Why Google Fiber Is High-Speed Internet’s Most Successful Failure

In 2010, Google rocked the $60 billion broadband industry by announcing plans to deploy fiber-based home internet service, offering connections up to a gigabit per second — 100 times faster than average speeds at the time. Google Fiber, as the effort was named, entered the access market intending to prove the business case for ultra-high-speed internet. After deploying to six metro areas in six years, however, company management announced in late 2016 that it was “pausing” future deployments. But what if the company’s goal was never to unleash the disrupter itself so much as to encourage incumbent broadband providers to do so, helping Google’s expansion in adjacent markets such as video and emerging markets including smart homes? Seen through that lens, Google Fiber succeeded wildly.

[Blair Levin led the team that produced the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan. He later founded Gig.U, which encouraged gigabit internet deployments in cities with major research universities. He is currently a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution and Policy Advisor with New Street Research.]

[Larry Downes is Project Director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy ]