Google Fiber Fail

I wrote way back in 2012 about Google Fiber.  Although that post focused on the marketing hype associated with Google providing 1Gbps Internet service, it did hint that Google was taking on physical infrastructure issues that could have major impacts to service.

The new installation techniques employed by Google and not tested by decades of real-world installations have come back to haunt Google and more importantly their complete customer base in Louisville, Kentucky.   Google attempted to take a shortcut to the installation of fiber with a technique that directly exposes fiber to the harsh realities of the environment.  This new method uses shallow slit trenching of fiber directly into the asphalt street pavement  and then it is covered with an epoxy - what could possibly go wrong?



Unlike concrete (which has its own issues),

asphalt is not solid or stable.  Asphalt moves and cracks. Years of layers of pavement generate layers that capture water, freeze and become potholes that are the bane of car tires everywhere.  The situation becomes worse depending on the combination of the type of ground under the pavement, weather, and very importantly they types and frequency of truck traffic.  What was the thought process that is approach was going to last a year, let alone the 10 to 20 year set-and-forget typically required to meet fiber or cable plant cost effectiveness?  You can actually see cracks and repairs in the pavement in the picture of Google installing fiber in Louisville.   Again, what were they thinking?

Although the Cable companies (the MSOs) use shortcut techniques of direct-bury of coaxial cable in the ground, this approach has cable systems that have the benefit of years of improvements and well known maintenance needs.  In general, although segments may fail, there are generally no regionally-wide systematic plant failures that require the complete re-installation of cable or fiber.

Google may have a fail-fast (or relatively fast if you are tracking Google's set of messaging applications) approach based on "Internet Time', but in this case, not only did they fail, there is no recovery enabled by the upgrade or download of an Android or iPhone app.  They created a false narrative that there was a shortcut to conventional installation approaches without performing the long-term testing that is the generally hallmark of stable and reliable telecommunications systems.

Finally, unlike other companies that plan for long-term commitments to their customers, Google Fiber is apparently leaving virtually all their Louisville customers forever.  Maybe Google will finally figure-out that although they can fix or abandon applications without significant damage to their main advertising-based revenue, failing at the physical layer to a customer is something that the customer will not soon forget.

Bandwidth use increases, revenue not so much...

I have been tracking my home’s bandwidth usage for over the past two years. My original concerns were twofold. First, usage seems to relentlessly increase, and second, many Internet Services Providers (ISPs) had a bandwidth cap of around 50 GBytes. per month.

I estimated that the “Bandwidth Bomb” for me would go off sometime in 2013 and it did, with some troughs, but I clearly would have exceeded my ISP’s acceptable use policy of no more than 250 GBytes transferred per month. Comcast’s Website assured me that the cap was generous enough and that only an exceedingly small percentage of users would ever have to worry about the Comcast bandwidth police.

As an amazing coincidence, just as I predicted I would exceed the cap, Comcast changed its policy and “Note:enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspended”. So, at least for the time being, I can enjoy 2013 without a home bandwidth worry in the world.
So what about the first issue above, how did my home’s traffic change over the past couple of years? First let’s see what changes happened at the Kaplow home. We are now the owners of three iPhones and an Android Pad. When in the home, these connect to my home WiFi network. My own phone, also an Android-based phone stays happily on Verizon’s wireless LTE network as I have still have a grandfathered unlimited bandwidth plan.

The Xbox also go smarter with an upgrade that includes Kinect. The youngest son discovered its use not only as an game console and Netflix player, but also as a party-line (if you know what that is) for a couple of hours every day playing cooperative games (of course after all his homework is done and done well). There were no significant changes to the laptop inventory.

Let’s look at the bandwidth trends at my house. The first set of bars represent the four month average from September through December in each year. The data shows a 77% increase from 2010 and an additional 83% into 2012. So from 2010 to 2012 the last third of the year’s usage increased 325%!

Looking at the total year 2011 and 2012, this represents an average that went from 111 to 182 Gbytes per month or a 65% increase. If this trend continues, to continue the same business margins, my ISP has to wring costs from their infrastructure or raise prices. Alternatively, they could find a way to make money on other services. Currently, some of the infrastructure is covered via the bundle of TV and voice services. With streaming content from providers other than the cable company itself, will we see a trend that mimicked that the traditional telephone company saw people turning off their telephone for “naked” DSL Internet service, with people turning off or significantly reducing their TV content?

There are also additional pressures on cable (or even services provided by the traditional local phone service provider) revenues:

• Verizon is offering home phone service delivered over their mobile network. This takes away one of the “bundle” revenue elements. 
• Satellite services. This takes away the broadcast channel elements, putting even more pressure on access on-demand material over the Internet.
• Wireless providers in general. With the continued build-out of 4G LTE services, there will likely be a growing number people that just use a wireless provider for their home service. Much of this is just a pricing plan away (with of course, within the limits of the available spectrum, etc.).

So, the potential trend of reduced services revenue combined with increased Internet use means that it is likely that Internet service costs will increase if only to enable cable and other wire provider companies to maintain their revenue - with an unknown hit to margins. On the other hand, they may have to hold the line on pricing, if only to keep their customer base in the face of competition.

Some additional comments on Google Fiber

A few more comments on Google Fiber:

• The big deal here are the services Google is going to provide.  1TBytes of storage for data and a 2TByte DVR.   These are values.  However, are they really long-term discriminators against current services?.  Traditional DVR storage can be expanded easily, units can be upgraded to record more at a time, and Cloud storage services (already part of at least some providers services) can also be expanded.  Competition is good.
• The $120/month looks good (for a two year contract that waives the $300 install fee), but is not that much different that current service deals from Verizon for FiOS.  Current two year pricing with a multi-room DVR and 75Mbps of Internet and 285 channels with 75 in HD is $130/month.  Since FiOS is GPON-based, providing "1Gbps" of access service to the Internet is possible.  This now descends into feature and marketing games.  Again, competition is good. 
• Content is the key.  Much of the cost of cable service is the content, not getting the wire to the house. Just look at the jockeying between content owners and cable and satellite providers.  For a compelling offer, Google has to deal with this issue.
• Apparently, Google has designed their own equipment.  It is not clear if this is true for the optical transport equipment or the home video termination equipment.  It is also not clear if the optical equipment is a clean-sheet design or a derivative of existing technology (e.g. GPON or ActiveEthernet).
• People are focusing on the 1Gbps access rate which certainly is not needed for the eight simultaneous DVR sessions which even in 3D HD  is around 10Mbps x 2 x 8 = 160Mbps (are these done on the home unit or in the Google Cloud?, if in the Cloud what does the bandwidth to the home matter?)