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Author: Google Fiber Just Began the "Golden Age" of High Speed Internet Access

posted by martyb on Friday March 11 2016, @05:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the back-to-the-early-days-of-DSL dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Susan Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age who also ironically shares a name with a telecom fatcat, has published an analysis of the recent Google fiber deal in Huntsville Alabama. This deal differs from all previous deals in that the city will build and own the fiber network and that Google has only committed to lease capacity on it, leaving the city the option to lease to other internet service providers and thus engender competition for internet access. It is a utility model for connectivity that has had great success in other nations, but is contrary to the way American telecom corporations view their role in the broadband market.

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  • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday March 11 2016, @09:12PM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Friday March 11 2016, @09:12PM (#317167)

    Thanks for that, I'm encouraged by the fact that the If they won't build it, Then the municipality can. I hope more cities are able to push through with it.

    One possible problem I see on the horizon is dealing with Tier 1 and 2 networks. If a city has its own network, it must connect to the larger net through a Tier 1, possibly Tier 2. I guess this is where Net Neutrality becomes exceedingly important, but I can see a few valid problems for private networks.

    If Cable Co. owns the Tier 1 access points into a town, then the town will have to pay Cable Co. to access the outside lines. If enough of Cable Co's customers switch to the muni connection then Cable Co won't be getting enough money to justify keeping their infrastructure in place. Hopefully market competition will actually bring prices in line, but access to internet backbones seems like a valid concern.

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