Frontier's headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

Frontier Communications has dismissed the proposition of Google constructing a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home network, telling readers of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle that most users don’t need ultra-fast Internet access.

Ann Burr, chairman and general manager of Frontier Communications of Rochester made the remark in response to news that citizens and business leaders are excited about promoting Monroe County as a potential test location for Google’s fiber network experiment.

Frontier, which serves Rochester and most of the 585 area code, accused Google of having “a poor track record of following through on such proposals and that creating a fiber-optic network from scratch would be enormously expensive.”

Pot to kettle.  Frontier’s illusory promises for fiber optic connectivity in states like West Virginia, where it seeks to take over the majority of the state’s phone customers from Verizon, never seem to include specific assurances such projects will reach customer homes.

“If Google built its own network, we estimate it would cost $5,000 per household,” Burr told the newspaper.

That’s as exaggerated as Frontier’s DSL speed claims.

Verizon Communications, which is in the business of providing fiber connectivity to the home, disclosed the true costs are far lower than that, and continue to decline.  In the summer of 2008, Verizon’s Policy Blog noted:

Capital Costs
– We said our target per home passed was $700 by 2010, and we are ahead of plan to achieve that objective. In fact, we’ve already beaten the target.
– We said our target per home connected was $650 by 2010, and we’re on plan to hit that target.

No wonder Frontier doesn’t contemplate providing fiber service to customers.  It created its own sticker shock.

Still, the local phone company didn’t want to slam the door entirely on Google’s foot, suggesting it would be willing to talk about leasing space on Google’s network if it launched in the Flower City.

Frontier’s claim that customers don’t believe fast broadband service is important is a remarkable admission, particularly for a company that increasingly depends on broadband service to stop revenue loss from customers dropping traditional phone lines.  That philosophy should be carefully considered by state officials and utility commissions reviewing Frontier’s proposal to take over Verizon phone lines in several states.  Do communities want to receive broadband from a company that dismisses faster broadband speed as irrelevant for the majority of its customers?

Perhaps the remarks came with the understanding Frontier isn’t capable of delivering 21st century broadband speeds over its antique network of copper telephone wire anyway.

That’s the point Time Warner Cable has made repeatedly, especially in the Rochester metro area.  The cable operator routinely promotes its Road Runner cable modem service’s speed advantages over Frontier’s DSL product.  Frontier promises up to 10Mbps, but often manages far less (3.1Mbps was my personal experience with Frontier DSL last April.)  Time Warner Cable promises up to 15Mbps, and often exceeds that with its “PowerBoost” feature.  In rural areas, the phone company tops out at “up to 3Mbps.”  Time Warner Cable notes most of its new broadband customers come at the expense of phone companies like Frontier.  DSL customers switch because they do care about broadband speed.

Judging from the excitement in Rochester over Google’s proposal, Frontier’s dismissal of a fiber optic future seems out of touch, and potentially a drag on the local community’s economic future.

Rochester increasingly will become a broadband backwater because of anemic broadband competition from Frontier Communications.  Its reliance on ADSL technology, more than a decade old, to deliver distance-sensitive broadband service looks out of place compared with the rest of New York State.  Major cities throughout New York are being wired with fiber optic service by Verizon Communications.  Verizon FiOS delivers up to 50Mbps service.  Frontier maxes out at far lower speeds and defines an acceptable amount of broadband usage on its DSL service at just 5GB per month. Using Verizon’s FiOS fiber network, you’d exceed Frontier’s entire month’s ‘allowance’ in less than 15 minutes at Verizon’s speeds.

Rochester is one of many communities challenged by the transition away from a manufacturing economy towards a high technology future.  A world class fiber optic network doesn’t just benefit big business.  It spurs revolutionary growth in medicine, education, software development, telecommunications, and more.  That means good paying jobs.  For consumers with fiber to the home, it opens the door to telecommuting on a whole new level, distance learning opportunities, new ways to access information and entertainment, and allows home-based entrepreneurs to develop new businesses.

