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?"

Comments

competition

[asmkm22]

Funny what a little competition can do. Now if only this stuff could happen in other areas.

Re:competition

[Xicor]

it isnt free if you have to pay more taxes for it.

Re:competition

[djyrn3715]

Google wins either way. Best case scenario is if 1GB starts to roll out everywhere ahead of Google Fiber. That way they don't have to muck about with the infrastructure, and they still get people using their services at the higher rate.

Re:competition

[sneakyimp]

The telecom industry is already subsidized (see Universal Service Fund) and it doesn't really work. On the other hand, shared infrastructure, something the government could invest in, apparently has great benefits in fostering competition in Korea, for example. The basic idea is that instead of letting ISPs build their own proprietary network, we build open, shared internet infrastructure and let ISPs share the infrastructure and compete for customers. This is sort of obliquely analagous to the breakup of AT&T in 1984. The government mandated that AT&T resell its network to long distance resellers and the prices of long distance plummeted over the next 10 years.

Maybe it'll be like Dallas

[ThatsNotPudding]

In AT&T's Dallas HQ parking garage, you can get four bars in every elevator as it's critcally important all their execs be in constant contact.

But for their customers? Ha! This will be just more cobbled-together Uverse hybrid garbage.

I'll see your HERP and raise you DERP.

[Anonymous Coward]

it isn't free if you have to pay a communications surcharge fee for it for a decade and get nothing to show for it.

And who cares?

[Okian Warrior]

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.

In the magical land of the oompa-loompas, where Willie Wonka is a benevolent dictator and everything is done for the betterment of their society, this would be important.

Any real issue has arguments both for and against. It's like a mathematical function with many variables, and you have to choose the combination of variables that gives the function the highest value.

In this case the highest value is utility for society, and the variables are the amount of weight you assign to each argument.

Specifically in this case, we assign little weight to "being wasteful because we're digging two trenches" because even though that argument is valid, the utility to society is much lower if we let that consideration drive our choice.

Yeah, I'd *like* to not have to waste effort to have good things, but that's not the world we live in.

Having fiber is more valuable than the expense of digging an extra trench.

Re:Good luck to them

[swillden]

"Sure, I found 1,0000 Mbps for $70/mo"
"Well. I can offer you 14Mbps for $40/mo"

I suppose for a lot of (non-geek) people that might look like a compelling alternative, so it's not totally silly of the rep to offer it. However, I suspect that most of those who'd prefer 14 Mbps for $40 over 1000 Mbps for $70 would find 5 Mbps for $0 even more compelling.