Ultimate Proof That Google Fiber Is Not Serious

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Frust...ers-139281

You can add Salt Lake City residents to the growing list of would-be customers frustrated by the slow pace of Google Fiber's deployment. Locals in the city are frustrated by the sparse availability of the service more than two years after the project was first announced. The Deseret News notes that the company refuses to provide specific information on how many Salt Lake residents have service, in what order Salt Lake neighborhoods will be receiving service, or how long it will take to complete the work of establishing access to Google Fiber service citywide.

Frustration has mounted not only because of Google Fiber's slow pace, but because the company hasn't been particularly clear about the direction of the project after last fall's shock announcement.

Last fall Google Fiber announced it would be putting a number of new fiber deployments on hold as executives -- rumored to be tired of the high cost and slow pace of fiber installs -- ponder a pivot to next-generation, ultra-fast wireless. While this shake up involved laying off the CEO and shuffling around some employees, the company has continued to insist that existing deployments -- like Salt Lake City and Kansas City -- would remain unaffected.

But in Kansas City many customers have seen their installations cancelled in recent months. And in markets like Charlotte and Salt Lake City, many people just aren't sure if service will ever actually reach them. While some of this is due to the traditionally-slow pace of digging and installing fiber, in many of these markets there are clear signs that work has been intentionally slowed as Google ponders its wireless pivot.

But Google Fiber has refused to acknowledge this, only fueling consumer annoyance. For its part, Google Fiber's response has been to issue a series of rosy press statements that profess continued dedication to the project, but don't really provide any meaningful answers.
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The reticence of Google Fiber to provide more detail likely stems from the fact that Alphabet/Google executives aren't sure themselves what happens next. The company is conducting a large number of trials using a wide variety of technologies and spectrum, and pretty clearly wants to better understand what these wireless options can do -- before insisting them a lateral replacement for the traditional fiber many execs clearly are drifting away from.