Google's Demands of Cities Are The Much Lesser of Two Evils

As this site has reported on several occasions, residents in Kansas City have been dealing with the usual assortment of problems caused by larger fiber deployments including cut cables, lands being torn into and utility cabinets placed in the middle of sidewalks.

Cities lately been highlighting Google Fiber construction complaints as significant negatives -- yet cities are still begging Google to bring their services to their region. San Antonio has been doing everything possible to get Google Fiber to their city. Baltimore spent an entire year begging Google Fiber to service their city. Multiple cities in Arizona (where I lived at the time) were jumping for joy at the thought of getting Google Fiber. Georgia has several cities with citizens demanding Google Fiber. So, we have cities begging for Google Fiber in the deep South, out West, on the East Coast, in the Midwest.

Why?

Because in today’s world where just about every issue is divided by political sides, we can all agree on one thing: Our Internet and cable services are over-priced and under-perform. Again, there is a reason that Internet and cable companies continue to own last place or near last place in just about every customer service ranking.

In the Seattle Times, Brian Dudley (who I do like to read) mentions that Seattle should look towards Portland to see how they deal with Google and their list of demands. In the article, he states that CenturyLink and other broadband providers will also want special treatment that is afforded to Google:

quote: Google doesn’t want to abide by current restrictions on the placement of metal utility cabinets on parking strips in front of people’s homes, according to Oregonian reports. That’s not all. Google is going further and requesting that Portland give the company swaths of public property to place garage-size “network huts” — with a 12- by 28-foot base — to support its project.

First, I agree that the utility cabinets are ugly. But as this site has reported for years, cities have been dealing with cabinets and huts from companies like AT&T and Comcast for some time now. This is not new. It's simply the price of new builds. We just don't see it often as Verizon's FiOS build, long finished, was the largest in recent memory.

Mr. Dudley goes on to say that the type of access that Google wants from cities is unprecedented. I do not argue with that. But let’s not act like CenturyLink and others are not utterly catered to by the cities that they service. Recently, Seattle eliminated a law that required phone companies (CenturyLink) to contact homeowners before they installed the cabinets on public easements.

Additionally, why should Seattle give in to CenturyLink? Why treat current providers like CenturyLink the same as Google when CenturyLink has a clear history that involves sticking with current or past technology? We saw that when Seattle wanted their own fiber network due to Qwest (now CenturyLink) telling residents that they would upgrade when customers were ready while the customers demanded faster speeds.

Considering the FCC has found that CenturyLink is quite the under-performer, it shouldn’t shock anyone that recently the State of Washington is still trying to get actual answers about the 911 system outage that occurred with CenturyLink lines.

So, Portland will be conceding to Google quite a lot. In fact, maybe more so than any previous city. It's important to always remember however that there is a reason that cities like Portland are this desperate to get solid Internet and cable at a semi-reasonable price. Total disdain toward uncooperative existing ISPs has them willing to go to the ends of the earth for a company to provide solid service without charging them an arm and a leg.

Then again, CenturyLink has specifically told us that we don’t need Google Fiber. Wait, can we find a state where one city is not on their knees begging for Google Fiber to come to them? It must be a coincidence that countless companies are now following a trail blazed by Google Fiber, with countless locations all-but handing them the keys to the city in exchange for faster, better, and cheaper broadband.

Ain't competition great?