Only the wealthiest of the Atlanta suburbs, it seems. What good is "affordable" true broadband that challenges the cable and DSL companies if it never makes it to those who could most use the savings?
Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
211–220 of 287 posts
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.
> The competition got serious. It's interesting how pure competition and "rational self-interest" got us the likes of Comcast and Cox and Verizon and all these other awful, awful companies. They quickly locked up the market, injected their own lobbyists into Washington, and then were content to provide a poor service for a lot of money. What is shaking them out of their complacency now is not "the market" or "competi…
> pure competition ... injected their own lobbyists into Washington
It's either pure competition, or they're injecting lobbyists to tilt the table in their favor, but not both.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#213Only the wealthiest of the Atlanta suburbs, it seems. What good is "affordable" true broadband that challenges the cable and DSL companies if it never makes it to those who could most use the savings?
Which suburbs are they? I tried 30004 - part of Alpharetta and had no luck.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
People trot out "regulatory capture" but can never give a straight answer about what is being captured and how that leads to a lack of competition. Verizon wants to wire up the yuppie neighborhoods here in Baltimore with FiOS. That'd be major competition for Comcast, because those yuppies subscribing to triple play are where all the money comes form. The city won't let them do it, because they demand Verizon wire up…
This is too true. It's more regulatory moats than regulatory capture. At any rate, it's not profitable after, probably, the first time. It's strange how cities force companies to wire this way. It's as if they forced a luxury brand, Hermès, say, to open a store in the most shit-hole, criminal part of town in order to gain the right to open a store in the yuppie part of town.
Access to the Internet is increasingly viewed as a right and/or an essential service. Access to overpriced handbags, not so much.
Providing health care to the destitute isn't profitable either; doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing it.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't think that the core of the issue is regulatory capture, rather than a failing of "the market"? It takes a lot of money to break into a captured market, which is why it takes a large company to do it. Google entering the ISP market has done more to shake up and spur on the incumbents in the past couple of years than anything regulators have done. And furthermore, you can be assured that their doing so is abs…
It's not just "regulatory capture" stopping competition in the broadband market. Let's say I launch a startup fiber ISP that serves a small area, planning to use the profit from that area to expand to cover the entire country, and to show investors there's money to be made so they'll loan me money for the expansion. I invest a bunch of cash digging up the roads to lay new cables. All the national incumbents have to d…
The reality is that arguments of this kind are always made by people who dont have any fantasy on there own. This mechanical story you layed out is devoid fantasy.
In the real market people take advantage of oppertunities, large companies are not always so flexible and dynamic for example, companies can survive in small market, more companies may join.Maybe for some other reason all the streets have to be opened and you can somehow get your cable in for cheap. Maybe you have a groupes of special costumers that require special networks and you can give them a discount because you wanted to do that anyway.
The are for example universtiy networks in some country that are connected by glass outside of the internet. Now if you can find a costumer like that you can lay some internet glass as well.
Or how about a big company that did something diffrent joining the game (google in this case), they will not be underpriced so easly.
A small company could survive in a single place or town, and if they can do it other might be able to do it as well.
There are a millions of possible ways that your mechanical view does not take into account, and that why we have markets. Im not smart enougth to figure out a good solution, you are not smart enougth but somebody might come up with something. There were many great and powerful countrys that crashed in a suprisingly short time because of these sorts of things.
If we can get away from "regulatory capture" we have change to see these effects. For what is worth in Switzerland a new company is laying down massiv amount of fiber right now and the competition has yet to dynamiclly rearange themself to this new challange. Also even if it fails, its not at all clear that once prices went down, they will go up again. Just because the new competition is gone, does not mean a company wants to take the marketing hit of rising the price again. People might switch to the equally bad competition just because they are angrey at a company raising prices on them.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
My friend just got the gigabit service, first area to get it. So jealous. The price isn't even all that high.
In Phoenix/Scottsdale? What are the major cross streets near him? How much? I'm down near Tatum & Cactus.
I love that in the Phoenix area, you can go across town and still be on something & Cactus.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what happened when GMail offered 2 GB inboxes. The competition got serious.
Of course, most competition also died. In terms of free email, there's now... I think Outlook.com is the only one I see semi-regularly? Yahoo's email service is utterly dreadful and I seem to remember a lot of kerfuffle regarding them and mailing lists.
I never understood why people are hating on big companys that produce great effects and big market share. I can understanding people hatin horrible IE6, but gmail was and is fantastic and most people love it. Noting is stopping them from leaving to other provider (and there are still many other) but they are happy.
So why is everything that has big market shares bad?
How about we switch to a model where we gat bad at companys that are actually selling us shitty products instead.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#218Only the wealthiest of the Atlanta suburbs, it seems. What good is "affordable" true broadband that challenges the cable and DSL companies if it never makes it to those who could most use the savings?
Which suburbs are they? I tried 30004 - part of Alpharetta and had no luck.
I'm going by the map graphic they have here[1] showing certain suburbs highlighted. Granted, College Park and Hapeville aren't necessarily wealthy areas but they are near the airport so that makes sense. I was thinking more of Sandy Springs and Avondale Estates, and to a lesser extent Decatur.
Of course, that graphic could have zero to do with their plans and I'm going on about nothing. I do wish you could check by ZIP code alone instead of needing a street address as well. It would be nice to know just how close the service is to me geographically.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't think that the core of the issue is regulatory capture, rather than a failing of "the market"? It takes a lot of money to break into a captured market, which is why it takes a large company to do it. Google entering the ISP market has done more to shake up and spur on the incumbents in the past couple of years than anything regulators have done. And furthermore, you can be assured that their doing so is abs…
It's horribly inefficient to lay new fiber for every ISP that wants to enter the market. At some point the economies of scale are such that it becomes impossible to even enter the market; many thought two entrants was the limit, Google is proving that the market can support three. This is a classic case where government should be laying fiber to cover the last mile and selling access at cost to any ISP that wants it.…
If three fiber nets are not enougth to creat a good market, why not lay another? If all the ones that are there are really shit there are costumers to be had.
And just by the fact that there are three horrible equally sized companys there we allready know that they are not able to change because if they could, they would allready be winning over market share there.
Also its easy for one of these providers to sell of there own fibers to many providers on top of itself so they dont have to figure out all the costumer managment and things like that.
There are many, many option outthere but the are currenly very hard to take (because of old and new regulation).
Everything from a truly huge company building a huge new net for the hole country in order to provit from economy of scale to small local companys that take offer specialised communitys and then spread from there.
In principle letting government lay down the fiber sound like a fine idea that can work, but juging by other technical project governemnt do I have my doutes.
Re: Google Fiber is coming to Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham
#220I just hope it doesn't take too long to radiate out from Atlanta. Barrow County is the middle of nowhere, but it is right on the road between Atlanta and Athens.
I've got family in Winder. Y'all are kinda out there.