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Google Fiber has been gaining its fair share of headlines over the past few weeks and months. Although the service has been some time in the making, the rollout to the end user has been slow going with currently only a handful of cities being offered the service. This is in spite of what seems to be a growing interest in the service. Which is not that surprising, seeing Google are offering 1GB internet speeds for round about the same price most people are paying their current companies for a much lesser speed. So, in spite of the actual slow rolling out, the prospect is one which excites users and somewhat worries internet providers.
The other half of the Fiber business is the TV side. This, like what is offered by many triple play companies (landline, internet and TV) can be bundled into a one fee package with the internet. At least, this is what Google hopes new adopters will do. As such, the idea of Google Fiber worries cable companies as much as it does internet providers. However, it seems those cable companies have less to worry about then maybe the internet providers do. This is because, latest figures show that the adoption rate of the TV side of Fiber is proving extremely slow.
The latest figures come directly from the U.S. Copyright Office by way of analysts, MoffettNathanson and highlight Google’s subscription base equates to roughly 0.026% of the U.S. cable market. This is made up of what was a total of 29,867 video subscriptions by the close of 2014, with Kansas City, Mo, being the clear bulk of the overall subscriber numbers (20,140). Beyond Kansas City, Provo in Utah saw 2,507 subscribers, Kansas City, Kan, saw 7,026 subscribers while a trial in Stanford currently stands at 194 subscribers. This is not the first time either that the TV side of Fiber has been reported as causing Google issues. Back in October of last year, Milo Medin, VP of Access Services explained how TV studios were slowing down the rollout of Fiber and proving the most difficult hurdle to pass. Are you waiting on Fiber to land near you? Are you interested in the TV services or just the fast internet? Let us know.