He says: “The only way American consumers are going to get the same level of connectivity that residents of Korea, Japan, Stockholm and other places around the world already enjoy is if we pursue local experimentation of next generation deployment solutions like Google has done in Kansas City, and others are beginning to test.”

It’s not clear that American consumers want or need gigabit networks at any price, so I remain unconvinced about their value. Perhaps it’s a matter of building for the future, but it’s generally more economical to to that in the future. America lacks superhighways as fast at the German autobahns, but it’s unclear we’re suffering because of it.

He also says: “Those legacy arrangements enjoyed by incumbents like AT&T and Time Warner granted them monopolies in their respective markets, something Google will not receive.”

Once upon a time, AT&T and TWC had monopolies for POTS and cable TV, but they’ve never had a broadband monopoly. One could point out that Google enjoys a monopoly in Internet search just as easily, but I’m not sure that’s significant except as it supplies a revenue stream to partially defray the costs of the fiber net, as they legacy POTS and cable businesses do.

It will be interesting to see how the KC market reacts to three players in the wired broadband market, but it’s not something we haven’t seen before. We have multiple players in places like San Francisco and Boston, for example, and the world hasn’t changed.

The notion of picking winners and losers by subsidizing a new entrant is actually kind of disturbing when we play out the potential futures in just about any policy direction. What happens to broadband investment in other communities when the specter of a subsidized third pipe appears on the horizon (or wherever specters appear?) Will Google have the tenacity to stick to an ISP business that’s far outside its core competency when the blush is off the rose and the headaches of customer support supplant the high fives about sticking it to the man?

It’s going to be interesting to watch the scenario unfold. One thing I’d like to see is broadband takeup reach the same level as cable TV subscriber-ship, as that would be a huge step toward the all-IP world. But it’s a way off yet.

RIGHT ON!

After years of working in this area – its truly the stability and reliability of broadband which proves its value. Researchers, workers, government officials and entrepreneurs are still effectively getting 10Mbps bandwidth, but at least it won’t GO DOWN (as my T-W cable modem constantly does here in Shaker Heights, OH.)

I live down the street from Mark Ansboury, do seder with Lev Gonick and have been trying to get Cleveland to think of broadband as something more than remote surgery or sexy video phone calls. Unfortunately the example we have here in Cleveland – OneCommunity – has over promised, and under delivered – for years.

I applaud your and Gigabit Squared’s efforts and I PLEAD with you to focus on workforce training for a new breed of workers – who will make their living on-line. I’m NOT talking about programming or the digital salt mines of call centers and BPOs.

What I’m talking about is a freelance nation of independents, working in that zone in the middle between hi-end coding and lo-end drone thinking. It’s out future – and coincidentally it looks like it’s getting built in the neighborhood I was raised in!

Make sure to run fiber to the Miriam G. Canter middle school. It’s named after my mother.

The cable companies are a different story. The physical plant for cable television was never designed for internet access, it just worked out that it could be used as such. The physical plant deployments were based on television viewing issues. The cable companies never got the tax cuts, tax deductions, tax credits, rate increases, and law changes regarding physical deployment that AT&T did. They did not make the promises AT&T did about providing better service to ALL areas of the states. The line sharing concept may not be possible in some cases for cable systems.

AT&T needs a stick. TWC may need a carrot. But AT&T has been good at getting the entire garden to do nothing and will tell a tale of why it needs to do so again.

More important than free service to public institutions is the incumbent telecoms should lose their monopoly status if they want the same deal from local governments. I am sure that they will press for government-supported monopoly and present it as being necessary and ‘fair’ for them to recoup the cost of capital in building out new networks. If that happens, we will be back to square one a few years from now. Any kind of monopoly or duopoly is the bane of telecom progress.