Phillip “Reality Check” Dampier

The city of Los Angeles believes if they ask for it, they will get it – gigabit fiber broadband, that is. It is too bad we have to run a reality check.

In December, the city plans to issue an ambitious Request for Proposals (RFP) inviting at least one private company to run fiber service to all 3.5 million residents (and businesses and public buildings) within the city limits. The idea, which won unanimous support from the City Council, does not exactly come with many risks for the city. The Council acknowledges the project is likely to cost up to $5 billion (we suspect more), and the city has made it clear it won’t be contributing a penny.

“The city is going into it and writing the agreement, basically saying, ‘we have no additional funding for this effort.’ We’re requiring the vendors that respond to pay for the city resources needed to expedite any permitting and inspection associated with laying their fiber,” Los Angeles IT Agency general manager Steve Reneker told Ars Technica. “If they’re not willing to do that, our City Council may consider a general fund transfer to reimburse those departments, but we’re going in with the assumption that the vendor is going to absorb those up-front costs to make sure they can do their buildout in a timely fashion.”

That is wishful thinking.

The winning vendor is not just on the hook for the cost of building the network. It also has to comply with a city requirement to give away basic 2-5Mbps broadband service, possibly recouping the lost revenue with advertising. Customers wanting faster access will pay for it. Although not required to offer phone or television service, Reneker anticipates the winning vendor will offer both to earn more revenue to pay off construction costs.

Greater Los Angeles is now served by a mix of AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Cox, and Charter. Only Verizon has a history of providing a significant fiber optic broadband service, but it has suspended further expansion of its network. AT&T is the dominant landline provider, but considers its U-verse fiber-to-the-neighborhood design adequate for southern California. It seems unlikely any incumbent provider is likely to seriously contemplate such an expensive fiber project, especially because the city requires the winner to build an open access network that competitors can also use. Cable operators have also stated repeatedly that their existing infrastructure is more than adequate. The question providers are likely to ask is, “why do we need to partner with the City Council to build a fiber network we could build ourselves, on our own terms, that we ultimately own and control?”

The city can offer some incentives to attract an outsider, such as promising a lucrative contract to manage the city government’s telecom needs. It can also ease bureaucratic red tape that often stalls big city infrastructure projects. But Los Angeles is not exactly prime territory for a fiber build. Its notorious sprawling boundaries encompass 469 square miles, with many residents and businesses in free-standing buildings, not cheaper to serve multi-dwelling units.

Google avoided California for its fiber project reportedly because of environmental law and bureaucracy concerns. Even Google cherry-picks neighborhoods where it will deploy its fiber project in Austin, Provo, and Kansas City. The Los Angeles RFP will likely require universal coverage for the fiber network, although it will probably allow a lengthy amount of time for construction.

The City Council’s RFP comes close to promising Gigabit Fiber-to-the-Press Release.

Private providers govern their expansion efforts by an increasingly stiff formula to recover construction costs by measuring potential Return On Investment (ROI), which basically means when a company can expect to earn back the amount initially invested. Spending $5 billion on a fiber network that could actually cut expected Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) with a free broadband offer is going to raise eyebrows. Convincing investors to chip in on a fiber network “open to competitors” will also elicit a lot of frowning faces.

Wall Street analysts rolled their eyes when Verizon rolled out FiOS. It was “too expensive” and provided too few avenues for a quick ROI. ‘Verizon built a Lamborghini Aventador fiber network when a Honda Accord would have done just fine in the absence of fierce competition,’ analysts complained. Why spend all this money on fiber when fat profits were waiting to be harvested from high-ARPU wireless service? Verizon got the message and ceased expansion. AT&T never walked that Wall Street plank in the first place, delivering a less capable Chevrolet Spark network known as U-verse.

The city is likely to be disappointed with the proposals they receive, in much the same way local governments begging for competition from other cable companies get no positive results. The economics and expectations of today’s private broadband market makes it extremely unlikely an incumbent provider is going to rock a boat that has delivered comfortable broadband profits with a minimum of investment.

Breaking the broadband duopoly of high prices for slow service is only likely in the private sector if deep-pocketed revolutionaries like Google can self-finance game-changing projects. Los Angeles will likely have to sweeten its invitation to attract interest from players serious enough to spend $5 billion. It will likely have to invest some money of its own in a public-private partnership. Perhaps an even better idea is to take control of the city’s broadband destiny more directly with a community project administered by a qualified broadband authority with proven experience in the telecom business.

