Google Fiber rollout delays persist, here’s a little bit of why
If you’re in a city where Google Fiber is coming, you probably have heard a lot of squawking from AT&T and Comcast about how they don’t want other contractors to have the ability to move their equipment.
If you’re like me, you probably were thinking their equipment might be a wire or two being pushed up a bit and how hard could that possibly be.
Let me show you some of Comcast’s (I’m assuming, it was their trucks there,) freshly-installed equipment on the wires and you might get a sense of why this is a real problem, and how that problem is being perpetuated.
Attached picture is a piece of line equipment in our hood. Sorry for the quality, I was moving and not particularly interested in composing a shot. They’re replacing the nodes at a significant cost and running hard line to businesses. They’re also leaving their equipment dangling 3-4 feet below their spaces.
Any other ISP, phone service, etc that gets a space below them has to have this equipment moved, positioned correctly or when the wind blows their wires are going to be hit. This can take up to the maximum time on the contract (90 days if I remember correctly,) for the offending carrier to reposition their equipment before fines occur.
This is a fresh install mind you, placed in the last two weeks. The people who are installing it are done as far as I know. They’ll be required to move it at some point down the line, and assuming they make their deadline and don’t add another piece one or two poles over that blocks them, fiber rollout will slowly continue.
Now, it’s not fair to AT&T and Comcast to allow Google contractors move their equipment, but it’s also completely unsporting for them to be installing new equipment that very obviously is positioned to block the next ISP from the pole.
Meh, fiber is coming, but for now we’re stove up.
