April 2014

A Google Fiber job posting in New York City has a bunch of tech news sites excited about the prospect of Google bringing its fiber Internet service to the Big Apple.

But Google says there are no such plans.

"We're entirely focused on building out our networks in Kansas City, Austin, and Provo, and on exploring the possibility of bringing Fiber to the 34 locations we announced in February," a Google spokesperson told Ars. Google recently announced that it chose nine metro areas around the country for potential Fiber deployments.

The closest ones to New York City are Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia.

New York City already has fiber in the form of Verizon FiOS, and Google has focused mostly on underserved areas where municipal officials are willing to provide expedited permitting and other perks. There are still millions of Americans without broadband, so there are plenty of areas where Google Fiber is needed.

The rapid emergence of over-the-top (OTT) and Internet TV alternatives, as well as cloud services, has posed stiff challenges for US pay-TV service providers in recent years.

Having experienced a 0.58% decline in subscriber numbers in 2013, the pay-TV subscriber base will grow in 2014, albeit at a tepid pace, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. Pay-TV subscriber numbers will increase 0.14% in 2014, Strategy Analytics forecasts in its “North America Digital Television Forecast: 1Q 2014.” IPTV “will be the bright spot” in the pay-TV market, with subscriptions rising 17.5% year-over-year. The growth will continue, the market research company continues, with US pay-TV’s IPTV subscriber numbers increasing at an 8.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019.

The two leading US IPTV providers -- AT&T and Verizon -- “are approaching the future with different strategies, but both are focused on driving advanced services and multiplay bundles with digital television and high-speed Internet at the core of their packages,” Strategy Analytics notes. Turning to cable pay-TV providers, the rollout of the Xfinity X1 platform has reversed a downtrend in Comcast’s subscriber base.

[Commentary] Humility is not a Washington strong suit, and so the Senate Commerce Committee questioned Comcast and Time Warner Cable, often skeptically, over the former’s proposed $45 billion acquisition of the latter.

Lawmakers want US broadband to be successful -- but not too successful. They want ever expanding networks of ever greater capability but don’t want the firms that build these expensive networks to prosper. They want lower prices for consumers but don’t like the economies of scale that can help deliver such value. Because Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not operate in the same geographic markets today, there will be no reduction in broadband provider competition.

But even that question misses the larger point, which is that this is a market where competitive products and technological innovations spring up unexpectedly, often overlap, and show no signs of stopping. Cable firms compete against satellite firms (DirectTV and Dish), telecommunications firms (Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse), and broadcast TV, with possible new challengers like Aereo. In broadband Internet services, the cable firms compete with the telecom, satellite, and wireless companies. For services like voice, they compete with the telecom and mobile firms, and also with applications like Skype and WhatsApp. Web content from Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and many others, meanwhile, challenges the traditional cable TV model. Even traditional cable channels like HBO and ESPN are moving toward the Web.

We could also add the dimension of “interconnection” to the equation. Although cable gets only a tiny amount of revenue from interconnection deals, such as the recent Comcast-Netflix hook up, the DOJ and FCC are likely to scrutinize this arena.

Each of these dimensions overlaps with the others and is itself constantly shifting. The cable firms are adapting to all these changes, but no one knows what any part, or the whole, will look like just months from now. So it’s difficult to make the case that our general hands-off attitude toward regulation of the Net isn’t bearing fruit. And it’s unlikely that a merger of two entities who don’t compete will change the upward trajectory of the digital economy.

[Swanson is president of Entropy Economics]

[Commentary] Employers can get into legal trouble if they ask interviewees about their religion, sexual preference, or political affiliation. Yet they can use social media to filter out job applicants based on their beliefs, looks, and habits.

Laws forbid lenders from discriminating on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality. Yet they can refuse to give a loan to people whose Facebook friends have bad payment histories, if their work histories on LinkedIn don’t match their bios on Facebook, or if a computer algorithm judges them to be socially undesirable. These regulatory gaps exist because laws have not kept up with advances in technology.

The gaps are getting wider as technology advances ever more rapidly. And it’s not just in employment and lending -- the same is happening in every domain that technology touches. There is a public outcry today -- as there should be -- about National Security Agency surveillance, but the breadth of that surveillance pales in comparison to the data that Google, Apple, Facebook, and legions of app developers are collecting. Our smartphones track our movements and habits. Our Web searches reveal our thoughts. With the wearable devices and medical sensors that are being connected to our smartphones, information about our physiology and health is also coming into the public domain. Where do we draw the line on what is legal -- and ethical?

[Wadhwa is a fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University]