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Comment by orliesaurus | Hacker News Reader

IMHO this is the fulcrum of the article:

    Though Google appears to have paused future deployments, the broadband business
    has permanently changed. Fiber investments by former telephone companies have
    accelerated or restarted.

As someone who lives in Austin, TX and walk past the Google Fiber office every day, I can testimony that thanks to this mindset now there are at least 3 ISPs serving Fiber to the Home. (Grande, ATT, Google and possibly Spectrum?) Even if you can't get Fiber, most gentrified blocks can get 300Mbps (and with offers you can get it for $50ish a month). That's amazing, just because ISPs were afraid of Google's offering.

All in all Google's Fiber is super limited (very few blocks can get Fiber to their home) but just like a "grimreaper waiting on your doorstep" ISPs competing with Google had to start offering really good deals to everyone.

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I live in Austin. For two years I waited for my neighborhood to be included in their coverage map. Even after the map showed I was covered, repeated attempts to sign up would get rejected by their automated registration system. For months I watched workmen laying in the orange cables, including right through my front yard.

In October 2017 a Google employee walked door to door in the neighborhood signing people up. We signed up, gave a $15 (?) deposit, and then never heard from him or google again.

On the other hand, in that span of time my Spectrum speed got bumped repeated from 15/5 Mbps to 200/12 Mbps, without changing my price. So, thanks Google for bluffing so well.

Something tells me, the person collecting that $15 deposit might in fact not have been a google employee...

I lived in Austin and had AT&T and Google Fiber at times. The service, speed, and reliability was exactly the same as was the price. It's amazing what some competition will do. I now live in Minneapolis and actually have 10 Gbps up/down and the option for 1 Gbps up/down for half the price of Google/AT&T in Austin ($35/month), but no Google Fiber (US Internet is the provider here).

I also live in Austin, in the one neighborhood where Grande offers FTTH. Before Google it cost $89/mo for 100Mbps. As soon as Google announced Austin, I could get 1Gbps for $59/mo.

I still wish Google would continue the buildout in Austin, as Grande doesn't have a clue about IPv6.

It is worth mentioning that grande is now owned by the same capital group that owns Wave, which has been a pioneer in affordable gigabit access in condos and apartments, where they can reach a premises economically (flat rate $60/100Mbps, or $80/1000Mbps), no caps, no quotas, no upstream rate limits.

Google also wildly underestimated the cost of burying fiber in Austin's just-under-the surface limestone.

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