Google says: Net Neutrality ensures right to equally slow content

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.

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About Mark Milliman

Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
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