Google Fiber Delays Broadband Award To 2011

coondoggie writes "The response to the invitation to become a test market for Google's planned high-speed broadband network has been overwhelming, so much so the company today said it would delay awarding the system until 2011. According to a post in its website, Google said 1,100 communities and 194,000 individuals responded to its proposal. Google had hoped to award the test program this month."

Comments

Demand Unmet

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So Google talks about rolling out fiber to the home and they get nearly 200,000 responses and 1,100 communities express interest. That pretty well sums up the network infrastructure in the US. It's too slow, too expensive, and falling behind the times. I'm sure we will not be regarded as the most technologically advanced nation within another generation. This generation has failed to invest in critical infrastructure and has let corporate interests divert the money that should be being spent on public works projects, into those corporations own back pockets.

And yet, I can't help but think, "we deserve this". I mean the people are too lazy and stupid to pay attention to what's going on, or bother to vote, or bother to research candidates before they vote. So corporate shills are elected. They hand over taxpayer dollars, but require no return on the taxpayer's investment and pass laws to make sure taxpayers have fewer, more expensive choices when purchasing services.

Maybe one of the few innovative companies with enough prestige will be able to start real reform, but I seriously doubt it. This empire is crumbling and, as usual, the average person is too arrogant (USA #1 whooo!) to even consider how far we've fallen behind already. They don't want to hear it or have to think about the hard decisions that need to be made to turn things around.

Good luck Google, but I almost think you should just test out your new technologies in Japan or Korea or Sweden or somewhere where they are actually implementing fiber to the home, for a more realistic sense of what your future customers will be using.

Re:Another solution

[dunezone]

Or when the towns go to vote the telecom companies will run newspaper and tv ads on how it will cost the taxpayer more if the city ran network goes under.

This happened to a tri-city outside of Chicago (Geneva, St. Charles, Batavia). These three towns were voting to build a municipal network and let me tell you the week before voting the amount negative ads running against it were crazy. They basically played on the fear that if this failed the tax payer would foot the bill. It failed in vote but had every household that agreed to it bought it into it would have paid itself off in 5 years.

The best part the reason the three towns were doing it were because Comcast or any other major telecom refused to bring in broadband. Literally two weeks after the vote Comcast had delivered to 90% of the three cities.

Problem - US constituencies too big

[zooblethorpe]

The average US constituency is massive , at around 700,000 people. This is much larger than originally envisioned when the country was founded, and guarantees that the little guy is drowned out. From Thirty-Thousand.org:

The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed 50 to 60 thousand. Currently, the average population size of the districts is nearly 700,000 and, consequently, the principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned.

Such large constituencies as we see now in the US are also much larger than in other representative democracies. The Isle of Wight is an interesting comparison:

With a single Member of Parliament and 132,731 permanent residents in 2001, it is also the most populous parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom.

While not widely known, the first article of the original twelve proposed for the Bill of Rights laid out the size of congressional constituencies, as an attempt to avoid that the dilution of individual votes seen in the modern US. From the US House of Representatives website:

Article the first

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

James Madison himself talked about how larger constituencies tend to favor those with land and property (i.e., the rich). He was writing about the justification for having larger constituencies and longer terms for the Senate than for the House, but his description of the basic political mechanics is sound. From page 155 of The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates by Ralph Ketcham:

Large districts are manifestly favorable to the election of persons of general respectability, and of probable attachment to the rights of property, over competitors depending on the personal solicitations practicable on a contracted theater.

I.e., large districts are more impersonal, favor the rich, and are less representative. This is precisely what we have in the US. I do not expect any real progress until this gross imbalance is corrected -- and frankly I suspect changing my citizenship would be much more productive for me personally.

Cheers,