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The Next Big Fiber Showdown: Austin
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google might have big plans to wire America with high-speed broadband, but at least one carrier isn't willing to let Google Fiber have a free run: AT&T has announced that it will deploy a '100 percent fiber' network in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds of up to 1GB per second. That location is auspicious, given how Google's already decided to make Austin the next city to receive Google Fiber. Whereas Google plans on connecting Austin households to its network in mid-2014, however, AT&T promises to start deploying its own high-speed solution in December. But there's a few significant catches. First, AT&T's service will initially roll out to 'tens of thousands of customer locations throughout Austin' (according to a press release), which is a mere fraction of the city's 842,592 residents; second, AT&T has offered no roadmap for expanding beyond that initial base; and third, despite promises that the service will roll out in December, the carrier has yet to choose the initial neighborhoods for its expansion. Could this be a case of a carrier freaking out about a new company's potential to disrupt its longtime business?"
Initial speed will be 300Mbps, of unknown cost, probably with the current 250GB monthly cap, available in few unspecified areas... oh boy.
att wont be able to compete. google is charging the same price for gb internet as att charges everyone for 20mbit. rolling out fiber and then charging 100$ more wont do anything to compete with google. that being said, maybe eventually att will wisen up and start offering fiber in other cities at a competitive rate (before google gets there), but i doubt that seriously, since att milks their customers for money.
Having multiple sets of fiber maintained is more expensive than a single set though. I know trash service provided by private companies is far less efficient, much more labor and much more fuel as trucks from multiple companies travel down the same road. If government laid the fiber and treated like a roadway (covering just the last mile) it'd have less cost than google and AT&T competing, then they could compete on the other many miles, with many other companies, because now right-of-ways aren't an issue.
Digging duplicate trenches to lay parallel fiber is wasteful. That's why utilities are "natural monopolies". Getting economic efficiency in such situations usually requires regulation or community ownership.
No they don't require you to get cable with the internet service. Not in Austin anyway. It's cheaper to get cable+internet, that might be what you are referring to? Please don't spread misinformation, that's really not helpful. We need to have informed arguments with facts about the various carriers.
Charles Wyble System Engineer