11 ms·

FCC sides with Google Fiber over Comcast with new pro-competition rule

258 points by ricw 8y ago

GW150914 8y ago
Am I just grotesquely cynical that my first thought was “Pai liked this because it hurts AT&T and Comcast, not his paymasters at Verizon.”? Still, good news whatever the reason. Competition is desperately needed here, even if it’s only going to be between three or four major options.
- ars 8y ago
  Yes, you are cynical. Republicans simply have a different utility function. They consider deregulation, and ease of running a business more important than enforcing fairness via legislation. They believe the market will do a better job than they can do. Democrats don't trust the market to do that, and feel they can do a better job.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    Unfortunately we have no alternatives to choose candidates from that understand neither extremes will work, and that you actually need a mixture of legislation/regulation in the right places, and no legistlation/regulation in others.
    - ars 8y ago
      That's why you make the parties fight. Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. There's a reason control usually flip-flops each election, it's the electorate trying to accomplish this. See here: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/07/mary-jordan/do-presidents-always-get-shellacked-midterm-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep...
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        While compromising may have worked in the past, each year brings a more polarized situation where each party is less willing to compromise. > Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. This two party system makes it too easy for one party to control all 3 branches (like now..). Having a true multiparty system (>2, preferably more) forces compromise, because you wouldn't have a government without it.
        andrew_ 8y ago
        One can point to the 24-hour cycle media viciously vying for eyeballs, and the litany of pseudo-news outlets that have gained widespread audiences and which peddle in division for a major portion of the cause. The electorate are being manipulated by our own. Unless the media on all sides walk back the rhetoric it will only get worse in the years to come.
    - vonkow 8y ago
      IMHO, the United States lacks a true left wing party and the Democrats are the party of moderate regulation/legislation (which is unfortunate for a number of reasons).
    - ikiris 8y ago
      They aren't two extremes. Democrats are somewhere around center. It's just the spectrum in the US is shifted vastly right as a whole.
      - ars 8y ago
        Or maybe the EU (which you are comparing to) is shifted vastly to the left? How do you know which it is? But it's irrelevant, for the electorate in question, Democrats are most definitely not center.
        ikiris 8y ago
        Nowhere did I mention the EU at all. I was using an absolute scale, and yes, frankly the democrats are a bit right of center. I mean if you declare the electorate the spectrum, then nothing means anything, because its all a completely meaningless fluid definition which has no basis in actual reality.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      To the contrary, there is broad consensus and what people are all arguing about is actually the mushy middle. The Republicans won on this one--the 1996 telecom act broadly deregulated the telecom industry. Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. What republicans are worried about is attempts to undo the 1996 reforms. There are people who think that rate regulation, municipal utility boards deciding where infrastructure should be built, etc., are actually good ideas. Probably not a majority of people even in the democrat camp, but there are enough people who don't remember why the 1996 act was a good idea that it makes republicans nervous.
      - techsupporter 8y ago
        > Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. But one big problem with "attempts to undo the 1996 reforms" is that Europe kept (and expanded) linesharing and unbundled network element rules; the United States threw out most mandatory UNE rules and never expanded them to include companies operating networks over coax or new-build fiber optic networks. So now we have this farce where, in some areas, people served by DSL have the choice of several (slow) ISPs because the copper is still technically, kinda unbundled. But if you can't get DSL or can't get a sufficiently fast speed, your sole choice is likely your monopoly cable provider.
        rayiner 8y ago
        Most large European countries didn't expand unbundling to include cable and fiber either: https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. None of the five largest EU countries (which comprise the majority of the EU population), applied unbundling to coax. Most don't apply unbundling to fiber either. U.S. copper unbundling rules are weaker than the U.S., but copper is also largely irrelevant in the U.S., because most broadband is over cable or fiber. Unbundling matters more in Europe, but primarily because DSL is much more common in Europe.
      - tonysdg 8y ago
        The problem as I understand it is that deregulation helps a lot in situations where a compelling business case exists for companies to expand/compete, and it hurts a lot where said business case does not exist. As it so happens, crowded urban centers, where a single cell tower or fiber-optic network can serve thousands of paying customers, benefit a great deal from deregulation. Sparsely populated rural areas, however, where "last mile" really means "last 30 miles", get screwed over by deregulation since companies have minimal incentive to expand if it only means 10 new paying members. I'm not saying either extreme is perfect -- indeed, deregulation likely helps more than it hurts given increasing population density in U.S. cities -- but it seems to me that there are advantages to both sides of the equation.
  - anadem 8y ago
    Unfortunately deregulation leads to consolidation which leads to monopolies.
    - AmericanChopper 8y ago
      What mechanism does deregulation introduce that leads to monopolization? The opposite is the truth. The most regulated markets are the least competitive. More than anything else, regulations are barriers to companies that want to enter markets.
  - malcolmgreaves 8y ago
    The Republican political identity is no longer that of small, limited government and free market policies (see: massive tarrifs and bailouts of the affected domestic industries to win votes).
