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I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't that local authority be delegated by statute from state governments? Google Fiber was a fluffy bunny sort of thing. Verizon try

I'm not a lawyer, but wouldn't that local authority be delegated by statute from state governments? Google Fiber was a fluffy bunny sort of thing. Verizon trying to drain the river of gold before it reaches Google is existential-threat stuff. In their position I would go to the mattresses.

nostrademons 10y ago
Yeah, AFAIU the local authority is delegated by state governments. Voters could fix this if they got organized and cared about it enough, but it's pretty hard to get voters organized about anything these days, and of all the political issues out there, "gigabit fiber" tends to rank below "save democracy", "get cops to stop killing black people", "preserve women's healthcare", "stop global warming", "don't go to war", and the other things people are protesting these days. Google Fiber was Larry realizing that Google was vulnerable to competition from its infrastructure providers and trying to get ahead of it before those companies realized too. I worked on it when it launched in 2012. It was very much a defensive play then as now: the idea was that if Google won, they would get revenue and a defensive moat, while even if they lost, they would improve broadband speeds, spur competition, and build a defensive moat. They just didn't figure on a bureaucratic quagmire. I suspect that Larry still recognizes the threat, but thinks that Loon, Fi, and WebPass are more promising approaches to head it off.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  > They just didn't figure on a bureaucratic quagmire. They also apparently didn't figure on the slow and expensive business of lobbying. If the matter is unimportant to voters, that makes it available to what I will charitably call "the most civic-minded and purposefully engaged company".
- x0x0 10y ago
  There's national laws under consideration to force cities to lay fiber any time they dig up a road. That's imo the most promising, yet very slow, way forward. Coincidentally, Congresswoman Eshoo is one of the sponsors of the bill.

nostrademons 10y ago

Yeah, AFAIU the local authority is delegated by state governments. Voters could fix this if they got organized and cared about it enough, but it's pretty hard to get voters organized about anything these days, and of all the political issues out there, "gigabit fiber" tends to rank below "save democracy", "get cops to stop killing black people", "preserve women's healthcare", "stop global warming", "don't go to war", and the other things people are protesting these days. Google Fiber was Larry realizing that Google was vulnerable to competition from its infrastructure providers and trying to get ahead of it before those companies realized too. I worked on it when it launched in 2012. It was very much a defensive play then as now: the idea was that if Google won, they would get revenue and a defensive moat, while even if they lost, they would improve broadband speeds, spur competition, and build a defensive moat. They just didn't figure on a bureaucratic quagmire. I suspect that Larry still recognizes the threat, but thinks that Loon, Fi, and WebPass are more promising approaches to head it off.

jacques_chester 10y ago
> They just didn't figure on a bureaucratic quagmire. They also apparently didn't figure on the slow and expensive business of lobbying. If the matter is unimportant to voters, that makes it available to what I will charitably call "the most civic-minded and purposefully engaged company".
x0x0 10y ago
There's national laws under consideration to force cities to lay fiber any time they dig up a road. That's imo the most promising, yet very slow, way forward. Coincidentally, Congresswoman Eshoo is one of the sponsors of the bill.