Told You So

A few years back when Google announced its fiber business I noted that they knew nothing about it and the people that were running it in my opinion also had little understanding. Today I see that they are slowly abandoning thier efforts, leaving Louisville.

ArsTechnica notes:

Google Fiber will turn off its network in Louisville, Kentucky and exit the city after a series of fiber installation failures left cables exposed in the roads. Google Fiber's customers in Louisville will have to switch ISPs and will get their final two months of Google Fiber service for free to help make up for the disruption. Google Fiber went live in Louisville late in 2017, just a few months after construction began. The quick turnaround happened because Google Fiber used a shallow trenching strategy that is quicker than traditional underground fiber deployment and doesn't require digging giant holes. Instead of a foot-wide trench, a micro-trench is generally about an inch wide and four inches deep. In Louisville, Google Fiber reportedly was burying cables in "nano-trenches" that were just two inches deep. But Louisville residents soon found exposed cables, .... "When you're walking around the neighborhood, [the lines are] popping up out of the road all over the place," resident Larry Coomes said at the time. "People are tripping over it."

 As noted, the infrastructure business is dramatically different that software. I have been in both, and infrastructure requires experience and mistakes are costly to recover from. Clearly this team would not have been chosen by General Groves in the 1940s. Can't say we didn't warn them.