Google Fiber Goes Live, Luring Startups > Unsustainable

reply to JasonOD

Re: Unsustainable

It's not easment access, The RoW is public, but the poles are not and Google cut a deal with KC, KS to use the poles at a lower then normal rate, provide rack space in public facilities for free (including electric service) something that was NEVER offered to any other provider, and the taxpayers are on the hook for pole improvements and all future maintaince for said poles, something that normally is paid for by pole attachment fees. so it's not a profitable deal for the city, not even breakeven, but a direct cost on the taxpayers, made worse, now that it's revealed, by the other providers sueing for zero fee attachments and the return of previous fees.
This back room deal will end up being VERY expensive as now anyone who can meet to ROW usage requirment can DEMAND the same treatment.

With the exception of tornado siren poles (and those are only mounted every 5 miles or so), the poles in Missouri are all privately owned as we do not have public utilities here other than water. So if Google cut a deal on pole access, it was with private companies.
(And the other teleco companies have huge amounts of public rackspace in St Louis and Kansas City.)

It was KCK that cut the deals, as far as I know, the KCMO build was just a PR add-on when KCMO people complained about redlining (which is actually the basis of this whole project, I don't think you could find another "Cherrypicking" example as clear as the Google fiber selection process)

I believe it was reported at the time, KC, MO was not in the original PUBLIC plan.
google it* yourself, it would have been spring 2011 sometime between march and may (when the announced KC, MO was added)

*better use bing, google is pretty careful not too leave easy access to its PR mis-steps.

reply to tshirt

I'm not talk redlining as in Income level, it was about COOPERATION.
KCK WAs the original selected target because they were willing to bend over backwards for the actual build (not silly PR stuff like renaming the city, like Topika did) KC, MO was not announced until a few months later, AFTER complaints. KC, MO appears to begetting more benefit as the payments to the power company for pole rights were pledged to reduce power rates.

Either way this experiment is not about ROI in either KC and thus doesn't set a model/example for the traditional ISPs.