Google halts Fiber rollout in 11 US cities with CEO Craig Barrett stepping down

Google’s Fiber project is once again in the headlines, this time for a double whammy. Google is temporarily holding back on plans to roll out Google Fiber gigabit internet in 11 U.S. cities.

Not just this, there are some executive departures too. Craig Barrett, CEO of Access, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet that includes the Fiber initiative, announced in a blog post that he is stepping down. The company also plans layoffs in the areas where they have halted the roll-out.

“We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives,” Barrett wrote in the blog post. “It entails us making changes to focus our business and product strategy. Importantly, the plan enhances our focus on new technology and deployment methods to make superfast Internet more abundant than it is today.”

The affected cities are Dallas, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Nashville, Phoenix, Portland, San Jose, and Tampa.

Barratt has been with Google since 2013, joining a few years after Qualcomm bought his connectivity company Atheros Communications for $3.1 billion in 2011. At the time, Barratt was CEO and president of Atheros, then became president of the new joint entity Qualcomm Atheros before leaving to join Google.

Barratt will stay on as an advisor to Alphabet CEO Larry Page, but it’s clear this is a setback for its broadband ambitions. The company also did not name a new CEO to replace Barratt.

A lot has changed since Google’s acquisition of Webpass whose wireless capability has given the company an ability to expand Fiber while also keeping costs down.