There is no reason private companies cannot be active participants in whatever project is ultimately built, but these companies are not charities and if their financial backers don’t see a pathway to profit running fiber rings around LA today, an RFP to build a fiber network with city strings-attached isn’t likely to garner serious interest tomorrow.

The next name of Time Warner Cable?

Charter Communications is laying the foundation for a leveraged buyout of Time Warner Cable before the end of the year in a deal that could leave Time Warner Cable’s broadband customers with Charter’s usage caps.

Reuters reported discussions between the two companies grew more serious after last week’s revelation a poor third quarter left TWC with 308,000 fewer subscribers.

Charter is relying on guidance from Goldman Sachs to structure a financing deal likely to leave Charter in considerable debt. Charter Communications emerged from bankruptcy in 2009 and is the country’s tenth largest cable operator, estimated to be worth about $13 billion. Time Warner Cable is the second largest cable operator and is worth more than $34 billion.

The disparity between the two companies has kept Time Warner Cable resistant to a deal with Charter, stating it would not be beneficial to shareholders. Charter executives hope to eventually win shareholder support for a buyout stressing the significant cost savings possible from a combined operation, particularly for cable programming.

The deal would likely end Time Warner Cable as a brand and leave Charter Communications CEO Thomas Rutledge in charge of a much larger cable company. Pricing and packaging decisions are usually made by the buyer, which could bring faster broadband speeds to Time Warner customers, but also usage caps already in place at Charter.

John Malone’s War on Customers

Malone

Cable billionaire John Malone, former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) — America’s largest cable operator in the 1980s — believes consolidation is critical to the future of a cable business facing competition from phone companies and cord cutting. Malone’s Liberty Media, which now holds a 25% stake in Charter, is currently buying and consolidating cable operators in Europe. Malone’s post-consolidation vision calls for only two or three cable operators in the United States.

Malone’s quest for consolidation is nothing new.

Under his leadership, TCI eventually became the country’s biggest cable operator, but one often accused of poor service and high prices. More than a decade of complaints from customers eventually attracted the attention of the U.S. Congress, which sought to rein in the industry with the 1992 Cable Act — legislation that lightly regulated rental fees for equipment and the price of the company’s most-basic television tier.

Despite the fact consumer advocates didn’t win stronger consumer protection regulations, TCI was still incensed it faced a new regulatory environment that left its hands tied. One executive at a TCI subsidiary advocated retaliation with broad rate increases for unregulated services to make up any losses from mandated rate cuts.

A 1993 internal TCI memo obtained by the Washington Post instructed TCI system managers and division vice presidents to increase prices charged for customer service calls and add new fees for common installation services the company used to offer for free. TCI’s Barry Marshall recommended charging for as many “transaction” services as possible — like hooking up VCR’s, running cable wire, and programming remote controls for confused customers.

“We have to have discipline,” Marshall wrote. “We cannot be dissuaded from the [new] charges simply because customers object. It will take awhile, but they’ll get used to it. The best news of all is we can blame it on re-regulation and the government now. Let’s take advantage of it!”

Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) was the nation’s largest cable operator. Later known as AT&T Cable, the company was eventually sold to Comcast.

The FCC’s interim chairman at the time — James Quello, charged with monitoring the cable industry, was not amused.

“It typifies the attitude of cable companies engaging in creative pricing and rate increases to evade the intent of Congress and the FCC,” Quello said. “There is little doubt that the cable industry has an economic stake in discrediting the congressional act they vehemently and unsuccessfully opposed.”

Marshall defended his internal memo, although admitted it was inartfully written and was not intended for the public. Revelation of a damaging memo like this would normally lead to a quiet resignation by the offending author, but not at John Malone’s TCI, a company with a reputation for being difficult.

Mark Robichaux’s 2005 book, Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business, was even less charitable.

Robichaux describes Malone as a “complicated hero,” at least for investors for whom he was willing to ignore banking rules and creatively interpret tax law. Robichaux wrote Malone’s idea of customer service was to ‘charge as much as you can, but spend as little as you can get away with.’

