As first reported by the Kansas City Star, several cable companies have started bumping up their internet speeds for customers, free of charge, in order to better compete with Google Fiber in Kansas City. Both Comcast and Time Warner announced changes for their internet packages.
We thought we understood the net neutrality argument: the need to ensure that ISPs like the big cable companies don’t extort cash from services like Netflix to provide them with greater bandwidth than companies who don’t pay the toll.
But no, according to Time Warner, we’ve got this backward: it’s popular websites like Google who could do the extorting, reports National Journal.
In a filing to the FCC, Time Warner Cable claimed that the controversy over Internet providers potentially charging websites for access to special “fast lanes” is a “red herring.” The real danger, the cable company claimed, is that Google or Netflix could demand payments from Internet providers. Customers expect access to the most popular websites, and an Internet provider may have little choice but to pay up.
The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade association representing all the major cable companies, backed this view, saying that it’s companies like “Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook” that we should be concerned about. It is, of course, merely coincidence that these are the mostly the same companies who wrote a joint letter to the FCC in support of net neutrality.
Google is on record as saying that there is no conflict between co-location – which enables faster delivery of content to consumers – and net neutrality.
We give companies like Netflix and Akamai free access to space and power in our facilities and they provide their own content servers. We don’t make money from peering or colocation; since people usually only stream one video at a time, video traffic doesn’t bog down or change the way we manage our network in any meaningful way — so why not help enable it?
The FCC has, understandably, rejected Time Warner’s claim, stating that “such conduct is beyond the scope of this proceeding.”
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Google announced on the Google Fiber blog today that it will launch the “100 times faster than broadband” Internet service on July 26 in Kansas City. We do not know a lot about what to expect, but a Google Fiber-branded set-top box of sorts did make its way through the Federal Communications Commission in June. We will keep you posted later this month when Google reveals more about its Google Fiber plans for Kansas. Until then, you can sign up to get the latest announcements:
Google Fiber is coming to to Kansas City on July 26. We appreciate your help and support, and we feel privileged to be part of the Kansas City community. For updates on our project, please sign up for our mailing list and look out for an announcement on July 26 at http://google.com/fiber.
Google is looking into offering a paid cable subscription model WSJ reported today. The move would put Google at competition with cable providers, and bring new technology to the Google TV. In September, Google brought on former cable-TV executive, Jeremy Stern, to look into adding the subscription model to the platform.
The report says that Google has already begun talking to Walt Disney, Time Warner, and Discovery Communications — but no final decisions have been made. Besides Google TV, Google also has the opportunity to incorporate cable streaming into YouTube, but that is not on the table right now says the report. Google’s fiber network would help with the delivery of the content, which is expected to roll out in Kansas in 2012. We look forward to seeing this story develop.
