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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?"
Funny what a little competition can do. Now if only this stuff could happen in other areas.
Initial speed will be 300Mbps, of unknown cost, probably with the current 250GB monthly cap, available in few unspecified areas... oh boy.
What is AT&T's plan here?
... Probably? They'll just assume we're going to do it anywhere they announce next and will all hang themselves, at which point we can quadruple the costs for the austin fiber and everywhere else."
CEO: "Gentlemen, google's competitive service challenges our freedom, our very way of life, our absurd profits. No longer will we be able to abuse customers and laugh as they threaten to leave us for better competitors, because there WILL BE a better option"
All: "GASP!"
CEO: "We have only one option. Stop them in Austin Texas. Throw everything we've got there. Be better than google."
Member of the audience: "But Sir, how can we keep getting monopoly-level profits for doing very little if we do that?"
CEO : (closes eyes) "We... can't."
All: "NNOOOO!!"
CEO: "But fear not! If we stop them in Austin Texas, they will give up expanding elsewhere!
All: "AMAZING!!!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
The other interesting thing here is that, at least in my city, there is a "comparable performance clause" in the agreement between the city and AT&T/Time Warner for the Phone/Cable monopoly.
It basically states that if another area gets quantifiable better speeds/options, they need to justify why it's economically infeasable to provide the same level of service in my community or they risk losing their license to a competitor who can. There are some limitations (like the deployment being in the same state) and it would mean that the city counsel would have to fight it and likely a legal battle afterward, but it is a route where a door could be opened to requiring big players to upgrade service to levels equivalent to Google if they try to fight in select areas instead of their whole service area.
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.
They had their chance to take care of me as a paying Customer. At this point, no matter what at&t or time warner do at this point I will dump them the first opportunity to get Google Fiber.
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.