With Verizon FiOS unavailable to Rochester indefinitely, and Frontier unwilling to make appropriate investments to keep this city competitive with the rest of upstate New York, those jobs and economic benefits can go to Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Westchester County, and metropolitan New York City.  We’ll be held back on the frontier with Frontier and its ideas of rationed broadband service.

[flv width=”360″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WROC Ontario County Makes Bid for Super Fast Internet 2-11-2010.flv[/flv]

WROC-TV in Rochester reports that Ontario County, to the southeast of Rochester, may have a built-in advantage with an already-installed fiber loop covering much of the county.  The county has a team working on a formal application to Google to provide service in communities like Geneva and Canandaigua.  Frontier’s claims that consumers don’t care about fast broadband speed are belied by the excitement of residents of both counties. (2 minutes)

Google plans to offer up to 1Gbps service on its direct to the home fiber network

Google has announced it is doing something about anemic, overpriced, and poorly supported broadband service in the United States.  It’s going to start providing service itself.

In a move that is sure to drive providers crazy, Google is looking for your nominations for communities that are stuck in broadband backwaters, desperate for an upgrade.  With so many suffering from “good enough for you” broadband speeds, threats of “inevitable” Internet Overcharging schemes like usage limits and consumption billing, or customer support that involves reaching more busy signals than helpful assistance, they won’t have to beg for nominations.

Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

From now until March 26th, we’re asking interested municipalities to provide us with information about their communities through a Request for information (RFI), which we’ll use to determine where to build our network.

I can think of a few cities that were victimized by providers in 2009 who have little chance of seeing true fiber optic service any other way.  Rochester, New York, the Triad region of North Carolina, parts of San Antonio and Austin bypassed by Grande Communications’ fiber network, are all among them.  Rochester has the dubious distinction of being stuck with two providers itching to slap usage limits and consumption billing on their customers – Frontier and Time Warner Cable.  Since Verizon FiOS is popping up all over the rest of New York State, residents in the Flower City concerned about being left behind might want to make their voices heard.

Google plans to deliver 1Gbps… that’s a Gigabit — 1,000Mbps service to its fiber customers at a “competitive price.”

While some in the industry consider such speeds irrelevant to the majority of consumers, Google thinks otherwise:

In the same way that the transition from dial-up to broadband made possible the emergence of online video and countless other applications, ultra high-speed bandwidth will drive more innovation – in high-definition video, remote data storage, real-time multimedia collaboration, and others that we cannot yet imagine. It will enable new consumer applications, as well as medical, educational, and other services that can benefit communities. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that the most important innovations are often those we least expect.

What’s in it for Google?  Targeted advertising, guaranteed open networks, an improved broadband platform on which Google can develop new broadband applications, and calling out providers’ high profit, slow speed broadband schemes are all part of the fringe benefits.

For providers and their friends who have regularly attacked Google for “using their networks for free,” Google’s fiber experiment deflates providers’ hollow rhetoric, and could finally provide a warning shot on behalf of overcharged, frustrated consumers that the days of rationed broadband service at top dollar pricing may soon be over.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Google Think Big With a Gig Announcement.flv[/flv]

Google released this video announcing their Think Big With a Gig campaign (1 minute)

This isn’t Google’s first experience with being an Internet Service Provider.  The company has experimented with free Google Wi-Fi service in its hometown of Mountain View, California since 2006.

[Update 2:30pm EST: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski applauded Google’s experiment: “Big broadband creates big opportunities,” he said in a statement. “This significant trial will provide an American testbed for the next generation of innovative, high-speed Internet apps, devices and services.”

The Washington Post has a source that claims Google “doesn’t currently have plans to expand beyond the initial tests but will evaluate as the tests progress.”  That could mean the experiment also serves a public policy purpose to re-emphasize Google’s support for Net Neutrality, and to deflate lobbyist rhetoric about Google’s support for those policies being more a case of their own self-interest and less about the public good.  If Google can run its networks with open access, they essentially put their money where their public policy mouth is.]