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      One could argue that the reason that tariffs are necessary is because we do not have an economy purely dictated by the free market, which in this particular case is probably not a bad thing. A big reason China is able to flood the US with a trade surplus is because they have a different view on the value of humanity. For instance workers in China, in some cases, work in something that's not that far off from slave-like conditions. $1000 iPhones are manufactured by the millions by people earning a few bucks a day, living in on-site dormitories, in buildings surrounded by 'suicide nets' to try to stop impulsive suicide from workers. In the US we would never tolerate such conditions and it would be legally impossible on a large number of levels, the least of which not also being our minimum wage. While I think this is probably the right way to go, it also means that our taking the higher moral ground there means that we're severely hurting domestic producers by making it literally impossible for them to compete with the prices that they can produce things for. By not relying entirely on market forces we've crippled our ability to compete. In a world where politics, on both the right and left, was not dictated by business interests there would be bipartisan support to let's say "adjust" our relations with China on this front. It's reminiscent of the times past when countries would speak out against slavery and then buy the dirt cheap American cotton and tobacco by the ton. We believe workers have the right to certain reasonable working conditions and in the process of doing so end up massively cutting employment in our nation and then shipping trillions of dollars to nations with no such concerns. It's hardly logical regardless of your political leaning.
  - Shikadi 8y ago
    Except there are things called natural monopolies. See: Railroads, water, electricity, telephones.
    - mc32 8y ago
      And search engines and social media and streaming services...
      - smt88 8y ago
        None of those are natural monopolies. Every human could easily switch from Facebook to any competitor right now. The same is not true of cable, ISPs, electricity, gas, etc.
        int_19h 8y ago
        You can switch from Facebook, but since the value of Facebook is derived entirely from connecting to other people on it, any such switch would be utterly useless unless the people you want to interact with also switch. The result is that a sufficiently large social network is, effectively, a natural monopoly. Which is exactly why no-one has managed to dethrone Facebook yet, not even by throwing lots of money at a better alternative (like G+).
        cookiecaper 8y ago
        No one has managed to dethrone Facebook because the CFAA allows private companies like Facebook to stop anyone who'd actually provide the facilities to allow for a smooth transition. BigCos like Facebook and Google lean on the aggressive monopoly-making powers of the CFAA every day. Look up the dockets and you'll see the companies making active use of these powers. In particular, check out Facebook v. Power Ventures, where an entrepreneur was left owing $3M in damages to Facebook for allowing users to extract only their own information. Underpinning all digital "monopolies" is copyright law, which is eminently changeable. It really pets my peeves when people suggest things like streaming services are natural monopolies as if there is nothing that can be done about it. Copyright was invented because since the printing press, intellectual goods are so easy to copy that it'd be impossible to sell them at scale without state-enforced supply ceilings (aka copyright). Doesn't sound like a "natural monopoly" to me. It's wholly artificial and we could change it if we wanted.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    This is a regulation though. They're telling private pole owners what they have to do.
  - tschwimmer 8y ago
    This is demonstrably false. Tariffs are are one of the least pro-business legislative tools. Businesses and sometimes whole industries can evaporate when costs increase by 25% overnight.
- rory096 8y ago
  Pai worked at Verizon from February 2001 to April 2003 when he was four years out of law school. What evidence do you have that Verizon are his 'paymasters'?
dev_dull 8y ago
> FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected this argument, saying that startups are unnecessarily delayed when they have to wait for incumbent ISPs before hanging wires. I thought I was supposed to not like this guy.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Even a broken clock is right twice a day (unless it's a digital clock then it's wrong all the time since it's not showing anything, but I digress).
- dylan604 8y ago
  This does seem very 180 degree different than his stance on net neutrality. The tin foil hat wearing side of me says that Google's donations must have been larger than Comcast's. The real world side of me can't figure out how somebody can logically justify these two opposing views.
  - thephyber 8y ago
    > The tin foil hat wearing side of me says that Google's donations must have been larger than Comcast's I'm curious: donations to whom? The FCC doesn't have campaigns, so any "donations" aren't campaign contributions.
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
      “Who are your friends? Let me know and I’ll donate to them if....”
      - dylan604 8y ago
        Exactly. "A gift was made to xxx in your name". A bag with large $$$ printed on the side being handed over is just for the comics. In the real world, "donations" is just a word with multiple meanings.
    - adrr 8y ago
collinf 8y ago
Is Google Fiber still expanding? Last I heard it was pretty much cut.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  you're right. they're not significantly expanding. i don't think it was really paying off in any useful way. The rule change won't necessarily spur more Google Fiber deployment, since the ISP has other financial problems and has largely stopped expansion of fiber into new cities.
  - blitmap 8y ago
    I wonder if Google could pivot to offering legal services for establishing municipal broadband. There has to be some way they can recoup the costs by acting as the legal 'spear' for cities that are unaware of how to offer greater competition and allow smaller ISPs in (if not acting as their own).
    - brownbat 8y ago
      Google grew up in a services era by replacing a hugely human intensive service with an algorithm. Navigating local laws might be doable with their current expertise, but would definitely be human intensive, absent a real breakthrough in AI. OTOH, there is that automated portal to fight traffic tickets. I wonder if Google tried to automate and A/B test more complicated court or municipal filings how it would do in the long run.
