Why Super-Fast Internet Is Coming Super Slowly

"AT&T is slowing Google Fiber deployment in Austin by denying access to its utility poles": This is why I am not getting Google Fiber yet?

I view the broadband industry as a fascinating example of what happens when an infrastructure industry meets the technology industry. TWC and friends were established to enact a business plan that's been viable and profitable for centuries: laying down expensive infrastructure is economically feasible if most of the cost comes up front and you can charge rents on it for decades. Stability is crucial. This is the economic reasoning that built the cable TV network, and the phone network before that, and the power grid before that, and the railroad network before that, etc.

Trouble is, this business model severely discourages new development (witness the "No one wants gigabit" rationale). Why interrupt your twenty year plan just to extend its life a year or two into the future? This isn't a bad thing if your industry is basically a utility industry, where technological changes move at a glacial pace. God help you if you enter into the technology industry armed only with the economic and managerial tools of a utility juggernaut.

So we've got ourselves a conflict. On one side there are irritated customers wondering why their service is so poor and why their bills are so high. On the other there are communications utilities providers: while they have a legitimate business need to keep their networks profitable, they are paying the price for committing the gravest sin possible in the technology world: complacency.

I've seen articles that it is just not feasible or even possibly to put all of the burden the wired networks carry onto the wireless ones. Besides the ugly data caps we have to deal with there, there's not enough room in the frequencies. Wireless is used as an excuse to not put in effort with wired and it's going to screw us.

"Net-neutrality" means different thing to different people.

If by net-neutrality you mean the system where a paying broadband customer can consume any content, irrespective of that content owner ability to pony up to cash to broadband provider, then yes, these two issues are related. More competition in consumer broadband market would keep providers in check.

In an ideal world (at least my ideal), broadband providers would strive to do everything they can to deliver content to me. In current world, it's well documented that Comcast is passively allowing interconnects to fill up, causing congestion, and forcing content providers to pay up for better interconnect.

I thought the USA was the model of capitalism. However it appears the opposite, monopolies run rampant. The free market is killed rather than encouraged.