Nearly six months after launching service in Morrisville, Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) subsidiary Google Fiber is debuting in Raleigh.
Specifically, it’s connecting some customers in Raleigh’s North Hills/midtown area to the high-speed service.
Erik Garr, regional manager, says Google Fiber has already taken a handful of “advanced orders” in that part of Raleigh.
“We’ve seen tremendous response in Morrisville and we expect the same tremendous response in North Hills/Midtown,” he said in an interview. He declined to be specific about how many people have signed up for the service in the Triangle, but says all is going according to plan. Additional geographic launches “will all depend on how long it takes to finish North Hills/Midtown,” he says, adding that North Hills was picked for engineering reasons.
But Google Fiber’s plans haven’t gone so smoothly in other regions.
In October, the company said it would “pause” operations in most of the cities it had announced as potential locales for the service. Layoffs were announced as the company paused plans in metros such as Chicago, Dallas and Phoenix.
Blair Levin, former director of the National Broadband Plan, said the reasoning behind Google’s rollout reduction is pretty simple: “It’s hard and expensive ... It's not an accident that there are very few companies willing to take that risk ... As Google Fiber slows ... what you’re going to see is a slowdown by the other companies offering improved speeds and lower prices, so the advantage to North Carolina just increases, actually."
Elliot Noss, CEO of internet service provider Ting, has called fiber installation a “messy and unpredictable” business. His Canadian company recently started connecting customers to high-speed fiber in Holly Springs, a metro Google Fiber left out of its plans.
On a call with analysts last year, he said “having just spent a quarter digging in the dirt in Holly Springs, North Carolina,” he could relate to Google’s reprioritization when it comes to fiber. “It does not perfectly match their skills,” adding that it would take time for Google to “learn [fiber’s] complexities.”
In the Triangle, some of those complexities may have come in the form of neighborhood disruption. In addition to acquiring multiple permits from government agencies across the region, Google Fiber contractors use heavy machinery to dig trenches for the fiber. The process has resulted in dozens of violation notices issued by municipalities across the Triangle.
Garr admits errors are inevitable. “All we can continue to promise is we’ll care about each complaint. ... This is hard work. It’s a big infrastructure upgrade for the Triangle.”
When the company announced its fiber plans for the Triangle, Morrisville, Cary, Raleigh, Durham, Garner, Chapel Hill and Carrboro were all included. Garr declined to say which of those areas Google Fiber would target next.
Garr said the retail and customer service center in Raleigh opens this week. Located at the former 518 West building in Glenwood South, the center will have a display during First Friday events showcasing Google Fiber speeds. And the company plans to fulfill its promise to provide free access to its service at certain public housing complexes, starting with the Oaks in Raleigh.
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2017/02/01/google-fiber-debuts-raleigh-service.html