[quote]
Now, just as any competitive business must, we have to continue not only to grow, but also stay ahead of the curve — pushing the boundaries of technology, business, and policy — to remain a leader in delivering superfast Internet. We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives.[/quote]
[quote]
These changes to our business and technology will have some immediate implications. Some of our efforts will remain unchanged, but others will be impacted. In terms of our existing footprint, in the cities where we’ve launched or are under construction, our work will continue. For most of our “potential Fiber cities” — those where we’ve been in exploratory discussions — we’re going to pause our operations and offices while we refine our approaches. We’re ever grateful to these cities for their ongoing partnership and patience, and we’re confident we’ll have an opportunity to resume our partnership discussions once we’ve advanced our technologies and solutions. In this handful of cities that are still in an exploratory stage, and in certain related areas of our supporting operations, we’ll be reducing our employee base.[/quote]
[quote]
And I’ve decided this is the right juncture to step aside from my CEO role. Larry has asked me to continue as an advisor, so I’ll still be around.[/quote]
Approximately 130 people getting laid off, according to analysts. Craig Barratt stepping down as CEO of Access.
Ya, WiFi is where things are going in the future… which makes total sense, because expanding its coverage will be dramatically less expensive than laying cables. It’ll also be much harder for crony capitalists who are in the bag for cable companies to stop, which has been a major headache for Google in regions where the cable companies effectively paid off city councils to block the entrance of new ISP infrastructure.
We had a WiFi service here… Clear Wire i think. It was slow. It was expensive. And every time they tried to build a tower it was a “not in my background” scenario with lots of claims about the towers giving you cancer.
I don’t know enough about this tech to know why this would be different. Is there a reason we think this attempt would be better than what was tried before?
Hyperlocal wifi is much cheaper than fiber to the house, but you still need fiber to the street to do it. Ultimately this is about cost-- Google Fiber was losing Alphabet money so they killed all new deployments and put it on life support.
There have been massive improvements in wifi tech in the past few years. Major algorithmic signal processing improvements which have resulted in huge bandwidth gains.
The idea of folks blocking stuff because it’s gonna give you cancer is silly… because these things are going to go on the towers which are already there, already broadcasting all the waves through your body anyway.
Comcast and AT&T have tied Google up in a heap of litigation here in Nashville, slowing Fiber deployment to a virtual standstill. Totally understandable that Google would want to re-focus efforts on wireless.
AT&T is piloting a new system that mounts on power poles called “AirGig”. I believe it will be using high-speed local wifi. Sounds like it can get fiber-level speeds to an area for a fraction of the cost of laying new fiber.
There is another new tech being piloted that is able to get fiber-level speeds using traditional copper. Their system requires a ~$10k box in each neighborhood (give or take).
