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Comment by geuis | Hacker News Reader

This makes little sense to me. Instead of building in the same market as Google, go build in another market with no competition! Why layout double the infrastructure when and get into a price war when you can do the same thing somewhere else and be able to charge more? That's my pro-business argument.

My pro-customer argument is that this is great for competition in Austin.

My I-live-in-SF argument is why isn't anyone doing this for us? I can't really think of another major city in the US outside of NY, Chicaco, or Boston where this would have the most impact. You have thousands of companies built on the Internet in SF. Lots of us techies live here. Please, give us a choice beyond Comcast!

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> Why layout double the infrastructure when and get into a price war when you can do the same thing somewhere else and be able to charge more?

The point is that AT&T is trying to kill off Google's Internet business. It takes many years to earn back the cost of laying new fiber.

If Google knows that AT&T is going to avoid building wherever they are, Google would just keep going with their plan.

If they do that a few times without expanding in other areas they open themselves up to a significant anticompetitive lawsuit.

Sonic.net is trying to build fiber in SF. Only held up by permitting issues. Latest update from the CEO is on the forums here:

https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085&s...

How exciting! Definitely going to followup on this.

That's like saying a manned Mars colony is "only" being held up by transportation issues.

Phone and Cable companies are increasingly becoming just ISPs; if Google Fiber starts to be successful in more cities, it threatens the highly profitable duopoly they have.

Consumer ISPs have long deployed their fastest technology in response to a competitor (typically, but not always a municipally funded competitor) deploying a fast network.

You need to remember, Comcast started charging Level 3 (who distributes some of Netflix's content) for peering. There's nothing illegal about this, but think about what it means is Comcast is now selling its customers to the content companies; you are no longer the customer but the product.

I wonder if they'll keep their current capping policy in place in Austin (I'm willing to bet they will not), or if they remove the caps nationally (I'm willing to bet they will not).

If they did, it'd take ~250 seconds at full throttle to use up your download limit. Provided they are charging for overage, this could be very profitable for them.

Sorry for the nitpick - By L3, I'm assume you mean Level 3 Communications, not L-3 Communications. Netflix uses the former's CDN services, I believe.

> By L3, I'm assume you mean Level 3 Communications, not L-3 Communications. Netflix uses the former's CDN services, I believe.

Thanks, corrected. That's what I get for not googling my facts before posting.

I saw these links in another discussion (apologies to whoever posted it—can't find the origin): http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/t-u-verse-runs-sf-sidewal... and http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/att-ordered-stop-u-verse-... . If AT&T can't even deploy U-Verse, why would Google or anyone else want to wander into the bureaucratic bog that is trying to get anything done in San Francisco?

Competition in Austin hasn't solved any problems. There are three major providers in Austin: AT&T, TWC, and Grande. That there are "more options" hasn't meant anything to the general availabilities that any of these three companies offers. I can "choose" to get internet from TWC or AT&T, but absolutely none of the choices have substantial differences.

Honestly, this whole focus on "competition" is completely missing the point. It doesn't matter if you have one company, or two companies, or three companies, or ten companies offering the service. If there's a way, they're going to collude.

> My I-live-in-SF argument is why isn't anyone doing this for us?

It is really really really expensive to do anything in SF, much less deploy fiber on a wide scale basis.

(I also live in SF. I <3 sonic but don't live in a place where they have fiber and even they can only do so much.)

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/econ439/2012/07/06/why-competin...

Because that would upset their competitors in other cities that they're not supposed to compete with. Google's already disrupted the Austin market so it's fair game now.

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