      - dmvinson 8y ago
        What portal to fight traffic tickets are you referring to? Never heard of this but sounds interesting
        blitmap 8y ago
        https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/27/donotpay-traffic-lawyer-bot/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/27/donotpay-traffic-lawyer-b...
ww520 8y ago
More competition is good news. Even if Google doesn't push Google Fiber hard enough, it serves as precedence for other competitors to come in.
syshum 8y ago
>>Verizon supported OTMR, hmmm... The "Former" Verizon Lawyer supported Verizon's position.... I am shocked I tell you....
ikiris 8y ago
I'll admit, this one surprised me. I didn't expect the new admin to support it.
- zavi 8y ago
  Why not? Seems like a common sense rule.
  - pornel 8y ago
    Exactly.
  - ikiris 8y ago
    It really isn't. It gives competitors ability to take you down at whim with no control. The right compromise is forced time horizons which are reasonable, and parallel execution, with significant penalties. Natural monopolies are a huge problem that does need regulation, but this goes to far for me to be comfortable with, and I worked at independent ISPs for like 10 years.
- ur-whale 8y ago
  The new admin has a libertarian streak. They don't like unnecessary regulation in general and that's a good thing. Of course, when that means giving the Comcasts of the world headaches, HW cheers, but when that means good riddance to net neutrality (or rather letting states decide), everyone here screams bloody murder. If that isn't double standards ...
  - skj 8y ago
    No, that isn't double standards. Why would you think it is? Do you think the rule can only be either "regulations are good" or "regulations are bad"? It's not. The idea of regulations is neither good nor bad - you have to consider them on a case-by-case basis. You especially have to consider the results.
    - ur-whale 8y ago
nashashmi 8y ago
This is bad. I love google fiber and see that what they are trying to do is valid but when one utility company touches another company's facilities it compromises the other facility and makes it vulnerable for service disruption. But the regulation to ban or allow should not come at the Federal level. It should be governed by the utility pole owner. In NYC for example con Ed owns a large number of poles. And then Verizon owns the next number of poles. Verizon and other utility companies pay ConEd based on how high their utility is placed. If it's a Verizon pole, Verizon will put their facility on the very top and spectrum will put their facility on the lower part. This means that another utility company cannot just come and move someone else's facility around.
- tonysdg 8y ago
  On the flip side, that means there's nothing to stop the pole owner from delaying, as (if I understand correctly) Google argued was happening here. Sure, you could try to fine uncooperative owners, but the delay will kill small ISPs who can't afford to wait; the potential fine would have to massive to deter such behavior, and between lobbying and general antipathy toward regulation, that size of fine would likely never occur. I don't disagree though that there should be some form of middle ground (which it seems Pai was trying to find) -- I'm just unsure what it would be.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dkhenry 8y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, but you must be blind to think that the biggest issue facing the American telecom industry is service disruption due to competitors having too much access to the utility poles. While you are right that this does create a bigger opportunity for small service disruptions, the bigger issue is that even when its not disrupted service in many area's is horrible, and expensive. While a private company might have paid to put the poles in they should be treated like the shared limited resource that they are, and there should be universally accepted rules on how the current "owner" has to allow other to access it. I will go so far as to say there is not a single citizen who will have a net negative result of this ruling.
cjhanks 8y ago
Politics aside, of course. The administration continues to act in removing Federal jurisdiction and regulations from being used as a tool to prevent startup organizations from entering established markets. This case is a success in that it removes significant incumbent advantages. Let's hope poor behavior and sloppy work (breaking connections too frequently) doesn't become common. And shame on the incumbents using regulations for financial gain.
- ericflo 8y ago
  You didn't set politics aside at all in this post. Your opinions are politically charged, or at least have significant political implications —though I suspect you know that.
  - foota 8y ago
    That was a fairly factual statement, it seemed?
    - brainwad 8y ago
      Well, in this case the administration is actually introducing regulations, rather than removing them...
      - koolba 8y ago
        I'd say it's more like they're closing a loophole in an existing regulation. Existing pole owners were already required to allow competitors to add their cables. What this does is prevent them from creating indefinite delays to prevent said competitors from actually doing so.
    - matt4077 8y ago
      It’s a factual statement, but false. As but one example: removing net neutrality only serves established players who can afford to pay for access to each of their customers. Just try to start a business when it requires separate contracts with (and payments to) each and every ISP in the country. Most of t admin’s drive against regulations has no impact on startup activity whatsoever: the amount of methane released by oil wells, mileage standards, etc. The statement by OP furthers the fallacy of proportional trade-offs between economic success vs environmental and other harms.
safgasCVS 8y ago
Go figure. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then
- coryfklein 8y ago
  Color me wholly confused by this metaphor. Who's the blind squirrel; Google Fiber, Comcast, or FCC? And what's the acorn?
Judson 8y ago
Interesting to see this decision today, as I was just speaking with my Google Fiber tech about their Nashville rollout. Apparently there was so much heel dragging pole access, they ended up laying their fiber in tiny channels cut into the road. As an aside, I also heard the channels weren't cut deep enough initially, so they were forced to go back and redo part of the work after much of it was considered complete.

