Google’s fiber cables were buried at little as two inches deep in Louisville. Many have resurfaced, as this reporter from WDRB-TV showed in a recent report.

Google Fiber will pay $3.84 million to the city of Louisville to restore roads and damaged public rights-of-way as Google Fiber exits the Louisville market.

Installment payments made over the next 20 months will be spent on:

• Removing fiber cables and sealant from roads
• Milling and paving activities where needed
• Removal of above-ground infrastructure

“Infrastructure in neighborhoods and public properties affected by Google Fiber will look as good or better than they did before the company began construction, just as our franchise agreement stipulated,” said Grace Simrall, the city’s chief of civic innovation & technology.

In addition, Google Fiber is making a $150,000 cash donation to the Community Foundation of Louisville’s Digital Inclusion Fund to support the community’s digital inclusion efforts, which include refurbishing used computers for low-income individuals and the enrollment of public housing residents in low-cost internet access through other companies providing service in Louisville. The company is also planning to make a donation of 275 refurbished computers to the Louisville Metro Housing Authority.

Last summer, Google Fiber discovered its newest underground installation method of “shallow trenching” — laying optical fiber cable just two inches below ground along the sides of roadways and covered with sealant — was ineffective. In short order, the sealant rose above the surface, often exposing fiber cables to damage from the freeze-thaw cycle, road maintenance crews, plows, or just ordinary traffic. An effort to remove and replace the sealant with ordinary asphalt and re-bury the cables appeared to fail as well. That left Google Fiber with a choice between replacing all of its fiber infrastructure, or deciding to give up and leave. It announced the latter in February, and Google Fiber was officially switched off at 11:59pm on April 15.

Simrall suggests it isn’t all bad news.

“It’s clear that Google Fiber’s presence in Louisville led other providers to step up and increase investment in Louisville, and that was good news for consumers everywhere,” Simrall said. “Moreover, we appreciate Google Fiber’s donation to our digital inclusion work, because improving equity in access to technology and digital skills is essential for Louisville’s economy today and tomorrow.”

WDRB-TV in Louisville reports former Google Fiber customers are angry about losing their internet service from the fiber provider. (2:15)

WHAS-TV in Louisville talked to residents concerned about whether the costs to repair the roads damaged by Google Fiber will be adequately covered. (1:57)

Justice Department staffers have told T-Mobile and Sprint that their $26 billion merger is unlikely to win approval as presently structured, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Unnamed sources familiar with the deal told the newspaper the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division is among the most skeptical of those reviewing the deal, questioning claims from the companies that the merger will create synergy and increased efficiency that could free up resources to dramatically expand the combined company’s wireless business.

At the core of the concern is the impact of combining the nation’s third and fourth largest wireless carriers, reducing competition to just three national postpaid companies — AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile. That could present an unacceptable threat to competition.

The Justice Department is not alone expressing concern over the merger deal. Multiple state attorneys general are still reviewing the deal and several have announced they are prepared to sue the companies involved to stop the merger if it manages to win approval on the federal level. The Federal Communications Commission is also said to be questioning some of the claims of the company about the merits of its promised 5G home broadband service and exactly how much consumers could save should they subscribe.

The Financial Times also published a story this afternoon essentially confirming the Journal story.

John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile USA, denied the premise of the Journal’s story in a tweet late this afternoon, calling it “simply untrue,” but refused further comment.

The premise of this story, as summarized in the first paragraph, is simply untrue. Out of respect for the process, we have no further comment. This continues to be our policy since we announced our merger last year. https://t.co/3q9CVgkRfv key info: https://t.co/N5YvuuJtPZ

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) April 16, 2019

Any decision about the merger is not expected for several weeks, and any recommendations from the staff report on the deal can be overruled by the political appointees that run the Justice Department. The Times reports that the final decision will likely rest with Makan Delrahim, President Trump’s pick as chief of the antitrust division. With staff objections now leaked to the press, Delrahim could be in a politically difficult situation overruling his staff’s recommendations. In the meantime, company officials can offer concessions, such as selling off certain assets to overcome regulator objections.

Many Wall Street analysts feel the chances of the merger winning approval are reduced the longer the merger review remains underway in Washington. Many have placed the odds at less than 50% that the deal will ultimately be approved. If it is rejected, T-Mobile is expected to continue its business without any significant financial hurdles. Sprint may be a different matter, as its Japanese backer SoftBank has soured on the merits of pouring additional money into Sprint’s wireless business.

(Reuters) – The White House has told two U.S. House Democrats it will not turn over documents that could show whether Republican President Donald Trump sought to intervene in the regulatory review of AT&T Inc’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

In March, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and Representative David Cicilline, who chairs a panel overseeing antitrust issues, asked the White House and Justice Department to turn over records after The New Yorker magazine reported Trump directed then-National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn to use the Justice Department to block the deal.

