There is an assumption among folks in the tech community that there is no competition between providers serving different markets--i.e. what Verizon does in Maryland cannot affect what Comcast does in Delaware. However, the idea that Google Fiber is "spur[ring] the rest of the ISPs" to roll out gigabit is accepted without question, even though Google Fiber serves very few markets. Verizon, for example, upgraded FiOS to gigabit even though Google Fiber serves no Verizon territory and has shown zero willingness to overbuild another fiber provider, and after Google Fiber announced it was downshifting deployment.

One of those premises has to be wrong.

It's hard for big telcos to move fast (it was hard for Google to move fast in this area). What telcos are doing today is responding to what happened 5 years ago. Where they're doing it is responding to what happened 6-12 months ago.

Because Google wasn't able to get traction on their construction in San Jose, AT&T had time to do street surveys and order custom multistrand fiber with drops for a splitter at every pole, and then get the fiber actually on the pole before Google got much of anything done. Existing carriers can run new cable on poles they already have access without a lot of hassle.

Otoh, Google primarily wanted to show it could be done and spur others to, faster eyeballs without capital costs is a win. If you can't get 10mbps for YouTube on a gigabit connection, something is clearly broken.

Edit: pole instead of poll (thanks unmonk)

Did you mean to write "pole" instead of "poll"? (Genuine question - I'm not sure whether "poll" is a term with some meaning in the telecom / isp industry.)

It did spur competition where Google Fiber was announced. The ISPs were tripping over themselves to match Google in those cities.

But as soon as Google announced the demise of Fiber, they mostly put the brakes on those expansions. They may still expand their own fiber initiatives now, but it's nowhere near as fast, and you won't get as cheap 1Gbps fiber as you would've gotten with Google Fiber around.

AT&T's gigabyte service is $70 a month.

Nationally?

From what I can tell, the price for new customers is $80 a month for the first year and $90 a month thereafter.

I can get 100mbs (both down _and_ up) from at&t for $50/mo. That's plenty for my home. Much better than comcast

I have gigabit internet and my house is wired for gig-e. But I agree, it is overkill. Even 4K streaming content is only 15Mbps and I’ve never seen anything in real life come to close to even 100Mbps except for the VPN to my job in the middle of the night, occasionally upload speeds to AWS, and when I’m uhh, downloading Linux ISO’s from bit torrents.

The only advantage I see of gigabit Internet is that it’s uncapped and I could easily host some side web projects from home.

> There is an assumption among folks in the tech community that there is no competition between providers serving different markets--i.e. what Verizon does in Maryland cannot affect what Comcast does in Delaware.

Grass-is-greener effect is real. While there may be no competition to spur changes, other things might such as PR and loyalty when facing potential future competition (i.e. in a more competitive future or just by people moving). If the marketing efforts are any measure, customer retention during a move is a big target.

We should realize that they compete for mindshare locally and regionally and there are overlaps, even if they don't affect decisions as significantly as direct competition would.

Tell that to people in smaller towns....

Comcast may have little incentive in a remote city to make these changes, but if Comcast even believes that Google Fiber may be looking to expand to one of its areas, it is in Comcast's best interest to preemptively improve service in that area.

Preemptive retention is much less costly than having to reacquire customers after they've switched to Google Fiber.

Google Fiber is still being built in Huntsville, AL. It straight up made Comcast, WOW, and AT&T all start rolling out gigabit. The only other local provider, Mediacom, had already begun rolling out gigabit before Google even announced its plans for the area.

>the upload speeds are abysmal- 35Mbps

It's funny how regional this is, even only looking at major cities. In my part of Los Angeles, you can't get a residential line with more than 20Mbps up for any money.

I mean, it is likely just access to deploy the new wires. LA is far larger and likely has much more cost/hoops to jump through for companies to deploy anything. Ex: "No deploying new fiber unless you do it to the entire area simultaneously, also you must use this labor to do it, coordinate with this many more entities while working in the areas" etc compared to sparser and generally business-friendlier Southern/Midwest Cities

5G can't come soon enough.

It's actually true. I know of people who did have the money and asked for a quote to lay about 2km of line, no matter how high. Quote refused.

FWIW, Google Fiber is actively being rolled out here in Louisville.

Yes, and I recently had an AT&T fiber line installed in my house because of it. I'm 100% certain that if Google Fiber hadn't started deployments in Louisville I would not have a fiber connection today. Even if it's not from Google.

Thank you Google!