258 points by ricw 8y ago

Am I just grotesquely cynical that my first thought was “Pai liked this because it hurts AT&T and Comcast, not his paymasters at Verizon.”? Still, good news whatever the reason. Competition is desperately needed here, even if it’s only going to be between three or four major options.

ars 8y ago
Yes, you are cynical. Republicans simply have a different utility function. They consider deregulation, and ease of running a business more important than enforcing fairness via legislation. They believe the market will do a better job than they can do. Democrats don't trust the market to do that, and feel they can do a better job.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Unfortunately we have no alternatives to choose candidates from that understand neither extremes will work, and that you actually need a mixture of legislation/regulation in the right places, and no legistlation/regulation in others.
  - ars 8y ago
    That's why you make the parties fight. Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. There's a reason control usually flip-flops each election, it's the electorate trying to accomplish this. See here: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep/07/mary-jordan/do-presidents-always-get-shellacked-midterm-electi/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/sep...
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      While compromising may have worked in the past, each year brings a more polarized situation where each party is less willing to compromise. > Like have the house and the senate controlled by different parties, or the president and the legislature different parties, etc, etc. This two party system makes it too easy for one party to control all 3 branches (like now..). Having a true multiparty system (>2, preferably more) forces compromise, because you wouldn't have a government without it.
      - andrew_ 8y ago
        One can point to the 24-hour cycle media viciously vying for eyeballs, and the litany of pseudo-news outlets that have gained widespread audiences and which peddle in division for a major portion of the cause. The electorate are being manipulated by our own. Unless the media on all sides walk back the rhetoric it will only get worse in the years to come.
  - vonkow 8y ago
    IMHO, the United States lacks a true left wing party and the Democrats are the party of moderate regulation/legislation (which is unfortunate for a number of reasons).
  - ikiris 8y ago
    They aren't two extremes. Democrats are somewhere around center. It's just the spectrum in the US is shifted vastly right as a whole.
    - ars 8y ago
      Or maybe the EU (which you are comparing to) is shifted vastly to the left? How do you know which it is? But it's irrelevant, for the electorate in question, Democrats are most definitely not center.
      - ikiris 8y ago
        Nowhere did I mention the EU at all. I was using an absolute scale, and yes, frankly the democrats are a bit right of center. I mean if you declare the electorate the spectrum, then nothing means anything, because its all a completely meaningless fluid definition which has no basis in actual reality.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    To the contrary, there is broad consensus and what people are all arguing about is actually the mushy middle. The Republicans won on this one--the 1996 telecom act broadly deregulated the telecom industry. Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. What republicans are worried about is attempts to undo the 1996 reforms. There are people who think that rate regulation, municipal utility boards deciding where infrastructure should be built, etc., are actually good ideas. Probably not a majority of people even in the democrat camp, but there are enough people who don't remember why the 1996 act was a good idea that it makes republicans nervous.
    - techsupporter 8y ago
      > Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. But one big problem with "attempts to undo the 1996 reforms" is that Europe kept (and expanded) linesharing and unbundled network element rules; the United States threw out most mandatory UNE rules and never expanded them to include companies operating networks over coax or new-build fiber optic networks. So now we have this farce where, in some areas, people served by DSL have the choice of several (slow) ISPs because the copper is still technically, kinda unbundled. But if you can't get DSL or can't get a sufficiently fast speed, your sole choice is likely your monopoly cable provider.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        Most large European countries didn't expand unbundling to include cable and fiber either: https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf https://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/2-7.pdf. None of the five largest EU countries (which comprise the majority of the EU population), applied unbundling to coax. Most don't apply unbundling to fiber either. U.S. copper unbundling rules are weaker than the U.S., but copper is also largely irrelevant in the U.S., because most broadband is over cable or fiber. Unbundling matters more in Europe, but primarily because DSL is much more common in Europe.
    - tonysdg 8y ago
