Flash flooding in a neighborhood where storm drains were blocked by Google’s construction debris. (Image: Adolfo Romero)

Some Austin residents are fuming over the sloppy construction work and eyesores left by contractors hired by Google to install its fiber optic service.

Last year, 254 formal complaints were filed against Google and its contractors, by far the largest compared with AT&T and Time Warner Cable, which are also in the process of upgrading their networks in the city.

The epicenter of construction nightmares for homeowners is on Lambs Lane in Southeast Austin, where last October a flash flood allegedly caused by Google’s construction crews blocking nearby storm drains brought two feet of water into the home of Arnulfo and Dolores Cruz, causing $100,000 in damages.

Two of Google Fiber’s newest fiber cities will only get the gigabit fiber-to-the-home service because someone else already laid the fiber.

In the last week, residents of San Francisco and Huntsville, Ala. were told they were next in line for Google Fiber service. But instead of proposing to build a citywide fiber network for all residents, Google will rely almost entirely on pre-existing fiber networks they will use to reach customers.

In San Francisco, only an unspecified portion of the metro area will qualify for Google Fiber, namely certain apartments, condos, and subsidized housing units already served by a fiber optic connection. Single family homes and apartments not currently connected to fiber may never qualify for Google’s service.

A Google Fiber executive seemed to signal Google may be taking a harder look at the cost of building fiber service, and future expansion may rely on renting space on someone else’s cable.

“To date, we’ve focused mostly on building fiber-optic networks from scratch,” said Michael Slinger, Google Fiber’s business operations director. “Now, as Google Fiber grows, we’re looking for more ways to serve cities of different shapes and sizes.”

That suddenly makes existing municipal and private dark fiber networks very attractive and in demand. Many municipalities have underused institutional fiber networks that serve anchor institutions, public safety, and government offices. Public access is often limited to non-existent. The prospect of Google paying to use those networks to reach more customers may prove attractive to cash-strapped cities. Private fiber overbuilders and those with excess capacity may also find a new revenue stream renting space to the search engine giant. In Huntsville, Google will have non-exclusive access to the city’s publicly owned fiber network. Any competitor could technically offer their services over the same network.

Competitors and analysts seemed ready to dismiss Google’s latest expansion announcements. Diffusion Group analyst Joel Espelien told the San Jose Mercury News Google Fiber’s plans to wire affordable housing in San Francisco was nothing more than “pure PR.” He’s unimpressed with Google Fiber generally, dismissing it as “Costco Internet,” delivering bulk sized connections at prices most consumers are unaccustomed to paying for Internet access.

“It’s both cheap and it isn’t cheap,” Espelien said. “It kind of depends on your point of view.”

Google’s reasons to offer service to only a few locations in San Francisco are clearly pegged to the costs of wiring the entire city.

“We considered a number of factors, including the city’s rolling hills, miles of coastline, and historic neighborhoods,” Google said in a blog post. All of those features that tourists love to see are also expensive because of costly engineering efforts to hide the cables from view to stay within zoning regulations.

Despite predictions Google Fiber had no interest in offering customers landline telephone service, Google has quietly begun testing a new residential voice service called Google Fiber Phone that appeared to be powered by its Google Voice service.

Google hoped to keep the trial confidential, but one of its subscribers shared their invitation with the Washington Post:

We are always looking to provide new offerings to members of our Fiber Trusted Tester program which gives you early access to confidential products and features.

Our latest offering is Google Fiber Phone, which gives you the chance to add home phone service to your current Fiber service plan and offers several advanced features:

• A phone number that lives in the cloud. With Fiber Phone you can use the right phone for your needs whether it’s your mobile device on the go or your landline at home. No more worrying about cell reception or your battery life when your home.
• Voicemail the way it should be. Get your messages transcribed delivered directly to your email.
• Get only the calls you want when you want. Spam filtering, call screening, and do not disturb make sure the right people can get in touch with you at the right time.

With Fiber Phone you have the option to get a new number or transfer an existing landline or cell number. If you’re interested in testing this product please fill out this form within one week.

Please be aware that testing Google Fiber Phone will require a service visit in which a Fiber team member will come to your home to install a piece of equipment. If you’re selected for this Trusted Tester group, we will be actively seeking your feedback – both good and bad – so that we can improve Fiber Phone once we launch it to all of our customers.

Please remember that the Trusted Tester Program gives you early access to features which are not yet available to the public, so please help us keep this confidential.

Thanks,

The Google Fiber Team

The feature set sounds almost identical to Google Voice, which offers free phone service. For the first time, Google is prepared to allow customers to port existing landline numbers to its phone service. Previously, Google Voice customers could only port a cell phone number or select a new number to start the service.

Google Fiber has only sold single or double-play packages of Internet and/or television service. Customers looking for telephone service had to select a third-party provider like Vonage or Ooma or be technically proficient to get Google Voice service up and running with Voice over IP equipment. Including Google Fiber Phone would allow Google to sell a triple-play package.

The technician visit required is likely to involve wiring Google Fiber’s beta test phone line into a home’s existing telephone wiring, which will let customers use their current home and cordless phones.

Google has not announced a price for the service, but there is every chance it could come free with Google Fiber, which starts at $70 a month for 1 gigabit broadband service.

Despite the increasing frequency of announcements promoting new Google Fiber cities, Google’s currently operating fiber network remains modest. In October 2015, Bernstein Research estimated Google Fiber passed about 427,000 homes and 96,000 business locations, primarily in Kansas City and Provo, Utah, according to Multichannel News. Bernstein estimated Google Fiber has about 120,000 paid customers nationwide.

