To take charge of its burgeoning internet and television service, Google has selected someone with expertise in operations for future expansion. Dennis Kish, a former Qualcomm executive, has been selected as the leader of Google Fiber. Kish has spent a number of years with Actel and ST-Ericsson as well. At Qualcomm, he was the senior vice president and general manager of the technology division.
Bringing in Kish shows that Google is dedicated to taking Google Fiber beyond an experimental project. Under this new leadership, he will be working on launching the service in additional locations across the country. Google Fiber is currently available in Kansas City, Provo, and soon to be Austin. At this point, there are nine metropolitan areas listed as candidates to be next.
Kish is replacing Milo Medin, who was largely behind Google Fiber's launch. Medin will remain with Google by working on undisclosed projects.
Source: Digits (The Wall Street Journal)
Hopefully he can take the project out of perpetual test. If you look at the planned/unplanned cities they have stayed the same for a long time. I’m not saying they are doing nothing, but I am saying that there has been very slow growth. I realize that there is a lot of planning with this, but they honestly need to improve their progress.
I worked there – so I have a certain appreciation for all the challenges involved. This is so much easier said than done… in many ways, our old legacy telco regulations, laws and bureaucracy is a major factor in the deployment speed.
These laws are hurting us as a society — most of the laws are from the 60’s – 90’s; almost no laws are specific to the Internet or data services. If they exist, they are band-aids tacked on to old law.These old laws are greatly impacting speed of deployment, directly and indirectly (costs).
The major players are also using these arcane laws to protect them from this competition, and trying to implement new “anti-competition” laws (eg Comcast). Then there are just the inefficiencies with any government (city/county government, easement, construction, permits, etc). Our laws are written to support one company’s infrastructure – a monopoly, not to allow multiple companies to play together.
Yes, there are the technical challenges of scaling deployment, but that’s what Google is excellent at.
Google Fiber has and is continuing to develop open and public standards and requirements — any city meeting those terms can apply. There are many talks with many cities, but as far as I know, none of them can yet lift the red tape required to secure an efficient build-out of fiber. We’re talking the difference of billions of dollars in government and regulatory inefficiencies, not just tens of millions.
That said, it’s my opinion that IF a local government/municipality were to build an open fiber network, Google Fiber would be happy to quickly jump in and provide services. I personally think this is the best solution … your local government supports building fiber to the home, some legal structure manages that — some type of co-op possibly (this is all at layer 1 – physical infrastructure only — though layer 2 options do exist). The network is open to providers that provide the content/services,operating at OSI layers 2 and above. In this way, ‘mom and pops’, Google Fiber, and even AT&T, Verizon and Comcast could all compete on one physical infrastructure. That’s efficient…. for the consumer. One build-out cost, multiple providers competing for your business.
GOOGLE FIBER IS NOT AVAILABLE IN AUSTIN TEXAS!!! GET YOUR FUCKING FACTS STRAIGHT, DUMB ASS RETARD!!!
That’d be correct. We have altered the phrasing to reflect that Google Fiber is on its way to Austin.
By the way, I’m pretty sure you could get your point across in a much friendlier way without a ton expletives and caps.
The good news is that Google Fiber does have infrastructure in place in Austin, and is committed — it’s just a matter of getting the fiber to homes. AT&T wasn’t making that easy. Austin will be next, and much sooner than anyone else. Like anywhere, the “unlucky” ones (the ones to get it last in a metro area) may have to wait 2 or 3 years.