      The problem as I understand it is that deregulation helps a lot in situations where a compelling business case exists for companies to expand/compete, and it hurts a lot where said business case does not exist. As it so happens, crowded urban centers, where a single cell tower or fiber-optic network can serve thousands of paying customers, benefit a great deal from deregulation. Sparsely populated rural areas, however, where "last mile" really means "last 30 miles", get screwed over by deregulation since companies have minimal incentive to expand if it only means 10 new paying members. I'm not saying either extreme is perfect -- indeed, deregulation likely helps more than it hurts given increasing population density in U.S. cities -- but it seems to me that there are advantages to both sides of the equation.
- anadem 8y ago
  Unfortunately deregulation leads to consolidation which leads to monopolies.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    What mechanism does deregulation introduce that leads to monopolization? The opposite is the truth. The most regulated markets are the least competitive. More than anything else, regulations are barriers to companies that want to enter markets.
- malcolmgreaves 8y ago
  The Republican political identity is no longer that of small, limited government and free market policies (see: massive tarrifs and bailouts of the affected domestic industries to win votes).
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    One could argue that the reason that tariffs are necessary is because we do not have an economy purely dictated by the free market, which in this particular case is probably not a bad thing. A big reason China is able to flood the US with a trade surplus is because they have a different view on the value of humanity. For instance workers in China, in some cases, work in something that's not that far off from slave-like conditions. $1000 iPhones are manufactured by the millions by people earning a few bucks a day, living in on-site dormitories, in buildings surrounded by 'suicide nets' to try to stop impulsive suicide from workers. In the US we would never tolerate such conditions and it would be legally impossible on a large number of levels, the least of which not also being our minimum wage. While I think this is probably the right way to go, it also means that our taking the higher moral ground there means that we're severely hurting domestic producers by making it literally impossible for them to compete with the prices that they can produce things for. By not relying entirely on market forces we've crippled our ability to compete. In a world where politics, on both the right and left, was not dictated by business interests there would be bipartisan support to let's say "adjust" our relations with China on this front. It's reminiscent of the times past when countries would speak out against slavery and then buy the dirt cheap American cotton and tobacco by the ton. We believe workers have the right to certain reasonable working conditions and in the process of doing so end up massively cutting employment in our nation and then shipping trillions of dollars to nations with no such concerns. It's hardly logical regardless of your political leaning.
- Shikadi 8y ago
  Except there are things called natural monopolies. See: Railroads, water, electricity, telephones.
  - mc32 8y ago
    And search engines and social media and streaming services...
    - smt88 8y ago
      None of those are natural monopolies. Every human could easily switch from Facebook to any competitor right now. The same is not true of cable, ISPs, electricity, gas, etc.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        You can switch from Facebook, but since the value of Facebook is derived entirely from connecting to other people on it, any such switch would be utterly useless unless the people you want to interact with also switch. The result is that a sufficiently large social network is, effectively, a natural monopoly. Which is exactly why no-one has managed to dethrone Facebook yet, not even by throwing lots of money at a better alternative (like G+).
        cookiecaper 8y ago
        No one has managed to dethrone Facebook because the CFAA allows private companies like Facebook to stop anyone who'd actually provide the facilities to allow for a smooth transition. BigCos like Facebook and Google lean on the aggressive monopoly-making powers of the CFAA every day. Look up the dockets and you'll see the companies making active use of these powers. In particular, check out Facebook v. Power Ventures, where an entrepreneur was left owing $3M in damages to Facebook for allowing users to extract only their own information. Underpinning all digital "monopolies" is copyright law, which is eminently changeable. It really pets my peeves when people suggest things like streaming services are natural monopolies as if there is nothing that can be done about it. Copyright was invented because since the printing press, intellectual goods are so easy to copy that it'd be impossible to sell them at scale without state-enforced supply ceilings (aka copyright). Doesn't sound like a "natural monopoly" to me. It's wholly artificial and we could change it if we wanted.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  This is a regulation though. They're telling private pole owners what they have to do.
- tschwimmer 8y ago
  This is demonstrably false. Tariffs are are one of the least pro-business legislative tools. Businesses and sometimes whole industries can evaporate when costs increase by 25% overnight.
rory096 8y ago
Pai worked at Verizon from February 2001 to April 2003 when he was four years out of law school. What evidence do you have that Verizon are his 'paymasters'?

