Google is shutting down its high-speed Fiber internet service in Louisville, Kentucky after several residents reported seeing its cables wide open and exposed in the streets.
“Today, we’re saying goodbye to one of our Fiber cities. And it ain’t easy,” Google Fiber’s official team said in a blog post entitled ‘Saying Goodbye to Louisville.’
The company first offered its gigabit-speed internet service to Louisville residents less than 2 years ago, in October 2017. According to reports by The Verge, Google Fiber’s installation crew used a process called ‘shallow trenching’ that involved “laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant”. Unfortunately, the shallow placement also meant that there was a possibility for the cables to become exposed over time, requiring another cover-up with hot asphalt that employees seem to have disregarded, at least according to some residents.
“In Louisville, we’ve encountered challenges that have been disruptive to residents and caused service issues for our customers. We’re not living up to the high standards we set for ourselves, or the standards we’ve demonstrated in other Fiber cities,” the post continued. “We would need to essentially rebuild our entire network in Louisville to provide the great service that Google Fiber is known for, and that’s just not the right business decision for us.”
Google is officially shutting down its services in Louisville on April 15th and will not charge its customers for the last two months of service.
