Dayton and leaders within the region can learn from other cities and prepare for attracting gigabit carriers today. Although this is old news from back in late January 2014, AT&T responded to Google Fiber’s announcement to bring gigabit speeds over fiber to the home in Austin, Texas. AT&T is currently offering speeds of up to 300mbps, but is indicating there will be free upgrades to 1gbps still this year. Notice that AT&T is not clear on specific numbers of homes that would receive this service.
Still, if you’re one of those development customers who had a fiber to the home line running to your house that AT&T was capping at DSL speeds, you’re likely happy about the improvement. Otherwise, most people should understand that “GigaPower” remains about 90% PR and about 10% real-world deployment. In the real world, tens of millions of AT&T customers remain on pricey DSL lines with 150 GB caps — and they’re not getting upgraded anytime soon. (via AT&T Expands 1 Gbps ‘Fiber to the Press Release’ in Austin | DSLReports, ISP Information)
Both Google Fiber and AT&T are requiring cities to do a great deal of up-front work and to offer favorable policies before starting any formal builds. At the same time, both are requiring commitments from residents and city leaders to provide strong market response.
City leaders in the Dayton region should be gathering information about rights of ways, utility poles and conduits, and other construction related policies to make this process easier for a Google Fiber, an AT&T, or another committed fiber to the home provider. It is possible that some leaders are already gathering this information today.
If you are a city leader in the Dayton region and want more information on ways to make it easier to attract a fiber to the home investment in your community, please contact us at Extra Mile Fiber.
Leigh Sandy is the founder of Extra Mile Fiber and has been building and operating networks connected to the Internet since 1995.