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What, why? Google Fiber, municipal fiber, etc. will continue to exist and grow regardless of how broadband is classified. Title II doesn't mean "no competition

What, why? Google Fiber, municipal fiber, etc. will continue to exist and grow regardless of how broadband is classified. Title II doesn't mean "no competition."

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
Think what it does to Google's incentive to expand Google Fiber if the law prohibits Verizon et al from doing the things Google is most afraid of them doing. Imagine how much harder it would be to get voter support for a bond issue to fund municipal fiber if the incumbent ISP can't (and there for didn't) degrade performance of popular websites to favor their own competing alternatives. People fix things that are broken. If network neutrality makes Verizon's network tolerable to everyone then support for expensive alternatives disappears.
- sbov 12y ago
  Google has at least claimed net neutrality won't have any affect on their current or future plans for fiber rollout. Also, I think their incentives go beyond the throttling net neutrality is meant to prevent. Google makes more money the faster our connections are.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > Google has at least claimed net neutrality won't have any affect on their current or future plans for fiber rollout. We can distinguish between Google (the search engine) and Google Fiber (the ISP). What Google Fiber is saying is that network neutrality won't make their ISP business less profitable. That doesn't mean Google's search business is going to have the same incentive to continue providing a de facto subsidy for it in the form of new capital.
- zaroth 12y ago
  But I think the point of Google Fiber is not to be an expensive alternative. Fiber-to-the-home is inevitable, it's just a question of how many decades it takes to get there. Once the fiber is run, it's done. From everything I've read it makes zero economic sense to do anything but. The interesting variable is the CPE. I don't understand the desire to keep it on the pole where it needs to be protected from the elements. The life-cycle of the CPE is also an order of magnitude shorter than the life-cycle of the fiber. The hit to get the physical fiber into the home seems like a rounding error compared to being able to simply build a fiber connector into the router and let the customer pay for upgrading their hardware every X years.
- thirsteh 12y ago
  Sorry, but that sounds to me like anti-regulation/anti-government mumbo-jumbo. You're insinuating Google won't be able to compete because it's going to be illegal for carriers to actively become worse than they already are, while neglecting just that: They're bad! They're slow. They have bad peering agreements. Their networks are congested. None of these issues are solved by net neutrality regulation, and they're all reasons why people want Google Fiber or municipal broadband. Net neutrality barely factors in at all.
  - wtallis 12y ago
    Google Fiber isn't meant to be profitable, it's just meant to be enough of a threat to keep the other ISPs honest enough for Google's core businesses to be safe. Net neutrality regulations accomplish that purpose for Google. That leaves them no motivation for Google Fiber except enabling access to new Google services that don't exist yet, and Google's not good enough at long-range planning to have something like that up their sleeve.
    - thirsteh 12y ago
      Nonsense. Net neutrality doesn't factor in at all. Bad infrastructure problems are not solved by net neutrality. Net neutrality regulation prohibits telcos from actively throttling certain types of content, traffic to certain sites, etc. It does not require that telcos provide fast connections in general, or that they keep their infrastructure in good condition. It does not require that telcos provide X amount of bandwidth for X amount of dollars per month. Google Fiber is as relevant as it has always been. It's sad that this is even remotely controversial. Why can't pundits look at countries like Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Estonia, Germany, ...the list goes on, and see that regulation and competition can go hand in hand? All that these net neutrality changes will do is prevent existing ISPs from becoming (read: becoming -- most ISPs don't do anything that violates net neutrality right now!) even shittier. It changes almost nothing when it comes to competition. The U.S. is still hilariously out-of-date compared with the rest of the (more-strictly-regulated) industrialized world, and consumers will continue to demand better whether or not there's regulation in place to prevent bottom-of-the-barrel behavior.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  From the start Google has claimed they don't want to be an ISP. Which means Google Fiber is more like a "threat". A threat, how? Everyone I know believes it's about speed/cost, not throttling. Comcast is charging you $60/month for 10mbps, then Google rolls into town offering 1Gbps for $70/month? That's even impressive on log scale! Notice the reaction to G. Fiber from Comcast etc. has been free speed bumps. Google Fiber is certainly not a bargain play, but it is hardly the "luxury option", with an accompanied luxury tax.

