Google Fiber switch to Google Wireless?

[Bernard Murphy]

Changes, reduction in staff and halts in fiber layout. Believed to signal a shift to a wireless strategy

Google halts Fiber rollout in some U.S. cities
| Reuters

 

[Daniel Payne]

Yes, we in the Portland metro region were saddened that Google abruptly stopped their plans to bring giga-bit Fiber to our homes. But hey, if they can do something similar with wireless, then let's get that party started in Portland.

 

[Bernard Murphy]

Presumably cheaper to install which might mean they could accelerate deployment in other areas too

 

[Joe Talin]

There's a lot of new effort and promise in the wireless indsutry with regards to fixed wireless, there's a lot of invstment going on(5G , verizon buying large chunks of 28GHZ), and the tech seems better - with LTE advaced offering gigabit+ and startups like cohere and tarana solving major technical problem with wireless(channel fading, non-line of sight, intererence, probably affordable antenna arrays) while the 5G efforts(with fixed wireless as probably the biggest customer) starting to at least hint that mmWave deployments might be practical - and that promises a lot of open bandwidth.

 

[simguru]

The problem with wireless is that the bandwidth is intrinsically limited; the only way to get more is to move up to higher frequencies (like 60GHz), but those have range issues, so then you have to do small cells which drops you back in the problem of needing to build infrastructure.

The easy way to do fiber is to piggy-back some existing business -

Vodafone signs up to build €450m fibre-optic network in Ireland - Telegraph

One has to ask why the utilities spent so much money on SmartMeters with crappy mesh radios, when doing fiber-to-home could have made them a lot of money (and some friends).

 

[Joe Talin]

simguru, in urban areas ,regular LTE is already working as an affordable fixed access technology, in countries like Austria and South Korea. Maybe not Gbit to the home, but probably 100 mbit+ .

And yes there are issue with mmWave, but still, the fact that verizon is ackuiring tons of 28GHZ specturm for that role ,together with others , indicates that it does make financial sense, probably.

And some startups like cohere and tarana do offer solutions to problems the lower parts of the spectrum, like solving fading(cohere) and solving non-line-of-sight + intereference (tarana), and there are improvements in using large number of antennas(MU-MIMO) to achieve maybe 10x better spectral efficiency.

 

[simguru]

simguru, in urban areas ,regular LTE is already working as an affordable fixed access technology, in countries like Austria and South Korea. Maybe not Gbit to the home, but probably 100 mbit+ .

And yes there are issue with mmWave, but still, the fact that verizon is ackuiring tons of 28GHZ specturm for that role ,together with others , indicates that it does make financial sense, probably.

And some startups like cohere and tarana do offer solutions to problems the lower parts of the spectrum, like solving fading(cohere) and solving non-line-of-sight + intereference (tarana), and there are improvements in using large number of antennas(MU-MIMO) to achieve maybe 10x better spectral efficiency.

There's also stuff like LiFi - pureLiFi™ The Home of LiFi - pureLiFi™ and FSO - fSONA: free Space Optical Networking Architecture

The radio stuff works up to a certain point, but it is limited by the physics, and the bands are quite narrow. I.e. a 28GHz band is not 0-28GHz it's less than a GHz -

AT&T presses for multiple licensees in 28 GHz band | FierceWireless

So I'm not seeing traditional RF stuff being the main medium for 8k TV and VR transmission.

 

[Joe Talin]

I agree , Gbit to the home may not be possible with wireless.

I'm not convinced that 8K, or even 4K would have much utility on most tv's (unless they are 84" + ) . As for VR - It's far too early , but:


1. A lot of the content - games/movies could be downloaded to start, streaming isn't necessary.


2. Streaming would become critical for live tv(i.e. sports), but multicast wireless could work well.