It recently came to light that Google Fiber was essentially pausing any and all expansion, and CEO Craig Barratt was stepping down. The plan included laying off about 9% of the total workforce involved in the project, as well. For all intents and purposes, Google Fiber’s expansion is on hold, and areas that are just getting on board with Fiber right now can expect their deployment to be a bit on the slow side. AT&T decided not to mince words, and took to their corporate blog to call Google Fiber out for their “unfulfilled promise”, leaving would-be customers in many areas looking for an escape route from local options high and dry. They rubbed salt in the wound by making sure everybody knew it was Google Fiber they were talking about, telling consumers not to be surprised at searching for another option because “Making you search is what they do best.”
Not one to simply put a rival down without putting their own product out there, AT&T in the same breath touted AT&T Fiber. Their network, with speeds in the gigabit area and pricing starting below $100 much like Google Fiber, is now in 40 metro areas, and the post claims that AT&T will have service live in 45 total areas before 2016 is up, with a commitment to get it out to 67 major metro areas before it’s all said and done. According to AT&T’s Wired and Wireless SVP, Eric Boyer, their target for 2019 is to serve gigabit all-fiber internet to 12.5 million individual locations, and they’re projected to exceed that goal.
Throughout the blog post, the potshots at Google Fiber keep on coming. Before the end of the post, Boyer had implied that Google didn’t think rolling out Fiber would be difficult, poked fun at how long Fiber has been around in comparison to how widespread it is, and even attacked two of the more unique approaches Google has taken with the rollout, ” a checklist dictating terms or by pushing cities to enact lopsided legislation.” Boyer caps off the post by bragging that AT&T has laid out $140 billion in wired and wireless network capital since 2011, and demand for their Fiber option is so great that about 50% of new Fiber customers were not existing AT&T customers in any form, meaning that they are likely getting more than a few pieces of competitors’ pies in the areas that they’re rolled out.