Google Learning Hard Lessons on Fiber, Wireless, AT&T Executive Says
The lack of any traction in the TV white spaces despite a big push from Google and the company’s backing away from Google Fiber should demonstrate a hard truth to the firm -- building a network isn’t easy, said Joan…
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Marsh, AT&T vice president-federal regulatory, in a Tuesday blog post. Google deployed a fiber network in parts of seven of the 1,100 interested cities and now “appears to be pivoting toward using wireless technologies to defray the costs of fiber deployment and to bridge the last mile gap between utility poles and customer home,” Marsh wrote. Google has made a lot of excuses, she said. “It will also no doubt continue to seek favoritism from government at every level.” But Google’s experiments in broadband offer a story with a moral, she said. “Building reliable, ubiquitous high-speed broadband connectivity is tough,” Marsh wrote. “It takes an enormous commitment of capital and resources and a highly-skilled and capable work force. Yet AT&T has been at it for over 140 years. Between 2011 and 2015, while Google Fiber was cutting its teeth on fiber, AT&T invested over $140 [billion] in its network, building to over one million route miles of fiber globally and deploying ultra-high-speed fiber-fed GigaPower broadband services, reaching over a hundred cities.” Google didn't comment.