As telecoms trade groups file briefs in Federal courts, objecting to the FCC’s classification of ISPs at “common carriers,” (as they did with the railroads, long ago, when Rockefeller was hustling the lines to screw his competitors), Google pointed out that all Net Neutrality means is the right for all content to be served equally slowly.
Milo Medin, a VP at Google Fiber, highlighted some of the ways in which policy could improve access to abundant broadband. His comments were reported on Fierce Telecom.
Some key points from Medin’s comments:
- Competition improves service. Customer service from ISPs uniformly sucks, and only competition will improve it. Competition has been stymied, however, by lack of access to the rights-of-way that would make it easier for ISP to string fiber. As Susan Crawford has documented, in Stockholm, they didn’t build a public internet service, they just build a public right of way for providers to use to get fiber to the home.
- Common carrier classification improves competitive access. By classifying ISPs as common carriers, the FCC is now letting other ISPs get on telephone poles, which is a big step.
- Missed opportunity: roads. Fiber conduit should be laid, whether it’s going to be used then and there or not, any time a federally funded road is built or rebuilt. This is called a “dig once” policy and it has been discussed in D.C. since 2011, but it hasn’t moved.
- Missed opportunity: drains. Many cities are also in the middle of updating sewage and stormwater systems right now. The EPA is not letting them lay conduit as they fix the sewers (for reasons that are unclear — the story cites an obscure rule) so it’s another chance to save money on laying conduit lost.
