AT&T and Google’s plans to give Austin a gigabit is an experiment. Is it a good one?

AT&T executives will meet with Austin and Texas officials seeking the same concessions that Google is getting in order to build out its gigabit network. As someone who has followed telecom in Austin, and in Texas, this mostly means the ability to cherry pick where it will deploy its gigabit network. And that points to both the upside and downside of Google’s influence.

Google has changed the economics of deploying fiber in part by its strategy of getting people to sign up in advance and then choosing to deploy where demand was greatest. This eliminates the need to pass homes that might not sign up for fiber and also lets Google roll out service to neighborhoods in bulk. Well, AT&T wants to do something similar. AT&T would like to follow a strategy where communities help drive demand for the gigabit service, Larry Solomon, an AT&T spokesman, said. When I asked if that means aggregating demand and then serving those communities he said that was something AT&T was interested in. But there’s a big downside to this plan for the end user and the cities. Having both Google and AT&T trying to convince customers to sign up for their respective gigabit service effectively splits the vote. Solomon didn’t comment on that possibility, but did say AT&T wants to offer competitive pricing and build offers around wireless and other AT&T products. Google hasn’t announced pricing for its services in Austin yet, but in Kansas City a gigabit costs $70 a month and a gigabit plus TV costs $120 per month. If AT&T gets its way with city and state officials and goes head to head with Google in the neighborhoods, we’re looking at what could become — at best — a network buildout in areas where people own their own homes (Google had to develop special programs for attracting landlords to commit, which made Google Fiber in low-income areas a tougher sell) and already know they want a gigabit. At worst, neighbors who are split between Google or AT&T will not meet the threshold to get a buildout, and no one gets a gig.

And frankly, it’s dumb that both AT&T and Google might spent dollars building out fiber to the home in the same neighborhoods. Will streets get torn up twice? Will your broadband provider be determined for the life of your home based on the decisions that occur during a few pre-determined fiber sign-up periods?