dev_dull 8y ago

> FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected this argument, saying that startups are unnecessarily delayed when they have to wait for incumbent ISPs before hanging wires. I thought I was supposed to not like this guy.

craftyguy 8y ago
Even a broken clock is right twice a day (unless it's a digital clock then it's wrong all the time since it's not showing anything, but I digress).
dylan604 8y ago
This does seem very 180 degree different than his stance on net neutrality. The tin foil hat wearing side of me says that Google's donations must have been larger than Comcast's. The real world side of me can't figure out how somebody can logically justify these two opposing views.
- thephyber 8y ago
  > The tin foil hat wearing side of me says that Google's donations must have been larger than Comcast's I'm curious: donations to whom? The FCC doesn't have campaigns, so any "donations" aren't campaign contributions.
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    “Who are your friends? Let me know and I’ll donate to them if....”
    - dylan604 8y ago
      Exactly. "A gift was made to xxx in your name". A bag with large $$$ printed on the side being handed over is just for the comics. In the real world, "donations" is just a word with multiple meanings.
  - adrr 8y ago

collinf 8y ago

Is Google Fiber still expanding? Last I heard it was pretty much cut.

HillaryBriss 8y ago
you're right. they're not significantly expanding. i don't think it was really paying off in any useful way. The rule change won't necessarily spur more Google Fiber deployment, since the ISP has other financial problems and has largely stopped expansion of fiber into new cities.
- blitmap 8y ago
  I wonder if Google could pivot to offering legal services for establishing municipal broadband. There has to be some way they can recoup the costs by acting as the legal 'spear' for cities that are unaware of how to offer greater competition and allow smaller ISPs in (if not acting as their own).
  - brownbat 8y ago
    Google grew up in a services era by replacing a hugely human intensive service with an algorithm. Navigating local laws might be doable with their current expertise, but would definitely be human intensive, absent a real breakthrough in AI. OTOH, there is that automated portal to fight traffic tickets. I wonder if Google tried to automate and A/B test more complicated court or municipal filings how it would do in the long run.
    - dmvinson 8y ago
      What portal to fight traffic tickets are you referring to? Never heard of this but sounds interesting
      - blitmap 8y ago
        https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/27/donotpay-traffic-lawyer-bot/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/27/donotpay-traffic-lawyer-b...

ww520 8y ago

More competition is good news. Even if Google doesn't push Google Fiber hard enough, it serves as precedence for other competitors to come in.

syshum 8y ago

>>Verizon supported OTMR, hmmm... The "Former" Verizon Lawyer supported Verizon's position.... I am shocked I tell you....

ikiris 8y ago

I'll admit, this one surprised me. I didn't expect the new admin to support it.

