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> I'm not aware of any states which have laws "favoring incumbent telecoms over ... Google fiber, or other market entrants." Can you point to anything specific?

> I'm not aware of any states which have laws "favoring incumbent telecoms over ... Google fiber, or other market entrants." Can you point to anything specific? > The biggest impediments to deployment these days are at the state and local level: permitting requirements, onerous franchise license terms, etc. I mean, the reason those things are impediments is because the state and local laws favor incumbent telecoms by imposing permitting requirements and allowing onerous franchise license terms. Aren't you kind of answering your own question here?

rayiner 9y ago
The OP's phrasing makes it seem like state and local governments impose in order to favor incumbents. Rather, state and local governments impose these regulations because they're short-sighted. Baltimore is a great example. The city has been railing against the incumbent, Comcast. But then it didn't let Verizon build FiOS in the city, because Verizon wouldn't meet its demand of building out to every neighborhood in the city. The city then appealed to Google, which also wasn't interested, because Google categorically doesn't agree to build-out requirements: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubbed-by-google-fiber-mad-at-comcast-baltimore-seeks-its-own-fiber https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubb....
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  > Rather, state and local governments impose these regulations because they're short-sighted. See, I don't think this is always true. In my city its more like "state and local governments impose these regulations because they're _paid by Comcast and that's ok because money=speech_". Calling it short-sighted is letting them off the hook, IMHO. "We didn't realize that this company paying us to put up barriers to competition would use those barriers to prevent competition later" is right on the verge of being ridiculous.

rayiner 9y ago

The OP's phrasing makes it seem like state and local governments impose in order to favor incumbents. Rather, state and local governments impose these regulations because they're short-sighted. Baltimore is a great example. The city has been railing against the incumbent, Comcast. But then it didn't let Verizon build FiOS in the city, because Verizon wouldn't meet its demand of building out to every neighborhood in the city. The city then appealed to Google, which also wasn't interested, because Google categorically doesn't agree to build-out requirements: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubbed-by-google-fiber-mad-at-comcast-baltimore-seeks-its-own-fiber https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubb....

philipodonnell 9y ago
> Rather, state and local governments impose these regulations because they're short-sighted. See, I don't think this is always true. In my city its more like "state and local governments impose these regulations because they're _paid by Comcast and that's ok because money=speech_". Calling it short-sighted is letting them off the hook, IMHO. "We didn't realize that this company paying us to put up barriers to competition would use those barriers to prevent competition later" is right on the verge of being ridiculous.