• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, February 6, 2020

Google Fiber will stop offering traditional linear TV service to new subscribers, and instead direct them toward streaming service options.

Google Fiber, which has been offering YouTube TV as an option for new subscribers since December 2019, is now also adding virtual MVPD FuboTV — known for its heavy live sports coverage — to its options.

“As we return our focus to where we started — as a gigabit Internet company — we’re also ready to challenge the status quo, to finally come right out and say it: customers today just don’t need traditional TV,” Google Fiber declared in its company blog.

New Google Fiber broadband subscribers can now elect to also sign up for either YouTube TV or Fubo TV, or buy Fiber broadband and buy an online video service separately.

For now, at least, existing Fiber customers can keep using the platform’s original service.

Google Fiber, which for some time sold multiple different broadband-plus-TV bundles, dropped a $50-per-month, 1,000Mbps broadband option in December. It currently sells just one broadband plan: unlimited 1Gbps internet access for $70 a month for all uses, including video streaming and downloads. Fiber customers can also buy home phone service for an additional $10 per month.

The company’s shift away from linear to focus on broadband and streaming-based options is no surprise to industry analysts.

Google Fiber’s availability is still limited to a few areas of the U.S., and as of 2017, Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson estimated that its pay-TV base was only about 84,000, with growth prospects appearing to be limited.

Google announced Fiber in 2010, promising to shake up the broadband industry with fiber-based home internet service delivering ultra-high-speed (up to a gigabit per second) performance.

In 2016, after entering six metro areas, Fiber announced it was “pausing” its plans for 11 more cities.

In 2017, it entered the Louisville, Kentucky and San Antonio markets, using shallow trenches and other cutting-edge methods it said would control the costs of installing fiber infrastructure.

But last February, after infrastructure and service disasters, the company admitted defeat, and abandoned its Louisville initiative, saying it would use its learnings in other markets.

At that time, Google Fiber told CNET that it would continue to install fiber infrastructure and sign up new customers in the 10 other metro areas in which it operated: Atlanta; Austin and San Antonio, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee, Orange County, California; and Salt Lake City/Provo, Utah.