Google Fiber since last year has been transitioning away from its traditional TV product toward virtual MVPD alternatives and the shift is now almost complete.
Liz Hsu, director of product strategy for Google Fiber, provided an update this week about retiring Fiber TV in all Google Fiber markets. She said the company has completely upgraded Fiber TV customers in Nashville, Huntsville, Salt Lake City, and Provo, while Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte and Irvine will finish their transitions by the end of September, and Austin and Atlanta will finish up by the end of November. There’s no timeline for Kansas City yet but the company is still encouraging customers there to switch from Fiber TV to one of the available streaming TV alternatives.
“Traditional TV is expensive and outdated, so we're working to upgrade our customers to streaming options and will ultimately retire Fiber TV in all our markets. (Don't worry, current TV customers will get 90 days notice before their plan changes!) We want to make sure everyone gets the best TV for them, so we’re offering different options to meet different needs,” wrote Hsu in a blog post. “We know change can be hard, and we want to make this transition as painless as possible for all our TV customers.”
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To further incentivize customers to switch, Google Fiber is offering Chromecast with Google TV devices and upgraded home Wi-Fi with Google Wifi.
Back in 2017, Google Fiber was already phasing out linear TV. When the company announced imminent launches in San Antonio and Louisville, it said it would not be offering the TV service add-on in those markets. Cathy Fogler, then head of sales and marketing for Access, the Google division that houses Fiber, was careful to note that the TV product wasn’t going away but also seemed to acknowledge that the writing was on the wall.
“For our existing markets with TV as a part of their product offerings, nothing is changing--although more and more of you are choosing Internet-only options from Google Fiber. We’ve seen this over and over again in our Fiber cities,” she wrote in a blog post.
The company currently sells its own service, YouTube TV, alongside fuboTV, Sling TV and Philo as vMVPD options for its Fiber customers.