Google Fiber Had 29,867 TV Subscribers in 2014

Google Fiber, the broadband Internet and television service from Google, is growing slowly yet surely. According to the latest figures released today by the U.S. Copyright Office, which monitors TV subscribers through the mandatory licensing fees, Google Fiber had 29,867 video subscribers in 2014—representing 0.026 percent of the overall U.S. cable market.

The statistics, as reported by the website, Multichannel News, shows Google Fiber had 20,140 subscribers in Kansas City, Missouri; 7,026 in Kansas City, Kansas; 2,507 in Provo, Utah; and 194 subscribers in Stanford, California. To put things into perspective, Google Fiber got 10.5 percent of the 192,406 TV subscribers in Kansas City, Missouri; 13 percent of the 53,925 in Kansas City, Kansas; 8 percent of the 31,524 in Provo; and 5 percent of 3,913 in Stanford.

MoffettNathanson analyst, Craig Moffet, says that Google’s numbers are proof that building a telecommunications company is hard and slow. It’s also costly. Google’s vice president of access services, Milo Medin, noted last year that video is the biggest piece of Google Fiber’s cost structure. Furthermore, Moffet said that Google Fiber is similar to ebola. It’s very scary, but the numbers are relatively small. It gets a lot of press attention, but it doesn’t pose a big risk, he added.