zavi 8y ago
Why not? Seems like a common sense rule.
- pornel 8y ago
  Exactly.
- ikiris 8y ago
  It really isn't. It gives competitors ability to take you down at whim with no control. The right compromise is forced time horizons which are reasonable, and parallel execution, with significant penalties. Natural monopolies are a huge problem that does need regulation, but this goes to far for me to be comfortable with, and I worked at independent ISPs for like 10 years.
ur-whale 8y ago
The new admin has a libertarian streak. They don't like unnecessary regulation in general and that's a good thing. Of course, when that means giving the Comcasts of the world headaches, HW cheers, but when that means good riddance to net neutrality (or rather letting states decide), everyone here screams bloody murder. If that isn't double standards ...
- skj 8y ago
  No, that isn't double standards. Why would you think it is? Do you think the rule can only be either "regulations are good" or "regulations are bad"? It's not. The idea of regulations is neither good nor bad - you have to consider them on a case-by-case basis. You especially have to consider the results.
  - ur-whale 8y ago

nashashmi 8y ago

This is bad. I love google fiber and see that what they are trying to do is valid but when one utility company touches another company's facilities it compromises the other facility and makes it vulnerable for service disruption. But the regulation to ban or allow should not come at the Federal level. It should be governed by the utility pole owner. In NYC for example con Ed owns a large number of poles. And then Verizon owns the next number of poles. Verizon and other utility companies pay ConEd based on how high their utility is placed. If it's a Verizon pole, Verizon will put their facility on the very top and spectrum will put their facility on the lower part. This means that another utility company cannot just come and move someone else's facility around.

tonysdg 8y ago
On the flip side, that means there's nothing to stop the pole owner from delaying, as (if I understand correctly) Google argued was happening here. Sure, you could try to fine uncooperative owners, but the delay will kill small ISPs who can't afford to wait; the potential fine would have to massive to deter such behavior, and between lobbying and general antipathy toward regulation, that size of fine would likely never occur. I don't disagree though that there should be some form of middle ground (which it seems Pai was trying to find) -- I'm just unsure what it would be.
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dkhenry 8y ago
I understand where you are coming from, but you must be blind to think that the biggest issue facing the American telecom industry is service disruption due to competitors having too much access to the utility poles. While you are right that this does create a bigger opportunity for small service disruptions, the bigger issue is that even when its not disrupted service in many area's is horrible, and expensive. While a private company might have paid to put the poles in they should be treated like the shared limited resource that they are, and there should be universally accepted rules on how the current "owner" has to allow other to access it. I will go so far as to say there is not a single citizen who will have a net negative result of this ruling.

cjhanks 8y ago

Politics aside, of course. The administration continues to act in removing Federal jurisdiction and regulations from being used as a tool to prevent startup organizations from entering established markets. This case is a success in that it removes significant incumbent advantages. Let's hope poor behavior and sloppy work (breaking connections too frequently) doesn't become common. And shame on the incumbents using regulations for financial gain.

ericflo 8y ago
You didn't set politics aside at all in this post. Your opinions are politically charged, or at least have significant political implications —though I suspect you know that.
- foota 8y ago
  That was a fairly factual statement, it seemed?
  - brainwad 8y ago
    Well, in this case the administration is actually introducing regulations, rather than removing them...
    - koolba 8y ago
      I'd say it's more like they're closing a loophole in an existing regulation. Existing pole owners were already required to allow competitors to add their cables. What this does is prevent them from creating indefinite delays to prevent said competitors from actually doing so.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    It’s a factual statement, but false. As but one example: removing net neutrality only serves established players who can afford to pay for access to each of their customers. Just try to start a business when it requires separate contracts with (and payments to) each and every ISP in the country. Most of t admin’s drive against regulations has no impact on startup activity whatsoever: the amount of methane released by oil wells, mileage standards, etc. The statement by OP furthers the fallacy of proportional trade-offs between economic success vs environmental and other harms.

safgasCVS 8y ago

Go figure. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then

coryfklein 8y ago
Color me wholly confused by this metaphor. Who's the blind squirrel; Google Fiber, Comcast, or FCC? And what's the acorn?

Judson 8y ago

Interesting to see this decision today, as I was just speaking with my Google Fiber tech about their Nashville rollout. Apparently there was so much heel dragging pole access, they ended up laying their fiber in tiny channels cut into the road. As an aside, I also heard the channels weren't cut deep enough initially, so they were forced to go back and redo part of the work after much of it was considered complete.