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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?"
They haven't decided where to install because Google hasn't. It will be predatory installation. That means they will install the system only where Google does and will only offer competitive prices to those who can get Google service. They do this to anyone that tries to overbuild.
I really enjoyed calling up to cancel after Google connected our house.
"Why are you cancelling?"
"I found a better service."
"Can I ask what?"
"Sure, I found 1,0000 Mbps for $70/mo"
"Well. I can offer you 14Mbps for $40/mo"
They followed up with a letter just yesterday saying how they were surprised I canceled since they have such a great service and offering a $300 gift card for re-upping. As far as I can tell they have no strategy for dealing with competing fiber rollouts and Austin doesn't sound like one either.