Google Fiber's Latest FCC Filing: Comcast's Nightmare Come To Life

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from BGR: What's every incumbent ISP's worst nightmare? If we had to guess, it looks something like the filing that Google just made with the Federal Communications Commission. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Google this week told the FCC that reclassifying broadband providers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act would have a big side benefit for Google Fiber because it would give Google Fiber the same access to utility poles and other key infrastructure currently enjoyed by Comcast, AT&T and other big-name ISPs.

Comments

One fiber to rule them...

[Camel Pilot]

Why not just run one fiber, ditch all the copper, terminate it at the local POP and then allow various vendors access to that fiber and compete for my business?

Re: One fiber to rule them...

[Dunbal]

Municipalities charge taxes for roads, garbage, schools etc. At least where I live it's the power company or the phone company that fixes their own damaged equipment when lines come down, not the city. And you bet your ass the city won't lift a finger to fix anything unless they are generating revenue from it.

What GP is proposing is some sort of "public" trunk that everyone can then attach to at the end points and sell from there. OK. What GP has not mentioned is that someone has to own and maintain this "public" line and if it's the city, you bet your ass they are going to charge you for it one way or another. It's not a city service otherwise, is it?

As for private industry being the only one that can fix anything no, that's simply not true. The city will charge you an arm and a leg to fix something, do a shitty job and call what they bilk you for it "taxes". Private industry will charge you an arm and a leg, do a shitty job, and call the difference profit. But unless it's a life or death service, governments tend to take their sweet time about things. Feasibility studies have to be done, committees have to meet and decide, and finally the 2 guys responsible for actually fixing anything that goes wrong in the whole town have to fit it into their schedule. Or does your town not have potholes, burst pipes, etc? If those get fixed overnight please tell me where you live so I can move there. Private industry tends to be a bit quicker because they want the money ASAP. The city already has your money. Try not to pay them and see what happens.

Re:What rules prevent them from doing this already

[mea_culpa]

Back in the 80s and 90s lots of smaller cable companies lobbied local governments and were granted easement access to install their poles, wires, and equipment. Many poles belonged to various utility companies and Ma Bell and access was also negotiated with them. This is a very long process with lots and lots of red tape.

Bigger companies like Comcast bought these smaller companies primarily for these rights. Anywhere smaller companies overlapped the wires were pulled off of poles to prevent any chance of a competitor gaining easy access to these rights. Any new competitor would now need to start from the very beginning like the smaller companies did in the 80s and 90s in obtaining access.

In my city we had a choice of Dimension Cable and Cable America in the 80s and 90s. Both of these smaller companies did all of the busy work for Cox which gobbled both of them up and dismantled the redundant perfectly good infrastructure of Cable America.
Comcast did this on a much larger scale.

THANK YOU

[Dega704]

I have mixed feelings about Google Fiber (I strongly believe that open-access municipal fiber networks are the better option) but I consider this a tremendous New Year's present that utterly decimates the misguided viewpoint that common carrier rules will impede such projects. Every free-market preaching tool that has said "The next Google FIber won't happen with Title II!" Can now procede to eat crow.