[url=http://meincmagazine.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=31775157#p31775157:2xuc940c said:
TheMerricat[/url]":2xuc940c]
[url=http://meincmagazine.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=31775133#p31775133:2xuc940c said:
addicuss[/url]":2xuc940c]How are people not bailing from cable in droves.... I would dump comcast for anything remotely close to the same speed.
Did you not read the article a month or so back about how much effort the incumbent telco's are putting in on preventing Google the necessary access to even install?
It's hard to jump ship when there isn't even any driftwood floating by to cling to.
For sure, the incumbents are fighting Google tooth and nail but that can't account for the low penetration even in cities where Google has won a franchise. Part of this is due to the way Google has chosen to build its network when it enters a city. It isn't going in and blanketing an entire geographic region but only wiring areas where a certain percentage of households express interest. That may keep capital construction cost down for Google but it's inevitably going to dampen uptake. Imagine if you walked into a T-Mobile store to sign up for service but was told sorry, you can leave your name, contact info and a $10 preregistration deposit but we won't sign you up until 5-25% of your neighbors also wanted to get T-Mobile. When is that going to be? We can't say but we'll email you when it happens! Some people are going to be willing to wait but the vast majority are going to walk out and walk over to the Verizon/AT&T/Sprint store.
Google wants its cake and eat it too but telecom is capital intensive business. If it wants to compete, it's going to have to bite the bullet and invest in the upfront build out cost. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like Google has accepted that reality - all this talk about their interest in a 5G wireless solution that isn't even close to widespread commercial deployment indicates they'd rather search for a magic bullet to solve their problems rather than do the hard work of digging.
BTW, the same thing is happening to Verizon FIOS. They made real inroads against cable companies when they started laying fiber but when their CEO whose background was old school Bell Atlantic/NYNEX and who understood what being in the telecom biz entailed retired and was replaced by a wireless guy, they froze the network with its patchwork of availability and FIOS is stagnant and dying (the shock and surprise that greeted their recent decision to go into Boston is the exception that proves the rule). And you hear the same pie-in-the-sky talk out of Verizon - we don't need to expand FIOS because 5G will revolutionize everything (undoubtedly for $200 a month with data caps)!
