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"AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, ri

"AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives." Did Google do the political work here and leave the door open for competition?

sterlingross 14y ago
I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access.
- dragonwriter 14y ago
  > I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access. I suspect this overstating the case significantly -- I think its basically right in that Google's prime motivation is to push the market toward widespread, ultra-high speed access. But I think that by the time they launched Google Fiber, and certainly before they expanded it to Austin, they also had a model where it was worthwhile beyond being a lever to move the industry, between direct revenue and the opportunity to use it as leverage to promote the Android ecosystem through the Nexus devices tied to it. As with the Chrome browser, heck and even Android itself, what Google does with the prime motivation of moving the market (and preventing another vendor from getting/keeping a monopoly which they can leverage against Google) isn't necessarily a "burden".
- chriscampbell 14y ago
  I agree 100%, I feel that until one of the large ISP's commits to fast internet nationwide- they won't stop expanding.
ben1040 14y ago
>Did Google do the political work here and leave the door open for competition? Incidentally, AT&T did a lot of similar political work for others years ago when they were starting their U-Verse rollout. They lobbied in numerous states for video franchises to be granted on a state-wide basis, rather than having to go to each individual municipality and negotiate deals. That allowed them to basically steamroll into an area. When AT&T did this, the laws were written such that the cable companies selling service in the same areas could tear up their contracts with the municipalities and go statewide as well.
- gnoway 14y ago
  Yes, except there's still usually just one cable company in an area. The real effect of this is that a municipality unhappy with service now has no opportunity to oust a provider when the term of their franchise agreement is up.
maxk42 14y ago
On the contrary. AT&T has been laying political groundwork for ages. This is a PR hit piece intending to show they're competitive with Google's offerings, but in reality they're playing the reactionary. Google is scaring the shit out of them and they're trying to retain customers who might otherwise jump ship immediately by assuring them they'll get the exact same deal. That is almost certainly not the case, however.
- bratsche 14y ago
  If this were happening in my city and Google came along with Fiber, and AT&T and Time Warner decided to upgrade their infrastructure in response, I'd totally jump ship to Google anyway. I think a lot of people have been unhappy with their service providers for a long time, for more reasons than just the speed.
  - wlesieutre 14y ago
    At least when I have a problem with Comcast I can eventually get a rep on the phone to fix it. Can anybody with Google Fiber comment on whether the customer support is better than their other products'? Even paying Google Apps customers have said that it's almost nonexistent. I realize it's possible since this is a (relatively) expensive paid service, but Google has a lot less experience doing customer service even less than AT&T or Comcast. And their usual approach of "Make a webpage listing common problems" might not work as well for fixing internet service outages.
    - natrius 14y ago
      I've used Google's support for Nexus devices, and it's been pretty good. Talked to a human being, walked through the troubleshooting with her for a few minutes, then RMAed the phone.
mwsherman 14y ago
It may be naive to think that AT&T will get the same rules. By all means, all firms should get the same rules, and may need to litigate. But to assume that municipalities want a uniform set of rules for all comers would be without basis. Municipalities want to negotiate with vendors to extract concessions. Laws can be written, without naming names, that apply only to individual firms. Maybe Austin will say that the new rules and incentives only apply to firms below a certain market share. Or to firms that don’t also operate mobile networks. Or firms that have, or don’t have, some geographical footprint. Or which employ a certain number of Texans, or Austinites. Etc.
bradleyjg 14y ago
It's rich that ATT, successor company to Southwestern Bell, is complaining about alledged subsidies to another company to enable a fiber rollout. Southwestern Bell and its sister baby bells were subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in the 90s in exchange for a promise to roll out a nationwide network of fiber to the home. Needless to say the network never materialized but the telecoms kept the money. Ref: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  Yeah, it's kind of amazing. At one end of the spectrum, we have ultra-ethical companies like Tesla, who use government loans efficiently and pay them back ahead of schedule. At the other end, we have ethically and morally bankrupt companies like Southwestern Bell that took government funds with the promise of building a nation-wide fiber network, didn't do it, and pocketed the money.
- bdcravens 14y ago
  <pedantic> Actually, AT&T is Southwestern Bell, not so much a "successor" company. SBC acquired AT&T and changed the name. </pedantic>
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    Actually, I don't think you are being pedantic. The lineage is really important/interesting. Here, in the Bay Area, the majority of the LEC lines belonged to Pacific Bell (You can almost always tell who the "real" company is by looking at the cable-vaults, the names of the holding company is written in engraved/raised metal that will last for 100+ years). The SF Giants Stadium was born as "PacBell Park" Somewhere around 1997/1998, SBC Acquired all of Pacific Bell - so 100% of the PacBell LEC lines became SBC lines. Your Phone Bill now read "SBC", and a few years later, PacBell Park became SBC Park. Then, in 2005, SBC acquired AT&T, and, because AT&T had a stronger global brand, they changed their name to be "AT&T", even though AT&T was now just one component of the larger SBC. What's really confusing, is somewhere around 2003/2004, LEC competition was deregulated a bit, and the 2003 AT&T starting offering Local Phone services in the Bay area. So, you ran into scenarios where you would get a visit from both AT&T and SBC trying to sell you local phone services. I actually purchased a pretty good sized Long Distance/Data/LEC package from AT&T for around $15K MRC for our office buildings in Sunnyvale. The reason this is confusing, is that when SBC acquired AT&T, you now had two classes of AT&T customers, those with SBC legacy facilities, and those with AT&T legacy facilities. For about 5 years after the acquisition, every telecom consultant I dealt with avoided the confusion (for some definition of avoid, and confusion) - by continuing to refer to anyone getting their services from 2003 SBC, as "SBC Customers", even though, for the last several years, their phone bill read "AT&T". So, ironically, for some customers in the Bay Area, AT&T lines actually are AT&T lines, but for most customers, they are SBC/Pacific Bell lines.
tapsboy 14y ago
Infact, "However, in Austin, the agreements that Google has signed with the City of Austin are no different than the ones that AT&T and Time Warner have signed according to Laura Morrison, an Austin city councilwoman." http://gigaom.com/2013/04/09/take-that-google-att-ups-the-ante-with-plans-for-its-own-austin-gigabit-network/ http://gigaom.com/2013/04/09/take-that-google-att-ups-the-an...
wmf 14y ago
It would be viewed as pretty evil if Google extracted government concessions and then used some kind of regulatory capture to lock out competitors. That's AT&T's game.

