The Dayton Ohio region has two major ISPs, AT&T and Time Warner Cable. What will their reaction be when another ISP is building fiber to the home to deliver gigabit speeds to their home users? Whatever their reaction, it will be good for those home users.
When Extra Mile Fiber launched in late March, a colleague that lives in Austin Texas described what happened in his community when Google Fiber announced they plan to build fiber to the home there. He said that both AT&T and Time Warner Cable “fell all over themselves” to increase speed and offer more competitive broadband solutions. He went on to say that the United States needs more fiber to the home providers building out our communities.
An excerpt from Google Fiber Locations Spread, Major ISPs React | BGR quotes The Motley Fool’s Tyler Lacoma on the pressure of incumbent ISPs:
According to Lacoma, Comcast and Google are on a collision course that could see Google Fiber soon pop up in several key Comcast territories, such as Salt Lake City and Portland. Moreover, he believes that within the next five years, “Google may have a presence in dozens of cities and Comcast will likely be under pressure to upgrade its older lines into faster networks. This would pitch the two companies against each other more directly.”
There is really no compelling drive for incumbent carriers to build fiber to the home or change the last mile to fiber when they cannot charge the home users more money. However, competition with another last mile provider bringing fiber for costs similar to the current market pricing will generate some response.
In Dayton, the buildout of fiber to the home to neighborhoods throughout the Miami Valley will eventually generate a reaction from AT&T and Time Warner Cable to offer faster broadband and better prices.
As a whole, Dayton and its residents will win as fiber is delivered. Let’s get started.
Leigh Sandy is the founder of Extra Mile Fiber and has been building and operating networks connected to the Internet since 1995.