TCI’s top priority was to keep up the cable business as an “insular cartel.” The predictable result included accusations of “shoddy service” customers were forced to take or leave. In the handful of markets where TCI faced another cable competitor, TCI ruthlessly slashed prices to levels some would describe as “predatory,” only to rescind them the moment the competitor was gone. TCI’s intolerance for competition usually meant mounting pressure on competitors to sell their system to TCI (sometimes at an astronomical price) or face a certain slow death from unsustainable price cuts.

Among Malone’s most-trusted friends: junk bond financier Michael Milken and Leo Hindery, former CEO of Global Crossing.

Congressman Albert Gore, Jr., later vice-president during the Clinton Administration, was probably Malone’s fiercest critic in Washington. Gore’s office was swamped with complaints from his Tennessee constituents upset over TCI’s constant rate increases and anti-competitive behavior.

The cable industry’s biggest competitor in the 1980s-1990s was a TVRO 6-12 foot diameter home satellite system.

Gore was especially unhappy that TCI’s grip extended even to its biggest competitor — satellite television.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, cable operators made life increasingly difficult for home satellite dish owners, many in rural areas unserved by cable television. But things were worse for home dish owners that walked away from TCI and began watching satellite television instead. To protect against cord-cutting, the cable industry demanded encryption of all basic and premium cable channels delivered via satellite. It was not hard to convince programmers to scramble — most cable networks in the 1980s were part-owned by the cable industry itself.

To make matters worse, unlike cable systems that only leased set-top boxes to customers, home dish owners had to buy combination receiver-descrambler equipment outright, starting at $500. Just a few years later, the industry pressured programmers to switch to a slightly different encryption system — one that required home dish owners replace their expensive set-top box with a different decoder module available only for sale.

Gore was further incensed to learn TCI often insisted home dish owners living within a TCI service area buy their satellite-delivered programming direct from the cable company. Customers hoping to leave cable for good found themselves still being billed by TCI.

Sometimes the rhetoric against TCI and Malone got personal.

”He called me Darth Vader and the leader of the cable Cosa Nostra,” Malone said of Gore. “You can’t win a pissing contest with a skunk, so there’s no point in getting involved in that kind of rhetoric.”

“There’s a joke going around Washington,” John Tinker, a New York-based Morgan Stanley & Company investment banker who specializes in cable television said of Malone back in 1990. “If you have a gun with two bullets, and you have Abu Nidal, Saddam Hussein and John Malone in a room, who would you shoot? The answer is John Malone — twice, to make sure he’s dead.”

TCI itself was a four letter word in the many small communities that endured the cable company’s insufferable service, outdated equipment, and constant rate “adjustments.”

The New York Times reported John Malone’s TCI had a reputation for treating customers with “utter disdain,” and provided examples:

• In 1973, rate negotiations stalled with local regulators in Vail, Colo., the local TCI system shut off all programming for a weekend and ran nothing but the names and home phone numbers of the mayor and city manager. The harried local government gave in.
• In 1981, TCI withheld fees and vowed to go completely dark in Jefferson City, Mo., if the city failed to renew its franchise, while a TCI employee — “who turned out to have a psychological problem,” said Malone — threatened harm to the city’s media consultant. Again, a beleaguered local government renewed the franchise — although in a subsequent lawsuit, TCI was fined $10.8 million in actual damages and $25 million in punitive damages.
• In 1983, the small city of Kearney, Neb., also dissatisfied with poor service and rising rates, tried to give Malone some competition in the form of a rival system built by the regional telephone company. TCI slashed fees and added channels until the enemy was driven from the field.

“That’s the dark side, if you will, of TCI,” said Richard J. MacDonald, a media analyst with New York-based MacDonald Grippo Riely.

By mid-1989, Malone’s frenzied effort to consolidate the cable industry resulted in him presiding over 482 merger/buyout deals, on average one every two weeks. Among the legacy cable companies that no longer existed after TCI’s takeover crew arrived: Heritage Communications, United Artists Communications and Storer Communications.

To cover the debt-laden deals, Malone simply raised cable rates and shopped for easy credit. Bidding with others’ money, the per-subscriber price of cable systems shot up from $998 in 1983 to an astronomical $2,328 in 1989.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found deregulating the cable industry cost customers through rate hikes averaging 43 percent. In Denver, TCI raised rates more than 70% between 1986 and 1989.

