the brakes on its fiber builds. That seems to be the word out of Portland. According to a story in the Oregonian, contractors involved in the project – or at least who think they’re involved – say that construction won’t begin for several months, if ever. Google Fiber hasn’t actually said that Portland is one of its chosen few markets, but the general expectation was that an announcement to that effect would come in the fall.… More

Is Atherton Fiber living in the real world? Part 2

14 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Urban living, Atherton style.

An appallingly high take rate – 70% – and a vague reliance on third party ISPs to do the heavy lifting of achieving it are two reasons to be skeptical about Atherton Fiber’s plan to build a fiber to the home system that would reach all 2,500 households (there are no commercial properties as such) within the city limits, as discussed more fully in Part 1. It would not work in a typical Californian community.… More

Is Atherton Fiber living in the real world? Part 1

13 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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A deeper dive into the Atherton Fiber business model raises questions about its sustainability, given the assumptions that appear to have gone into it. The proposed fiber-to-the-home project would pass all 2,500 residences in Atherton. It seems there are no brick and mortar business customers there – the whole town is residential. Yes, it’s that exclusive.

The first red flag is an assumed take rate of 70% within four years. In a typical Californian community that assumption would be delusional.… More

Atherton FTTH plan has seed money and a quick timeline

11 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click for the big picture.

An Atherton venture capitalist put $500,000 into a fiber to the home project there. According to papers filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, Michael Farmwald made the investment in Atherton Fiber LLC, via his Skymoon Ventures Management Company, to get the ball rolling…

To finance the project, Atherton Fiber plans to raise approximately $3 million via a traditional investment mechanism and other interested Atherton residents. The remaining funds would be raised by selling interested property owners a “set” of bundled fibers to their home that they would own directly.

… More

Renters and condo owners willing to pay more for fiber, trade group study says

14 June 2016 by Steve Blum


Click for more.

Fast, fiber-based broadband raises the perceived value of a condominium by $8,600 and renters would be willing to pay an extra $80 per month for it, according to research just released by the Fiber to the Home Council, an industry trade group. On the other hand, most renters and owners don’t take broadband availability into consideration when choosing a place to live: the study says only about a third of apartment and condo dwellers who moved in 2015 or 2016 thought to ask about it.… More

Four good reasons to favor FTTH over wireless broadband, CPUC says

2 June 2016 by Steve Blum
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No less deserving.

When it approved a $16 million grant for the Bright Fiber fiber-to-the-home project in Nevada County last year, the California Public Utilities Commission said that expensive and patchy wireless Internet service is not sufficient to block broadband infrastructure construction subsidies in underserved areas. Last week, the CPUC reaffirmed that decision, unanimously rejecting requests for a rehearing from two fixed wireless Internet service operators.

In doing so, the commission said that there are clear differences between wireless and wireline broadband service…

  • First, the fiber-to-the-premises network proposed by Bright Fiber is not subject to terrain variability, and Bright Fiber has committed to serve every household in the project area…
  • Second, fiber-to-the-premise systems have significant speed advantages over fixed wireless systems…
  • Third, a fiber network has a significant advantage in terms of capacity over fixed wireless in any given area.
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Google Fiber tries cheaper service tier in Kansas City

12 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Google Fiber is pulling its 5 Mbps data plan off the market in Kansas City. It’s often mischaracterised as free, but it wasn’t quite that. The deal was that people living in a soon-to-be blessed fiberhood could pay a $300 installation fee and get 5 Mbps service for seven years. Speculation is that Google Fiber is trying to pump up revenue by steering low end subs to a $50 a month, 100 Mbps plan with free installation.… More

San Francisco FTTP analysis embraces economic reality

25 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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The fiber-to-the-premise analysis run by the City and County of San Francisco nailed it: providing gigabit capability to every home and business in the City means either treating it like a normal municipal utility and taxing everyone to pay for it – $43 a month, they figure – or taxing everyone less – $26 a month – and making up the rest with subscription fees from people that want to use it.

The everyone pays, everyone gets model means a big initial buildout for something close to a gigabuck, with the $43 monthly fees split between paying that off and running the system as a municipal utility.… More

Hints of respectability for Google Fiber's sub count

20 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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Some tantalising numbers have been published that could be interpreted as bad news for Google Fiber’s subscriber count. Or it might foretell market success. It depends on how you look at it.

MoffetNathanson Research took a bearish look at the latest filings with the U.S. copyright office, which collects pay TV data, and found that Google has 53,000 video subscribers in the three markets where it’s doing business – Kansas City, Provo and Austin – which indicates it grew by only 23,000 subs in 2015.… More