San Francisco* to get 1Gbps Google Fiber

Google has announced that its Fiber gigabit internet service will finally be arriving in San Francisco. Sort of. The Mountain View advertising broker said that it has signed on to be the ISP for a handful of apartments and condos where fiber lines have already been laid. The move will likely limit the reach of Fiber service …

[Warm Braw]

Ripping up copper wiring ... can be ... painful and costly

Admittedly it's a long time since I've been to the Bay Area, but the thing that I found remarkable was the density of overhead utility poles* - presumably something to do with the earthquake risk making burying wires a less than ideal solution.

I would have thought in principle that would make it a lot easier to run fibre than having to dig holes in the ground.

*Yes, I confess to being sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ripping up copper wiring ... can be ... painful and costly

"easier"

Yes, it seems to be the case.

When the truck came down our street, running the FibreOP fibre(s) (suspected to be 12 strands in one headphone cord sized cable; based on found scraps) on the wooden poles, they were moving so fast that the safety crew flag men were unable to stay in front of the rampaging fibre crew. Distance didn't seem to be the big deal that many claim.

I missed the next technician that ran the next fibre from the road down our ~100m driveway to the house, maybe an hour's effort. Then the third indoor tech spent a couple hours screwing the ONT, battery box and WiFi Router to the panel in our basement. The whole roll-out reeked of speed and efficiency. Blink and you'd have missed it. It didn't seem to be the vast expense per house that many claim.

They left the old POTS copper in place.

The other interesting fact is that our street is miles out of town, a good mile further into the forest from anyone, and we're a street of only a dozen huge multi-acre lots. Beyond suburban sprawl, this is ultra low density lakefront forested lots. And yet there's now up-to-Gbps FTTH 'FibreOP' here. The combination is nearly unbelievable.

If other telcos haven't yet broken the code, then they need to review the FibreOP business model. They've been there, done that, got the T-shirt. At least some of it is that the telephone company is now in the 'Cable TV' business.

[Anonymous Coward]

San Francisco* to get 1Gbps Google Fiber

Does that mean they are all sharing the one connection?? Sounds like the typical US set up.

[Mike 16]

Frisco

Is properly used to refer to the St. Louis-San Francisco railroad which (typical of that day, and still) did not (IIRC) get within 1000 miles of San Francisco CA. It may have reached Frisco, TX. Railways were the broadband of their day, and equally prone to overstating capabilities.

[Decade]

What about the NIMBYs?

Despite being a major tech hub, San Francisco itself presents a challenge for companies who would run fiber lines in the hilly terrain, unique architecture, and densely-packed clusters of houses and apartments in many of the city's neighborhoods, where ripping up copper wiring and installing new lines can be a painful and costly endeavor.

The NIMBYs and the horribly inefficient government have more say into why it’s so hard to build fiber in San Francisco. And anything else, really. Since so many techies are immigrants and cannot vote, the burden falls more strongly on native San Franciscan techies to change this state of affairs.

Monkeybrains tried to do micro-trench fiber, but apparently never discovered the necessary paperwork.

Google tried to do a fiber and WiFi thing with the previous mayor, now lieutenant governor, but the dysfunctional Board of Supervisors shut it down.

AT&T tried to do a FTTN deal, fiber + DSL, but the NIMBYs complained and shut it down.

In addition, there is no coordination about what happens when the streets are torn up, so every sewer, gas, and water project tears up the streets again and again and leaves the roads all lumpy. If they would install fiber and conduits when they fix other stuff, that would make Internet access more affordable.