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Comment by cosinetau | Hacker News Reader

From what I understood, Fiber wasn't a long term solution for Google. I think they anticipated that they could kick a American infrastructural movement into gear if they gave the other ISPs a real reason to compete.

I don't know if this is Google's response to those ISPs taking a different approach than they wanted, or if this is symptomatic of the company changing overall. Judging by the other ISP's marketing campaigns, competition doesn't seem to be the real message. That's a whole other can of worms.

I would venture to guess that given older company's paths, that it's the latter, and the problem is that they don't want to take big gambles like that; play a more conservative game.

It could also be a number of other factors. Maybe Google thinks Trump is looking to make good on infrastructural promises. It would be prudent of Google to capitalize on that momentum rather than spend their own resources.

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I doubt this is Trump-related, the major decisions about the change of direction were made in October.

Google may well consider Fiber's mission fulfilled. Gigabit connections are proliferating across the country from every major telco. Google's intent was to get internet speeds kickstarted, and they've successfully done just that.

While I can't get gigabit where I currently live for unspecified reasons (despite having a true FTTH connection), there are nearby areas that can, and almost every ISP has some type of gigabit pilot. That never would've happened without Google Fiber.

I think the _real_ answer to our telco issue is to go wireless. It's just so expensive to run real cables in the ground everywhere and the legal situation around who owns those cables, when they have to share with "competitors" (who are ultimately still dependent on the line owner to fill service requests, which means those competitors will always only be able to receive second-tier service), etc., is murky and can depend on the jurisdiction. Wireless is way cheaper and competition in that field is plausible.

While it would be ideal if we could get a reasonable public infrastructure to lease for wireless connections, it wouldn't be mandatory for a semi-competitive environment.

Also possible Google and SpaceX are teaming up. That constellation isn't going to manage or sell itself and Google put $1 billion into SpaceX two years ago.

What does that have to do with Google Fiber?

Google fiber and the spacex internet constellation are both ISPs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation

The idea is by sticking with LEO satellites vs geosynchronous the ping stays reasonable (~700 miles ~= 9ms vs ~22,236 miles ~= 279ms ping ping) and the bandwidth is much higher than traditional satellite internet. Further you don't need any effort aiming a dish thus vastly reducing installation issues.

Tech companies and entrepreneurs have been pitching LEO satellites for internet delivery for a very long time. Even Bill Gates had a kick at this can.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic

It's interesting to me that our cities and their governance are so awful - with their limited voter participation, poor cost control, class warfare politics, crazy fringe political advocacy, and unreasonable franchise agreements - that going into space is considered easy compared to working with city governments to get fibre in the ground.

A satellite constellation like this will actually be more efficient for long distance communication than fiber as hops will be more or less a straight line between a few sats whereas fiber on the ground often takes crazy paths due to terrain and politics.

If SpaceX can prove reusability, which is looking likely, putting up a constellation like this will become significantly cheaper. They also can just reuse first stages that their own customers already paid for (their customers pay for the flight, not the stage itself).

Efficient? Long haul fiber (DWDM) capacity is measures in Tbps....

I don't have SpaceX numbers. But, a constellation like this was supposed to provide ~200 Gbytes per month for 5 billion people, which works out to ~3000 terabytes per second or ~5 terabits per second per satellite at a minimum. (More if they are modeling the ocean.)

http://www.popsci.com/samsung-wants-launch-thousands-satelli...

ED: Here is the paper. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1508/1508.02383.pdf

In terms of latency, not raw capacity.

SpaceX is looking at much lower costs to LEO which very much changes this equation. They charge around $2,500 per pound right now, but with reusable rockets there internal costs may be under 1,000$/lb. Putting up ~1,400 * 600lb * 1,000$/lb is less than 1 billion dollars to get into space. Worst case they are looking at ~3 billion in launch costs which is hardly an issue for world wide infrastructure.

Now, the costs of these satellites and receiver's will make or break this idea. But, it's surprisingly viable even if they only cover the continental US to start.

PS: Iridium NEXT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...) is aiming for some data bandwidth. Though presumably at very high costs.

Now, the costs of these satellites and receiver's will make or break this idea. But, it's surprisingly viable even if they only cover the continental US to start

They also have to get radio spectrum for the uplink everywhere they operate. Have a good look through the history of Iridium (Iridium PREVIOUS?) and all of the unexpected costs Motorola ran into building and maintaining a satellite fleet.

I can see a situation where the USG would want this constellation to exist.

If you go to the middle east and many third world countries much of the Internet is still satellite. If a particular country wanted a way to insure that they still had access to most of the world's internet traffic (as economies grow and infrastructure is built) they might prefer a constellation of LEO sats capable of carrying the entire planet's traffic in a point to point fashion owned by a US based company who is very reliant on the USG for most of its other business.

I can see a situation where the USG would want this constellation to exist.

But would they want this to exist enough to pay for any of it or have a hand in maintaining it? Beyond how much they already are by awarding SpaceX government and NASA launch contracts?

And all because muni government sucks.

> It's interesting to me that our cities and their governance are so awful

Most people rarely, if ever, need to deal with municipal departments that regulate infrastructure, health, and safety. As soon as you do, you find out that they're pretty uniformly terrible places with terrible people dealing with terrible things.

OneWeb will be putting their first LEO satellites into orbit this year. They raised another $1.2B from Softbank just a couple of months ago, and have the spectrum and launch contracts.

It looks like they will beat both SpaceX and Google to the task - which is unfortunate for them since the founder of OneWeb was involved with attempting to develop the same project with both companies.

http://spacenews.com/oneweb-gets-1-2-billion-in-softbank-led...

But why should that make any difference to whether Google Fiber is a viable business? Since when did Google try just one thing at a time?

AFAIK there is a maximum number of phased arrays in an area, something like one array per 5-cit blocks. So this is great if you are in a rural community but it isn't a substitute for high-speed fiber.

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