Malone’s attempt to finance a leveraged, debt-heavy buyout of Time Warner Cable seems to show his business philosophy has not changed much.

Next generation cable or a spray-on solution to a really bad quarter?

Time Warner Cable has a plan for multi-gigabit broadband speeds over a state of the art network that, for the first time, might include fiber to the home service.

TWC Max is Time Warner Cable’s code name for selected markets where customers will be given first class treatment and provided what incoming CEO Rob Marcus calls “best-in-class reliability and service.”

Marcus made it clear in a conference call to investors this morning that TWC Max will only be available in specially chosen markets, most likely those facing intense competition from Google Fiber (Austin, Kansas City), Verizon FiOS (New York, parts of Dallas, etc.) or upgraded AT&T U-verse.

TWC Max might also be offered in cities where community-owned fiber-to-the-home providers best TWC’s broadband speeds and prices. North Carolina, in particular, would be a logical choice as Time Warner Cable recently acquired DukeNet, a major commercial fiber broadband provider headquarted in Charlotte, also a major hub for Time Warner Cable’s data services. Wilson, Salisbury, Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius are all served by publicly-owned broadband providers.

Beginning next year and over the next several years, those chosen will get major broadband speed upgrades — up to several gigabits, totally new customer equipment, and an all-digital experience.

“We will replace modems with state-of-the-art DOCSIS 3 modems and advanced wireless gateways, so we can meaningfully increase broadband speeds,” said Marcus. “And by the way, we’re not talking about tweaks here but rather quantum changes to our speed tiers. We’ll also replace standard definition and older HD set-top boxes and roll out new DVRs, better user interfaces and more advanced versions of our TWC TV apps to fundamentally improve the video experience.”

If the competition is DSL, you may have a really long wait to be considered a TWC Max city.

Marcus added that in some mixed business/residential areas, fiber to the home service is increasingly possible because of declining costs and pre-existing fiber infrastructure already serving commercial customers and cell towers.

But Marcus was quick to stress that his philosophy about upgrades is to provide them in focused markets, not share them with every city where Time Warner Cable provides service.

“The goal here is, really, to fundamentally change the customer experience in a given market, said Marcus. “So rather than spread our efforts like peanut butter throughout the footprint, I’m very anxious to deliver a complete experience.”

“That means not only going all-digital but also ensuring that we have state-of-the-art modems in every customer’s home, ensuring that they have the best video and that the overall experience is really optimal,” Marcus added.

“So we’re going to concentrate market by market rather than take individual components and run them through the entire footprint.”

So what are the chances your city will be designated a TWC Max target area?

After reviewing the transcript for this morning’s conference call,  Stop the Cap! has created this handy-dandy, simple to use guide:

• If your community has or was chosen for Google Fiber: A VIRTUAL CERTAINTY!
• If your community is served by Verizon FiOS or AT&T’s Next Generation U-verse: EXCELLENT
• If your community has a fiber to the home provider competing with Time Warner Cable: VERY GOOD
• If your community is served by copper-based DSL from the phone company with no prospect of getting U-verse or FiOS: WHEN PIGS FLY!

More drive-by reporting on Comcast’s usage caps.

When the media covers Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing, it is often much easier to take the provider’s word for it instead of actually investigating whether subscribers actually need their Internet usage limited.

Comcast’s planned reintroduction of its usage caps on South Carolina customers begins Friday. Instead of the now-retired 250GB limit, Comcast is graciously throwing another 50GB of usage allowance to customers, five years after defining 250GB as more than generous.

The Post & Courier never bothered to investigate if Comcast’s new 300GB usage cap was warranted or if Charleston-area customers wanted it. It was so much easier to just print Comcast’s point of view and throw in a quote or two from an industry analyst.

In fact, the reporter even tried to suggest the Internet Overcharging scheme was an improvement for customers.

The newspaper reported Comcast was the first large Internet provider in the region to allow customers to pay even more for broadband service by extending their allowance in 50GB increments at $10 a pop. (Actually, AT&T beat Comcast to the bank on that idea, but has avoided dropping that hammer on customers who already have to be persuaded to switch to AT&T U-verse broadband that tops out at around 24Mbps for most customers.)

