Google Fiber's Medin: Net neutrality doesn't promote broadband competition

Google Fiber may be an ardent supporter of the Federal Communications Commission's new network neutrality rules, but Milo Medin, vice president for access services at Google Fiber, says that the order does not address the issue of what he calls "bandwidth abundance." Medin said that the net neutrality rules still have yet to open up new choices in terms of pricing, speeds or alternative providers to get broadband service. "No consumers are seeing higher speeds than before the order was passed; no consumers are paying less for their Internet services than what they were paying for; no consumers are seeing higher volume caps that they had before; and no consumers have additional choice of providers than they had before," Medin said. "The openness of the Internet may have been preserved, which is really important, but the Internet options consumers can choose from have not changed and will not change because of what was passed in that order."

Medin added that while "protecting the openness of the Internet is vital, it does not address the underlying core problem of scarcity, which is the lack of competition." "If a service provider is not going to lose customers to another because they are not delivering good service, why should the shareholders of that company want the management team of that company to spend a nickel more on better systems or better training," Medin said. "Without a real choice, there's no economic incentive to invest in a better service." Medin said that regulation isn't going to solve the broadband availability problem. "Some would argue that regulation is the answer, but I have never seen a company deliver better service because a federal rule existed that said they must," Medin said. "What we do need to do is build new networks and deliver better and faster services while offering consumers new choice that replaces bandwidth scarcity with bandwidth abundance."