sterlingross 14y ago

I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access.

dragonwriter 14y ago
> I suspect this is exactly what Google wants. They don't want the burden of bringing high speed internet to everyone, but they do want everyone to have high speed access. I suspect this overstating the case significantly -- I think its basically right in that Google's prime motivation is to push the market toward widespread, ultra-high speed access. But I think that by the time they launched Google Fiber, and certainly before they expanded it to Austin, they also had a model where it was worthwhile beyond being a lever to move the industry, between direct revenue and the opportunity to use it as leverage to promote the Android ecosystem through the Nexus devices tied to it. As with the Chrome browser, heck and even Android itself, what Google does with the prime motivation of moving the market (and preventing another vendor from getting/keeping a monopoly which they can leverage against Google) isn't necessarily a "burden".
chriscampbell 14y ago
I agree 100%, I feel that until one of the large ISP's commits to fast internet nationwide- they won't stop expanding.

ben1040 14y ago

>Did Google do the political work here and leave the door open for competition? Incidentally, AT&T did a lot of similar political work for others years ago when they were starting their U-Verse rollout. They lobbied in numerous states for video franchises to be granted on a state-wide basis, rather than having to go to each individual municipality and negotiate deals. That allowed them to basically steamroll into an area. When AT&T did this, the laws were written such that the cable companies selling service in the same areas could tear up their contracts with the municipalities and go statewide as well.

gnoway 14y ago
Yes, except there's still usually just one cable company in an area. The real effect of this is that a municipality unhappy with service now has no opportunity to oust a provider when the term of their franchise agreement is up.

maxk42 14y ago

On the contrary. AT&T has been laying political groundwork for ages. This is a PR hit piece intending to show they're competitive with Google's offerings, but in reality they're playing the reactionary. Google is scaring the shit out of them and they're trying to retain customers who might otherwise jump ship immediately by assuring them they'll get the exact same deal. That is almost certainly not the case, however.

