You're supposed to want "fiber" because it's intrinsically better and shiny and faster. People who write these pieces always assume that we should want "fiber" regardless of what it costs to build, or whether there is demand for it, or how it will improve our lives. The private sector has not found "fiber" to be profitable, so for some reason government should do it because it's inherently good. It never occurs to these "fiber" proponents that maybe "fiber" is not profitable because it's not necessary.
America's wireless operators plow billions into capital investment, because there's market demand for it. That's the future. "Fiber" inspires geek fetishes because it's fast. Non-geeks on the other hand are using their phones to watch video and don't care about the alleged goodness of "fiber". After all, if they did care, FiOS would be expanding and Google would add more Fiber cities.
Government investment in FTTH is a twenty-first century boondoggle waiting to happen. It's nowhere near my list of beneficial things government could do if it wants to start plowing billions of dollars into capital investment.
There have been numerous studies done on the economic benefits to having broadly deployed, super fast wired Internet. The results are always the same: the economic benefits are dramatically underwhelming. It's true in Romania, Netherlands, Latvia and it's just as true in Kansas City [1]. Finland has had among the fastest Internet speeds for years - they've been stuck in a decade long near-depression economically and could hardly be further away from being in a tech boom from their high average access speeds. So where is the evidence to support the societal benefit of going from good speeds, to extremely high speeds? I've seen no evidence for it over the last decade anywhere on the planet.
For now, it turns out anything beyond ~50 to ~100mbps, is practically useless for consumers in delivering a big leap in productivity or quality of life. That has been the case for a decade (despite the propaganda in favor of spending a trillion dollars so everyone can have 1gbps tomorrow). South Korea for example has had among the fastest wired Internet speeds on the planet for a long time, it hasn't turned them into the next economic juggernaut in any regard (GDP per capita lower than Puerto Rico).
People didn't know they wanted smartphones until we had them. Or more relevantly, people didn't know how slow their computers were until they got an SSD, and then suddenly mechanical storage was outrageously bad.
Fiber works the same way. There is wild potential for all kinds of new uses for computers if anyone anywhere could transmit at such tremendous data rates, in the same way solid state storage has enabled all matter of technologies through just raw throughput that couldn't be accomplished without it (mainly in the form of the highest definitions of video, or the recording thereof, which are the most common huge-bandwidth consuming tasks for consumers.
Private industry brought us smartphones. Private industry brought us SSDs. Those things are useful. I saw a smartphone and I said "oh, I can get my Gmail on it, cool." I saw SSDs and I said "I won't have to wait while my hard drive spins, cool."
No one has ever told me how my life would be better if I had massive Internet speed. I'm happy with the Internet speed I have now. That's why private investors have not been willing to roll it out, unlike with smartphones or SSDs. Government shouldn't go put up the money either.
In how many places was building copper profitable? If it wasn't for government intervention most of the world would still be waiting for copper connections.
I'm still waiting on ISPs to make good with the promised infrastructure rollouts when they received all that sweet government subsidies rather than hoarding it.
Hell there's been many times where I thought 'this is good enough' only to have my mind changed when something else improved upon it.
FiOS would be expanding if they charged a reasonable price for bottom tier service. I have a FiOS modem in my apartment and get tons of flashy junk mail urging me to sign up. No way will I ever pay for that when cable is good enough.
What is a "reasonable price?" It doesn't cost appreciably less for Verizon to wire up a 50/50 customer versus a 500/500 customer. The average FiOS customer spends about $110 per month, and even with that Verizon's wireline division only makes 2-5% operating profit each quarter.
Yes, exactly. In NYC, RCN is charging around $70/mo for 330 mbs down and something like 20 or 30 mbs/sec up. IIRC cable latency is very slightly worse than fiber. Still, Verizon charges well over $100 for more than 100 or 150 mbs down, and they are very keen on two-year contracts. No thanks.
Do you also believe that investment into physical transportation infrastructure is "unnecessary"? If not, why do you believe digital transportation infrastructure is less "necessary"?
I believe such investment with taxpayer dollars could be good, but someone needs to make the case first for why this is an effective use of taxpayer dollars. The only case I ever see is "fiber good, fiber fast," and no one makes the case for how it would make our lives better. Roads, bridges, and railroads have tangible positive impacts. What's the impact of rolling fiber to everybody's door, when many people are already served by hybrid fiber-coax and wireless networks that they find good enough?
Even a case for targeted rural broadband investment would be good, if rural areas lack broadband. Even then, the discussion should be about bringing those areas broadband, not bringing them FTTH. Fiber assumes a single solution to any possible problem...I guess because fiber, oh, that sounds cool.
America's wireless operators plow billions into capital investment, because there's market demand for it. That's the future. "Fiber" inspires geek fetishes because it's fast. Non-geeks on the other hand are using their phones to watch video and don't care about the alleged goodness of "fiber". After all, if they did care, FiOS would be expanding and Google would add more Fiber cities.
Government investment in FTTH is a twenty-first century boondoggle waiting to happen. It's nowhere near my list of beneficial things government could do if it wants to start plowing billions of dollars into capital investment.