How about just convincing Verizon to sell the higher speeds to those who want them, at a higher price? The hardware's there, but their most expensive FiOS business connections are far short of Google's numbers.
Verizon does offer up to 150Mbit/35Mbit for their business packages. They probably don't see a market for it on the residential side. CableVision, Comcast, TWC, etc do offer 100Mbit+ connections for residential use in some limited markets. From what I've head they are not big sellers. (less than 1% of customers upgrade) That has probably slowed down wider deployment.
Is this so different from 10 years ago, when no one realized that they wanted high-definition TV? I can't imagine that the demand for HD television was very high then either. Once it was available, manufacturers began making all of their equipment HD capable.
The fundamental cause of poor broadband network performance in this country is actually not a lack of demand, it's a lack of competition among ISP's -- otherwise, these speeds would come to market naturally.
Over here in Helsinki, Finland there's a cable operator that offers connections that go up to 200/10Mbit (54,90€/month) and one of the biggest ISPs is putting together a 1000Mbit residential connection trial (they already offer 100/10Mbit fibre connections).
I think the demand is there if the pricing is decent.
To be honest, I have their business service at home to avoid trouble when I'm running VPN servers, etc. and the occasional Web service from home -- not to mention the usage cap issue.
And it's nice to know that they're up to 35 mbits upload (much faster than what I have), but their hardware is capable of much more (assuming it's on par with Google Fiber's).
Dunno about others, but the reason I'm not yet on Cablevision's 101/15Mbps plan is that they're charging a non refundable $300 fee to get you hooked up. I'm a software developer that works from home. If I won't do it, what are the chances your average Joe would?
Why are people comfortable with paying for tiered connection speeds, but not comfortable with a monthly data cap (that can be removed by paying more for a business connection)?
I think its because paying for a tiered connection speed is set-and-forget. Paying with a monthly data cap effectively overlays an economic decision over each interaction you have with the internet. "Do I click this link? How much bandwidth will that use?" Even though I think most people probably would end up not thinking about it on a link-by-link basis, they do have to devote some mental power to monitoring how much of their data cap they've used, how much they have left in the current billing cycle (especially under billing regimes that charge way higher marginal costs when you exceed the initial cap - e.g. most US mobile phone voice minute plans).
It's just annoying. Even though it seems like tying the price of something to your use of that thing is the most efficient way to bill, it just sucks because then you have to think too much about every use: text messages, AOL hours, phone calls, until these things got so cheap that they weren't worth metering, all were in that category.
Personally, I suspect there's some behavioral economics ish at work here that is measurable, like...you know how some hotels and cruiseships have all-in prices? I bet people are actually willing to pay more for the same amount of consumption with the 'unlimited' plans because they enjoy not having to worry about it. This would also be pretty easy to test with cruiseship or all-inclusive resort data where they also sell other a la carte packages.
I have data cap plans on my phone and iPad, and I don't really mind them, but its only because I know that they are effectively unlimited: I never come close to using up the cap level of data. I don't watch Slingbox on my phone, etc.
I tell you what really burns me up though: the fact that even though I am paying per-gigabyte transfer fees on my iDevices, AT&T wants me to pay more money to tether to my laptop. Why the fuck should they care? The data is the data. I understood when the idae was that a tethered laptop would use assloads of data on the nominal "unlimited" plan exceeding their modelled costs, but...dude, I bought data transfer. why do you give a shit which device the packets end up on? I HATE THIS. It honestly annoys me more than if AT&T just built in the tethering to the price and I just had to pay it.
I have a Linode with a data cap of 300GB per month; if I use more than that, I pay a reasonable amount ($0.15/GB) for the excess. So if I use a lot of data one month, I get a charge on my credit card, and life goes on. I'm completely comfortable with this.
A residential Comcast connection has a data cap of 250GB per month; if I use more than that, they turn off my connection and ban me for a year. So if I use a lot of data one month, I find myself abruptly and semi-permanently screwed. I am absolutely not comfortable with this since the consequences are so severe and long-lasting.
I don't think this is the case at all. The problem people have with monthly caps is that they're frequently done with plans that advertised "UNLIMITED X!". There are also people who don't mind paying per GB. The problem most people have is when ISPs react according to content, such as capping your torrenting but leaving youtube untouched, or capping Netflix but not Facebook, etc.
I thought there was a law against doing that (net neutrality).
I've heard that ISPs discriminate between "types" of content (video vs text). But I wasn't aware they were discriminating based on the company (Netflix vs YouTube).
I thought there was a law against doing that (net neutrality).
There is no law enforcing Net Neutrality.
And really, the concern isn't that a company like Comcast will meter Netflix, but not Facebook. It's that they will meter Netflix, but not "Comcast Video Streaming" if they were to offer such a service.