Since 2008, the company’s monthly limit has been capped at 250 GB per household. When customers exceeded that threshold, Comcast didn’t have a firm mechanism for bringing them back in line, other than to issue warnings or threaten to cut off service.

“People didn’t like that static cap. They felt that if they wanted to extend their usage, then they should be allowed to do that,” said Charlie Douglas, a senior director with Comcast.

Charleston is the latest in a series of trial markets the cable giant has used to test the new Internet usage policy in the past year. As with any test period, the company can modify or discontinue the plan at any time.

During the trial period in Charleston, customers will get an extra 50 GB of monthly data than they’re used to having. If they exceed 300 GB, they can pay for more.

“300 GB is well beyond what any typical household is ever going to consume in a month,” Douglas said. “In all of the other trial markets with this (limit), it really doesn’t impact the overwhelming super-majority of customers.”

The average Internet user with Comcast service uses about 16 to 18 GB of data per month, Douglas said.

Customers who use less than five GB per month will start seeing a $5 discount on their bills.

“We think this approach is fair because we’re giving consumers who want to use more data a way to do so, and for consumers who use less, they can pay less,” Douglas said.

Data caps are designed to stop content piracy?

The Charleston reporter asserts, without any evidence, “data-capping is a trend many Internet service providers are expected to follow in the next few years as the industry aims to reduce network congestion and to find safeguards against online piracy.”

Suggesting data caps are about piracy immediately rings alarm bells. Comcast and other Internet Service Providers fought long and hard against being held accountable for their customers’ actions. The industry wants nothing to do with monitoring online activities lest the government hold them accountable for not actively stopping criminal activity.

“It’s not about piracy, per se,” said Douglas. “We don’t look at what people are doing. The purpose is really a matter of fairness. If people are using a disproportionate amount of data, then they should pay more.”

Comcast’s concern for fairness and disproportionate behavior does not extend to the rapacious pricing and enormous profit it earns selling broadband, flat rate or not.

MIT Technology Review’s David Talbot found “Time Warner Cable and Comcast are already making a 97 percent margin on their ‘almost comically profitable’ Internet services.” That figure was repeated by Craig Moffett, one of the most enthusiastic, well-respected cable industry analysts. That percentage refers to “gross margin,” which is effectively gravy on largely paid off cable plant/infrastructure that last saw a major wholesale upgrade in the 1990s to accommodate the advent of digital cable television and the 500-channel universe. Broadband was introduced in the late 1990s as a cheap-to-deploy but highly profitable, unregulated ancillary service.

How things have changed.

Just follow the money….

Customers used to being gouged for cable television are now willing to say goodbye to Comcast’s television package in growing numbers. Today’s must-have service is broadband and Comcast has a high-priced plan for you! But earning up to 97 percent profit from $50+ broadband isn’t enough.

A 300GB limit isn’t designed to control congestion either. In fact, had she investigated that claim, she would have discovered the cable industry itself disavowed that notion earlier this year.

In fact, it’s all about the money.

Michael Powell, the head of the cable industry’s top lobbying group admitted the theory that data caps are designed to control network congestion was wrong.

“Our principal purpose is how to fairly monetize a high fixed cost,” said Powell.

Powell mentioned costs like digging up streets, laying cable and operational expenses. Except the cable industry long ago stopped aggressive buildouts and now maintains a tight Return On Investment formula that keeps cable broadband out of rural areas indefinitely. Operational expenses for broadband have also declined, despite increases in traffic and the number of customers subscribing.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Internet v. Cable 8-20-10.flv[/flv]

Don’t take our word for it. Consider the views of Suddenlink Cable CEO Jerry Kent, interviewed in 2010 on CNBC. (8 minutes)

“I think one of the things people don’t realize [relates to] the question of capital intensity and having to keep spending to keep up with capacity,” said Suddenlink CEO Jerry Kent. “Those days are basically over, and you are seeing significant free cash flow generated from the cable operators as our capital expenditures continue to come down.”

Unfortunately, Charleston residents don’t have the benefit of reporting that takes a skeptical view of a company press release and the spokesperson readily willing to underline it.

If Comcast seeks to be the arbiter of ‘fairness,’ then one must ask what concept of fairness allows for a usage cap almost no customers want for a service already grossly overpriced.

After nine months of foot dragging-negotiations between Overland Park officials and Google Fiber, a last-minute protest by a city council member over an indemnification clause that turned out to be insignificant was the last straw.

