The Daily Item, Feb. 9, 2015
Andrew Jay Schwartzman gives you just one thing you might have missed.
Google's aggressive effort to deploy its own fiber networks one of the best, and most
important, developments in U.S. telcom policy. It has demonstrated that there is, or at
least will be, consumer demand for gigabit speeds. ISPs like AT&T and Time Warner
Cable have responded to the competitive pressure by amping up their own high speed
offerings. However, as this analysis shows, the introduction of Google Fiber has had
some glitches. Google's decision to prioritize deployment in neighborhoods based on
demonstrated demand remains controversial. Google's initial outreach to minority
communities was deficient in the eyes of some local leaders. Perhaps most importantly,
even though Google was offering free (sort of) lower end service, there have been several
obstacles to hooking up low-income users.
Lessons From Google's First Rollout of Google Fiber
In Kansas City startups are growing, cable companies are catching up, but the digital
divide is as wide as ever.
Three summers ago, it was everywhere: An old-fashioned ice cream truck with peppy,
electronic music blaring from its speakers. Covered with rainbow-hued rabbits, the truck
wound through low-income neighborhoods of Kansas City, offering two premium
products: KC favorite Shatto Ice Cream Sammiches, which usually go for $3.99 each,
and Google Fiber, a product the city is newly famous for.
Kansas City had the first Google "fiberhoods" to go live, and those high-speed
neighborhoods now sit in the middle of a city that, like many, is working to change itself
from a blue-collar manufacturing depot to a digital business destination. If the cities just
inducted into Fiber-dom-Google recently announced that Atlanta, Charlotte, RaleighDurham, and Nashville are next-want to know what's in store, they should look to the
west.
Because today in Kansas City, Google Fiber is a lot like a $4 ice cream sandwich on a
hot day-a welcome treat for people with disposable income, but still out of reach for
others.
KC was a new challenge for the Mountain View-based search giant. Before its fiber
product, Google never had to initiate a traditional street marketing campaign. In July
2012, a team of 60 Google employees with clipboards worked 80-hour weeks in a sixweek blitz, chatting with neighborhood associations, going to town hall meetings and
church meetups to spread the promise of Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. In
order for a neighborhood to have access to the service, 5% to 25% of its residents had to
sign up in advance to qualify as a fiberhood. (That fluctuation in percentage is driven
mostly by population density, but also includes other factors affecting the cost of building
fiber networks. In dispersed, suburban areas, for example, more people need to sign up.)