Google Fiber today announced it would accept applications from Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, and Tampa to become the next cities qualified for its fiber to the home service.

We’re inviting Oklahoma City, OK, Jacksonville, FL and Tampa, FL, to explore bringing Google Fiber to their communities, as we did last month with three other cities. These growing tech-hubs have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to small business growth. Their list of accolades is long—from Jacksonville’s title as a top 10 city for tech jobs, to Tampa Bay’s #2 spot on the list of best cities for young entrepreneurs, to Oklahoma City’s recognition as the #1 city to launch a business. One of our goals is to make sure speed isn’t an accidental ceiling for how people and businesses use the Web, and these cities are the perfect places to show what’s possible with gigabit Internet.

Google continues its informal boycott of the northeastern United States, where community interest in fiber service has been rebuffed through a lack of responsiveness.

The three latest cities will have to prove they can meet Google’s extensive list of requirements on everything from zoning to pole attachment access and fees. Things that tend to upset Google include endless zoning paperwork, intransigent bureaucracy, and dealing with an excess of county, city, town, and village governments (states in the northeast are also often notorious for layers of local government, all demanding compliance with local codes.) Communities are even expected to get their arborist on board.

Local governments that take the attitude Google must win them over are unlikely to ever see the service. Those that bend over backwards to accommodate the fiber project are the ones managing successful applications. In other words, ask not what Google can do for you, ask what you can do for Google.

Tampa is the first city invited to apply that is also served by Verizon FiOS, although Verizon is in the process of selling its wired networks in Florida to Frontier Communications. Tampa’s cable competitor is Bright House Networks, itself in the process of being sold to Charter Communications. Jacksonville is Comcast and AT&T country and OKC is served by AT&T and Cox Communications.

Making it to the invitation list does not guarantee Google Fiber service, although most local governments are lobbied by their constituents to do whatever is necessary to secure fiber competition.

North Carolina residents bypassed by Google Fiber and impatient waiting for AT&T U-verse with GigaPower may still have a chance to get gigabit fiber Internet.

Ting, a Toronto-based wireless provider, is exploring building fiber broadband networks in as many as a half-dozen cities in 2016, and some of them may be in North Carolina.

Elliot Noss, CEO of Ting’s parent company, told the Triangle Business Journal he is impressed with the enthusiasm for fiber optic broadband in the state. He recognized Greenlight, Wilson’s community-owned fiber network, as a fiber pioneer that helped fuel demand for better Internet in the state. He added North Carolina is one of the leaders in fiber to the home service in the country, and that makes it a very suitable place to bring even more fiber to the state.

The Triangle region of North Carolina is receiving network upgrades from Time Warner Cable and AT&T, and Google Fiber is coming to Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, but there remains a number of Triangle communities including Clayton, Dunn, Henderson, Louisburg, Norlina, Oxford, Pittsboro, Rocky Mount, Roxboro, Sanford, Selma, Siler City, Smithfield, Tarboro and Wake Forest where fiber networks would be welcomed.

Ting workers installing fiber optics in Charlottesville, Va.

Noss believes fiber begets even more fiber, which may explain why some states are getting huge investments in competing fiber optic projects while others struggle with little or no fiber at all. As soon as a fiber provider enters a region, it creates a higher level of awareness that better Internet service exists when you look beyond “good enough” broadband from phone and cable companies. The resulting “broadband envy” fuels demand for network upgrades.

Noss believes smaller, outlying metros bypassed for fiber upgrades now want them more than ever because they are at a competitive disadvantage without better Internet access.

“North Carolina might be the first state in the union that has moved from where cities and towns are looking at fiber as a way to differentiate and to lead,” Noss told the newspaper. “(North Carolina) is seeing it almost defensively: We need it for our survival because we’re surrounded by it.”

So what makes a community ripe for fiber broadband? A community already sold on fiber and willing to make things happen quickly and smoothly.

“The first thing we look for when we’re engaging with a city or town is an understanding that this is something they deeply want to do,” Noss says. “We don’t take meetings with cities who want to hear about why they should have fiber or gigabit connectivity.”

That attitude is shared by Google, which has taken to issuing a checklist for city officials interested in attracting Google Fiber to their community. In short, it means developing a working relationship between zoning/permitting officials and Google’s engineers to cut the “red tape.”

In the past, politicians often treated cable franchise contracts as valuable enough to ask providers for concessions in return for an agreement. Many cities treated Verizon the same way when it sought franchise agreements to offer cable television over its FiOS fiber to the home network. Some city officials sought compensation for PEG services – Public Access, Educational, and Government channels. Others sought funding for technology and educational programs, community centers, or free service for public and government-owned buildings.

Google has turned that formula upside down. Today, communities offer concessions to Google competing to be the next fiber city. Other providers entering the fiber market with promises of better Internet are getting a similar reception from eager communities.

Charlottesville, Va. and Westminster, Md., neither a likely prospect for Google Fiber or Verizon FiOS did not need any convincing. Ting now provides gigabit fiber service in both communities for $89 a month or a cheaper 5/5Mbps budget option for $19 a month — both with a $399 installation fee. Customers cannot wait to sign up for service, often to say goodbye to companies like Comcast or Verizon’s DSL offering.

Ting is owned by Tucows, Inc., a provider of network access, domain names, and other Internet services.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Ting What gigabit fiber means for Westminster 2015.mp4[/flv]

Ting produced this video about what gigabit fiber broadband will mean for a community like Westminster, Md. (2:07)