[PLUG-TALK] Wail! Google fiber coming

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "John" == John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> writes:

John> I am curious how the fiber in Kansas Ciy? works. I assume there
John> was some kind of internet service to homes there
John> previously. Comcast? Who?  Did Google use the existing poles to
John> string their fiber? Who owns the poles? Does the previous
John> provider still have customers there? Do people who connect to
John> Google fiber pay Google for the service?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber

While it would be nice, perhaps, to trust Google to be a nice service
provider, it is important to bear in mind that the congress/courts/fcc
have abandoned pretty much all regulatory oversight.  Owners are given
free reign over their infrastructure.  Given the poor business case
for overbuilding same-class infrastructure (you divide the market,
making ROI n-times as hard, where n is the number of providers), you
are likely to end up with only one provider, with too much power over
settng rules and favoring themselves.  Hey, they risked their money in
the infrastructure investment, surely they deserve to reap the
benefits.

It would be better if the users owned the infrastructure (like they do
for streets, water, sewer), and bought private services over that
infrastructure, so they could guarantee low barriers to entry for
service providers.  A new provider (say, of internet access, or video
programming, or telephone) wouldn't have to build their own expensive
last-mile infrastructure in order to do their thing.  They'd just have
to connect to the common network and arrange mutual exchange of bits
with customers.  Users win.  Monopolies lose.  Yay!


-- 
Russell Senior, President
russell at personaltelco.net