What, why? Google Fiber, municipal fiber, etc. will continue to exist and grow regardless of how broadband is classified. Title II doesn't mean "no competition."

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

Think what it does to Google's incentive to expand Google Fiber if the law prohibits Verizon et al from doing the things Google is most afraid of them doing. Imagine how much harder it would be to get voter support for a bond issue to fund municipal fiber if the incumbent ISP can't (and there for didn't) degrade performance of popular websites to favor their own competing alternatives. People fix things that are broken. If network neutrality makes Verizon's network tolerable to everyone then support for expensive alternatives disappears.

sbov 12y ago
Google has at least claimed net neutrality won't have any affect on their current or future plans for fiber rollout. Also, I think their incentives go beyond the throttling net neutrality is meant to prevent. Google makes more money the faster our connections are.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  > Google has at least claimed net neutrality won't have any affect on their current or future plans for fiber rollout. We can distinguish between Google (the search engine) and Google Fiber (the ISP). What Google Fiber is saying is that network neutrality won't make their ISP business less profitable. That doesn't mean Google's search business is going to have the same incentive to continue providing a de facto subsidy for it in the form of new capital.
zaroth 12y ago
But I think the point of Google Fiber is not to be an expensive alternative. Fiber-to-the-home is inevitable, it's just a question of how many decades it takes to get there. Once the fiber is run, it's done. From everything I've read it makes zero economic sense to do anything but. The interesting variable is the CPE. I don't understand the desire to keep it on the pole where it needs to be protected from the elements. The life-cycle of the CPE is also an order of magnitude shorter than the life-cycle of the fiber. The hit to get the physical fiber into the home seems like a rounding error compared to being able to simply build a fiber connector into the router and let the customer pay for upgrading their hardware every X years.
thirsteh 12y ago
Sorry, but that sounds to me like anti-regulation/anti-government mumbo-jumbo. You're insinuating Google won't be able to compete because it's going to be illegal for carriers to actively become worse than they already are, while neglecting just that: They're bad! They're slow. They have bad peering agreements. Their networks are congested. None of these issues are solved by net neutrality regulation, and they're all reasons why people want Google Fiber or municipal broadband. Net neutrality barely factors in at all.
- wtallis 12y ago
  Google Fiber isn't meant to be profitable, it's just meant to be enough of a threat to keep the other ISPs honest enough for Google's core businesses to be safe. Net neutrality regulations accomplish that purpose for Google. That leaves them no motivation for Google Fiber except enabling access to new Google services that don't exist yet, and Google's not good enough at long-range planning to have something like that up their sleeve.
  - thirsteh 12y ago
    Nonsense. Net neutrality doesn't factor in at all. Bad infrastructure problems are not solved by net neutrality. Net neutrality regulation prohibits telcos from actively throttling certain types of content, traffic to certain sites, etc. It does not require that telcos provide fast connections in general, or that they keep their infrastructure in good condition. It does not require that telcos provide X amount of bandwidth for X amount of dollars per month. Google Fiber is as relevant as it has always been. It's sad that this is even remotely controversial. Why can't pundits look at countries like Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Estonia, Germany, ...the list goes on, and see that regulation and competition can go hand in hand? All that these net neutrality changes will do is prevent existing ISPs from becoming (read: becoming -- most ISPs don't do anything that violates net neutrality right now!) even shittier. It changes almost nothing when it comes to competition. The U.S. is still hilariously out-of-date compared with the rest of the (more-strictly-regulated) industrialized world, and consumers will continue to demand better whether or not there's regulation in place to prevent bottom-of-the-barrel behavior.
sliverstorm 12y ago
From the start Google has claimed they don't want to be an ISP. Which means Google Fiber is more like a "threat". A threat, how? Everyone I know believes it's about speed/cost, not throttling. Comcast is charging you $60/month for 10mbps, then Google rolls into town offering 1Gbps for $70/month? That's even impressive on log scale! Notice the reaction to G. Fiber from Comcast etc. has been free speed bumps. Google Fiber is certainly not a bargain play, but it is hardly the "luxury option", with an accompanied luxury tax.