The Google Fiber installation in Portland was one of few potential installations for Portland and was a very well-welcomed addition for this urban city. But the future of Google Fiber is a big question mark in Portland; it is totally vivid at the moment. The plans of its launch in Portland have been held on pause by Google. Other service providers are reacting to this news differently and on various degrees.

Google planned to expand in Portland back in 2014 but due to some rollout barriers, Google is probably not expanding to Portland now. The city was super excited by the idea of fiber optic Internet but now things have taken an unexpected change. Why did this happen?

What happened Google?

In areas where Google Fiber was accessible, it was not successful to gain TV and Internet subscribers as it had hoped to. It only managed to gain 50,000 TV subscribers and likewise, the Internet subscribers were only 65,000 plus. This is a small amount considering the Portland population is well over 500,000 residents. They were unable to gather as many customers as they had hoped for. There was a huge hint that things weren’t going on so well for Google Fiber when they cut off major staff from their company. Google Fiber recently cut its workers from 1000 to 500; which means that half of the staff was told to leave because they certainly could not afford to keep them on board. Google Fiber was not gaining a lot of subscribers which left them hopeless.

However, the low subscriptions members and the high costs that were going on to be invested in them, forced Google Fiber to cut their decision to expand into Portland. But in places where it had planned to bring in the Google Fiber optic, the company is now planning to deploy the wireless Internet.

Portland left hanging and Google Fiber is a ‘no-go’

BUT the major problem remains for the people of Portland as they had put in major efforts to bring Google Fiber to their city. They had arranged tax breaks to make it easier for Google Fiber to come to Portland but it is simply not possible now. Google cannot rollout Google Fiber Optic to the city due to the costs.

Why and where will they lead to now? It is said that Google Fiber will now be replaced with wireless Internet. It will remain in areas that have subscribers and other cities will have the wireless Internet facility. When is it going to happen? Nothing has been said about it yet, but we hope to gather some news regarding it soon. For now Google Fiber is not expanding any further as it has cost them more than they have received in return for it.