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Google Fiber: Make It Easier For Us Or Enjoy Time Warner Cable

"If you make it easy, we will come. If you make it hard, enjoy your Time Warner Cable,” Google Fiber's Milo Medin told attendees of a Comptel Competition and Innovation Summit this week. Medin was speaking on a panel about network deployment, fresh off of Google's announcement that it will be expanding Google Fiber into Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta and Raleigh/Durham.

According to Medin (who longtime readers may remember from his @Home days), cities can do a lot to improve their area's chances when it comes to next-gen broadband deployment:

quote:
Medin cited byzantine permission processes (including a fetish for faxes) and an inability to provide accurate information about infrastructure as prime reasons that hurt some cities’ chances to attract new broadband services...Medin, who was speaking on a panel about network deployment, added that some markets in the U.S. are simply uneconomic for internet providers to enter, and that local telephone companies are reluctant to grant access to key telephone pole infrastructure.
Numerous cities have been so eager to get Google Fiber, they've signed rather sweetheart deals that, for example, allow Google to simply walk away from builds should TV subscriber uptake numbers not be met. Perks also include the right to redline and cherry pick deployment neighborhoods (though the resulting digital divide may be obscured by fun "fiberhood" rallies), something traditional ISPs have lusted after for years -- but found blocked by many traditional franchise obligations.

Of course it's not quite as simple as fixing all of your city's restrictions and suddenly finding yourself awash in $70, 1 Gbps connections. Thousands of cities have petitioned Google for service, and so far Google Fiber's still only actively functioning in a few thousand homes in Austin, Kansas City and Provo. As noted repeatedly, Google Fiber's effort is in some ways a PR experiment designed to encourage a nationwide conversation on a lack of real broadband competition and how we plan to fix it.

Most recommended from 77 comments


AVonGauss
Premium Member
join:2007-11-01
Boynton Beach, FL

4 recommendations

AVonGauss

Premium Member

Comcast

Can you imagine if Comcast had said something like, "If you make it easy, we will come. If you make it hard, enjoy your DSL”...

... Just trying to keep everything in perspective.