[chris_mahan]

I want enough bandwidth to stream three HD 1080p movies at the same time (there are three people in my house) with enough left over for VOIP Phone and normal internet. I currently pay $80/month for that. ($50 for internet, 28+change for VOIP). I am willing to pay $120/month (that's frankly $4/day, not enough to really matter) for that. Can I buy it? No. Because no competition.

Why? Because utility monopoly. Why? Because lawyers and lobbyists and clueless and corrupt politicians.

Any question?

[rayiner]

Cable companies are not utility monopolies. The granting of exclusive franchises has been illegal since 1992. Do they have lawyers and lobbyists? Sure. So do Google and Netflix and Facebook and Yahoo.

Companies don't give you what you want because: 1) its expensive; 2) they can make higher returns with that money elsewhere. You can blame lawyers and lobbyists all you want, but the bare fact is that what Facebook paid for WhatsApp would pay for all the lobbying capacity of the top 10 DC lobbying firms for 60 years. That's a really weak argument to lean on when the interested tech players have so much money and lobbying is so cheap.

Just look at what Google is doing with Google Fiber. They're demanding massive regulatory concessions, and still don't seem to be positioning it as a money-making business. If building fiber was a good use of capital, why would internet companies sit on the sidelines and demand someone else do it?

[caust1c]

I appreciate your insight, but it really is still a political battle.

The reason why is because companies have to work with local governments to get construction permits to build out the access network. There are huge barriers here that prevent individuals and small companies from actually getting that work done. One of those barriers is the fact that even local governments have problems with bribery and corruption (you don't say!).

Google Fiber is demanding those massive regulatory concessions because they must! They're asking governments to bend over backwards for them because they recognize how hard it is go get through the bureaucracy. That's why they put on this big campaign to get the people to talk to their local representatives and essentially beg to be saved from the monopolies.

Take for example, Google Fiber versus Sonic.net. Sonic's been trying to build out their fiber network for a long time. However, since they're small it's much more difficult for them to work with the local governments and as a result their fiber rollout has been slower despite consumer demands.

[rayiner]

Please, show me the bribery and corruption that's creating these political hurdles. Otherwise, that's a strong accusation to be making without proof. If we're talking about good old fashioned lobbying, however, then the fact is that the internet companies have more than enough money to overwhelm the cable companies' lobbying efforts. Lobbyists are up for the highest bidder, after all. Yes, small companies can't afford it, but anyone with the money to realistically build the infrastructure in the first place can. Certainly, the companies with the most at stake (Google, Facebook, Netflix) can. It makes no sense to invoke money and lobbying while ignoring the fact of who has the deepest pockets in this game. Remember, Google is more profitable than Comcast and TWV combined, and has double the profit margin. Facebook's profits are about 2/3 as much as TWC.

The regulatory hurdles that Google is demanding relief from are (largely) not the result of lobbying. They're the result of the dysfunction of municipal politics. Right now, NYC's mayor is attacking Verizon because poor people can't afford FIOS (at $75/month). He's hired a civil rights lawyer to get into the issue. Is it any wonder companies aren't interested in building fiber? Is this the result of lobbying (or corruption and bribes) or predictable political forces?

At bottom, none of the screeds on this subject address the simple fact: the internet companies aren't rushing to build fiber, or lobbying to get permission to build fiber, or publicly demanding deregulation so they can build fiber. They're trying to get Comcast, Verizon, etc, to build fiber. To this day, Google positions Google Fiber as an effort to shame the ISPs, not a worthwhile business venture standing alone. What does that tell you about the monetary incentives at play?

[pdonis]

> The regulatory hurdles that Google is demanding relief from are (largely) not the result of lobbying. They're the result of the dysfunction of municipal politics.

Isn't that basically what caust1c said? It looks like the two of you are in violent agreement. :-)

[harryh]

No.

Lobbying is when big companies spend a lot of $ to try to get their way.

The dysfunctional municipal politics rayiner refers to is when politicians pander to various groups of voters to get votes.

[chris_mahan]

They don't pander to this voter to get vote.

[aidenn0]

It's simple to get AT&T, Verizon, etc. to at least promise to build fiber; start a plan to deploy municipal fiber (if that's even legal in your jurisdiction). Any time that happens fiber is "Just a year or two away, so this network isn't needed!"

[pdonis]

>Google is more profitable than Comcast and TWV combined

Reference, please? When I look up the financials, Google's quarterly gross profits are running about $9B, and Comcast's about $11B.

[mseebach]

> gross profits

You said it right there. Look further down the financials. Comcast net income is $1.8B, Google is $3.4B. Time Warner Cable (I assume that's what's meant by TMV, although their ticker is TWC) is $0.4B.

Look for net income:

https://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NASDAQ:GOOG

https://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NASDAQ:CMCSA

https://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NYSE:TWC

[pdonis]

But net income isn't a good comparison, because things like spending on R&D and infrastructure are subtracted before you get to it; they don't come out of net income, they come out of gross profits. So Google does not have significantly more funds available for those things than Comcast does; it has less.