bratsche 14y ago
If this were happening in my city and Google came along with Fiber, and AT&T and Time Warner decided to upgrade their infrastructure in response, I'd totally jump ship to Google anyway. I think a lot of people have been unhappy with their service providers for a long time, for more reasons than just the speed.
- wlesieutre 14y ago
  At least when I have a problem with Comcast I can eventually get a rep on the phone to fix it. Can anybody with Google Fiber comment on whether the customer support is better than their other products'? Even paying Google Apps customers have said that it's almost nonexistent. I realize it's possible since this is a (relatively) expensive paid service, but Google has a lot less experience doing customer service even less than AT&T or Comcast. And their usual approach of "Make a webpage listing common problems" might not work as well for fixing internet service outages.
  - natrius 14y ago
    I've used Google's support for Nexus devices, and it's been pretty good. Talked to a human being, walked through the troubleshooting with her for a few minutes, then RMAed the phone.

mwsherman 14y ago

It may be naive to think that AT&T will get the same rules. By all means, all firms should get the same rules, and may need to litigate. But to assume that municipalities want a uniform set of rules for all comers would be without basis. Municipalities want to negotiate with vendors to extract concessions. Laws can be written, without naming names, that apply only to individual firms. Maybe Austin will say that the new rules and incentives only apply to firms below a certain market share. Or to firms that don’t also operate mobile networks. Or firms that have, or don’t have, some geographical footprint. Or which employ a certain number of Texans, or Austinites. Etc.

bradleyjg 14y ago

It's rich that ATT, successor company to Southwestern Bell, is complaining about alledged subsidies to another company to enable a fiber rollout. Southwestern Bell and its sister baby bells were subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in the 90s in exchange for a promise to roll out a nationwide network of fiber to the home. Needless to say the network never materialized but the telecoms kept the money. Ref: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...

enraged_camel 14y ago
Yeah, it's kind of amazing. At one end of the spectrum, we have ultra-ethical companies like Tesla, who use government loans efficiently and pay them back ahead of schedule. At the other end, we have ethically and morally bankrupt companies like Southwestern Bell that took government funds with the promise of building a nation-wide fiber network, didn't do it, and pocketed the money.
bdcravens 14y ago
<pedantic> Actually, AT&T is Southwestern Bell, not so much a "successor" company. SBC acquired AT&T and changed the name. </pedantic>
- ghshephard 14y ago
  Actually, I don't think you are being pedantic. The lineage is really important/interesting. Here, in the Bay Area, the majority of the LEC lines belonged to Pacific Bell (You can almost always tell who the "real" company is by looking at the cable-vaults, the names of the holding company is written in engraved/raised metal that will last for 100+ years). The SF Giants Stadium was born as "PacBell Park" Somewhere around 1997/1998, SBC Acquired all of Pacific Bell - so 100% of the PacBell LEC lines became SBC lines. Your Phone Bill now read "SBC", and a few years later, PacBell Park became SBC Park. Then, in 2005, SBC acquired AT&T, and, because AT&T had a stronger global brand, they changed their name to be "AT&T", even though AT&T was now just one component of the larger SBC. What's really confusing, is somewhere around 2003/2004, LEC competition was deregulated a bit, and the 2003 AT&T starting offering Local Phone services in the Bay area. So, you ran into scenarios where you would get a visit from both AT&T and SBC trying to sell you local phone services. I actually purchased a pretty good sized Long Distance/Data/LEC package from AT&T for around $15K MRC for our office buildings in Sunnyvale. The reason this is confusing, is that when SBC acquired AT&T, you now had two classes of AT&T customers, those with SBC legacy facilities, and those with AT&T legacy facilities. For about 5 years after the acquisition, every telecom consultant I dealt with avoided the confusion (for some definition of avoid, and confusion) - by continuing to refer to anyone getting their services from 2003 SBC, as "SBC Customers", even though, for the last several years, their phone bill read "AT&T". So, ironically, for some customers in the Bay Area, AT&T lines actually are AT&T lines, but for most customers, they are SBC/Pacific Bell lines.

tapsboy 14y ago

Infact, "However, in Austin, the agreements that Google has signed with the City of Austin are no different than the ones that AT&T and Time Warner have signed according to Laura Morrison, an Austin city councilwoman." http://gigaom.com/2013/04/09/take-that-google-att-ups-the-ante-with-plans-for-its-own-austin-gigabit-network/ http://gigaom.com/2013/04/09/take-that-google-att-ups-the-an...

wmf 14y ago

It would be viewed as pretty evil if Google extracted government concessions and then used some kind of regulatory capture to lock out competitors. That's AT&T's game.