The pair wrote that if accurate, Trump’s involvement would “constitute a grave abuse of power.” In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower-court ruling rejecting a Justice Department challenge to the deal filed in November 2017.

Trump criticized the deal as a candidate in late 2016, saying it would concentrate too much media power in the hands of one owner, and later saying it would raise prices. He has also frequently attacked CNN, a Time Warner property now owned by AT&T, for what he sees as negative coverage of his campaign and administration.

In a letter dated Monday and released on Tuesday by Cicilline, White House counsel Pat Cipollone declined to release any documents, saying he would not provide “protected communications between the president and his senior advisers that are the very core of the executive branch’s confidentiality interests.”

Cipollone added that the Justice Department would be responding “in due course.”

The two Democrats responded in a joint statement that “the White House Counsel has made a blanket claim that all White House communications — regardless of whether they contain evidence of improper or even unlawful activities — are protected by a cone of secrecy,” adding they would “pursue this matter.”

Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a 2018 declaration he had never received “orders, instructions, or directions relating” to the AT&T-Time Warner deal from Trump, Justice Department officials or White House officials.

The Justice Department said in February it would not seek further appeals to block the merger.

In February 2018, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected AT&T’s request to see White House communications that might shed light on whether Trump pressured the Justice Department to try to block the deal.

AT&T lawyers said last year the deal may have been singled out for enforcement, citing as evidence statements by Trump as a candidate and as president that the deal was bad for consumers and the country. AT&T declined comment on Tuesday.

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Peter Cooney

Modem fees are back for some customers.

Spectrum appears to be sneaking modem fees back into the equation three years after telling regulators one of the benefits of Charter Communications’ acquisition of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable was that Spectrum customers don’t pay modem fees.

Effective April 1st, new Spectrum customers are being charged a one-time fee of $9.99 to either pick up or have shipped a cable modem for self-installation. If a technician installs it for you, the fee is $49.99.

“The one where you’re essentially paying them to go to the store, wait in line, get the modem, and then go home to install it all by yourself is especially nifty,” writes ‘rseiler,’ a forum participant on DSL Reports.

“Just wait for the ‘Bring your own modem’ $9.99 one-time activation fee, since that will be next,” predicted user ‘Techguru30.’

For now, however, the only way to avoid this fee is to activate your own customer-owned modem.

Comcast and Charter Communications are losing money on their cell service plans because their partner, Verizon Wireless, sets its wholesale rates too high, making certain the two companies cannot cannibalize Verizon’s own customers for long.

MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett claims the cable industry’s 2012 $3.9 billion sale of wireless spectrum to Verizon Wireless, which included an agreement allowing the two cable operators to resell Verizon Wireless service, turned out to benefit Verizon more than Comcast and Charter.

The problem is Verizon set its own price for service high enough to guarantee the two cable operators will have a hard time outcompeting Verizon Wireless. Moffett estimates Verizon is currently charging the two operators about $5/GB and around $5/month per customer for unlimited voice and texting. According to Moffett’s calculations, only the pay-per-gigabyte plans have any chance of marginal profitability. Comcast charges $12/GB for its pay-per-usage mobile plan; Charter charges $14/GB for essentially the same service. Both plans include unlimited voice and texting.

Things quickly get unprofitable when a customer signs up for Spectrum Mobile’s or Xfinity Mobile’s Unlimited plan (both $45/mo). Once a customer uses more than 8GB of 4G LTE data per month, Verizon’s wholesale price, including the cost of voice and texting, reaches the same amount those companies are charging customers for service. That does not include any of the ancillary costs Comcast and Charter have to pay to support and market their wireless plans.

Moffett believes the two companies overestimated how often subscribers would offload traffic to Wi-Fi, and the future potential for more solid Wi-Fi coverage “looks cloudy.” The problem, as Moffett sees it, appears to be the cable industry’s loss of interest building out their metro Wi-Fi networks. Moffett called the joint CableWiFi project between Comcast, Charter, Cox, and Altice USA “a bust” because the members of the coalition have largely stopped investing in new hotspot installations. That leaves about 500,000 working hotspots around the country, a number that has remained unchanged for two years. Only in-business Wi-Fi continues to grow, as business cable broadband customers are offered the opportunity to provide Wi-Fi service for their customers. But those hotspots don’t typically offer outdoor coverage.

Comcast has grown its Xfinity Mobile service to 1.2 million lines since launching in 2017 and Spectrum Mobile, which began in last September, had attracted almost 134,000 customers by the end of 2018.