Now residents of Overland Park are off Google’s upgrade list for gigabit broadband indefinitely.

Service providers often face a minefield negotiating with local governments over issues like zoning, performance guidelines, franchise agreements, and minimizing disruption to the community. Some also face confusion about technology or a lack of understanding that infrastructure projects require careful scheduling and seasonal construction limitations.

In Overland Park, it was “all of the above” say infuriated residents who watched the fiber project slip away at an Oct. 14 city council meeting when lawyers representing Google requested an indefinite continuance.

“Clearly Google was saying to Overland Park and other cities: if you make this process too difficult for us, we will pick up our ball and go play somewhere else,” said Overland Park resident Robert Walch.

Walch said city council members appeared shocked when Google’s representative broke the news. Just a month earlier, council members including Terry Goodman, Curt Skoog, and Richard Collins seemed intent to pelt Google with a range of objections and unusual questions that suggested a lack of basic knowledge about fiber broadband.

Phillip Dampier

According to those in attendance, Skoog in particular seemed far out of his depth, questioning if 1,000/1,000Mbps was fast enough to provide connections for 6-12 computer terminals inside a local school.

Council member Park Lyons patronizingly told Google representatives Overland Park was one of the best cities in the country and he was glad Google recognized as much.

“There is so much excitement about Google Fiber, and I know people think we should blindly go forward, but I think we need to look at this in a dispassionate way and have due diligence,” Lyons explained.

As Google’s representatives continued to field questions about the project even as the 2013 construction season began to wind down, Skoog sensed Google’s growing exasperation, finally asking at an earlier meeting if they were prepared to walk away over what Skoog characterized as a “minor detail.”

The answer, apparently, was yes, much to the surprise of a stunned city council witnessing a privately funded, multi-million dollar broadband improvement project collapsing before their eyes. Damage control for exposed council members likely to face the wrath of voters began immediately, starting with a symbolic, but largely empty resolution expressing the council’s profound interest in the fiber project they just buried.

“It’s disappointing because it would have been nice to have in the schools and the libraries and stuff. I know that the Internet is really spotty at the school,” Katie Lehn, an Overland Park mother told KCTV-5.

“Overland Park made it really, really hard for Google, and Google has a lot of other cities and towns to work with,” noted Walch. “I have to say, if you’re on Overland Park Council now, you have to know that this is your last term.”

Industry observers agree with Walch.

“Google maybe wanted to send a louder message that they wanted faster response from other communities to come,” said Donna Jaegers, a telecommunications analyst for D.A. Davidson & Co. “A month delay would not be enough to put off a design like that.”

“Google is sending a negotiating message to any other city: You take our terms, or we’re going to walk,” said Steve Effros, an industry analyst who headed the Cable Telecommunications Association for two decades.

Effros told the Associated Press Google was obviously making an example out of Overland Park, while getting special treatment from other nearby communities that incumbent cable and phone companies never got.

The message that Google is willing to walk away from lucrative, upscale communities like Overland Park over bureaucratic headaches has an impact on both Google and local government. Overland Park is an upscale community of 176,000 within metro Kansas City. The community’s median household income is more than $66,500 a year — excellent prospects to sign up for Google service.

But now Overland Park will have to wait even as neighborhoods around the community get the fiber optic service first.

“Overland Park wants Google Fiber,” said Overland Park Mayor Carl Gerlach. “The city council is ready to sign on the dotted line. … We’re willing to wait as long as it takes.”

Google isn’t ready to forgive and forget just yet, and communities like Overland Park cannot say they were never warned.

Milo Medin, Google’s vice president of access services, told the media in May that Google was picking communities that make their life easier as the fiber infrastructure is installed.

“In general, we go where it’s easy to build,” Medin said. “If you make it hard for me to build, and there are other places where it’s easy to build, I will probably go to those other places.”

Six months later, nothing has changed.

“We need to refocus our energy and our resources on the communities that are waiting for fiber,” said Google spokeswoman Jenna Wandres.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCTV Kansas City Overland Park on Hold With Google 10-25-13.mp4[/flv]

KCTV in Kansas City reports Overland Park residents are unhappy Google Fiber is popping up everywhere, but not in Overland Park.  (3 minutes)