Salvaging Google Fiber's Achievements

[Commentary] My take is that there was one fundamental flaw going into this, one that’s probably still floating around: Google believed they could revolutionize the laying of fiber. They didn’t just think they could offer a kickass service, they thought they could deploy much cheaper and much faster than anybody else had ever done. That’s fully in line with the Google mindset, but unfortunately it ignores the fact that hundreds of company had been deploying wireline access infrastructure for years by the time Google Fiber decided to give it a go.

I’d suggest we’re now seeing the windfall from that misguided assumption: Google is finally admitting (in a roundabout way) that despite all the clever people they have on hand, they haven’t revolutionized fiber deployment. It still takes time to do the planning properly, to work with local authorities effectively, to do the outside plant layout efficiently. Did Google manage to do things cheaper than others did ? Probably, but not by a wide margin. And as they decided to scale beyond Kansas City, they realized that the efficiencies they might have been able to find in KC didn’t scale well elsewhere because a lot of those things are down to local specificities and relationships.

[Benoit Felten is a Chief Research Officer at Diffraction Analysis]