On Jul 21, 2014, at 14:41 , Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 8:34 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote: .....
Whoever installs fiber first and gets any significant fraction of subscribers in any but the densest of population centers is a competition killer, _IF_ you let them parlay that physical infrastructure into an anti-competitive environment for higher layer services.
I take it that on principal you would have petitioned against the proposed Google Fiber roll-out in the San Jose area and would have spoken out against it at the public hearing on June 17th in favor of an alternative municipal funded project if you were not otherwise engaged (the synopsis indicates no public comments from the floor from that meeting)? You may have missed an opportunity to be the one to stop Google Fiber in San Jose in preference to muni fiber, although there is never just one meeting for such large scale projects. I am sure you will have other chances to offer your opinion, and encourage the council to just say no.
Nope... I would strongly support it. Why? Because until we have regulation that does what I am proposing, we have ridiculous monopolies with all kinds of negative consumer impact. While Google as a new monopoly wouldn't be the ideal competitive environment, it would, at least, be better than what we have today. While I believe, on principle that we need to move forward towards what I described above, I also recognize the reality on the ground and the need not to cut off one's nose to spite one's face. Owen