4 ms·

Without laying fiber or networks to the millions of homes around the entire united states (kind of like google tried and found not economically viable), no.

by SEJeff 10y ago

rayiner 10y ago
That is, ironically, a problem largely created by public interest minded people. Most places in the U.S., it is illegal for an ISP startup to be like Apple: targeting the lucrative high end of the market and working down. You have to build out to every neighborhood, even in nehgborhoods where the cost of build out will be more than what you can hope to make from subscribers there. That means even behemoths find it difficult to enter each others' markets. Baltimore, for example, wants fiber. Verizon was ready to build fiber. It would have been easy--Baltimore's suburbs are already wired. But the city wouldn't give Verizon a television license (fundamental to the economics of broadband) without universal build out. But it just didn't make sense to do that in a city where a third of the population is below the poverty line. In fact, nobody has been willing to build fiber in Baltimore on those terms, despite the city railing against Comcast and trying to get a competitor.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  Not quite, that is an issue, but not remotely the biggest one. The biggest problem (and google themselves admit this!) is planning and zoning happens at the city and even county / neighborhood level. If you want to move into a city like say Chicago you don't just need to pass city muster. You need to get the alderman to agree for each small neighborhood. What if you need to lay fiber through neighborhood B to reach neighborhood C from neighborhood A and the zoning committee in B denies you? Well that just cut off a large swath of potential clients. This is fundamentally a problem with all infrastructure improvements in the US. The local communities have too much control over what happens. This is also why things like infra happen to move so quickly in a place like say China where the federal govt can trample over all local regulations. For things like infrastructure, this is a great thing.

Without laying fiber or networks to the millions of homes around the entire united states (kind of like google tried and found not economically viable), no.

by SEJeff 10y ago

Without laying fiber or networks to the millions of homes around the entire united states (kind of like google tried and found not economically viable), no.

rayiner 10y ago

That is, ironically, a problem largely created by public interest minded people. Most places in the U.S., it is illegal for an ISP startup to be like Apple: targeting the lucrative high end of the market and working down. You have to build out to every neighborhood, even in nehgborhoods where the cost of build out will be more than what you can hope to make from subscribers there. That means even behemoths find it difficult to enter each others' markets. Baltimore, for example, wants fiber. Verizon was ready to build fiber. It would have been easy--Baltimore's suburbs are already wired. But the city wouldn't give Verizon a television license (fundamental to the economics of broadband) without universal build out. But it just didn't make sense to do that in a city where a third of the population is below the poverty line. In fact, nobody has been willing to build fiber in Baltimore on those terms, despite the city railing against Comcast and trying to get a competitor.

SEJeff 10y ago
Not quite, that is an issue, but not remotely the biggest one. The biggest problem (and google themselves admit this!) is planning and zoning happens at the city and even county / neighborhood level. If you want to move into a city like say Chicago you don't just need to pass city muster. You need to get the alderman to agree for each small neighborhood. What if you need to lay fiber through neighborhood B to reach neighborhood C from neighborhood A and the zoning committee in B denies you? Well that just cut off a large swath of potential clients. This is fundamentally a problem with all infrastructure improvements in the US. The local communities have too much control over what happens. This is also why things like infra happen to move so quickly in a place like say China where the federal govt can trample over all local regulations. For things like infrastructure, this is a great thing.