Comcast last week told Wall Street three important facts:

1. They have plenty of capacity to handle increasing broadband traffic and can deliver faster speeds;
2. They are reducing the amount of money they invest in broadband;
3. They are still moving forward on usage caps and usage billing experiments.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told investors the company was well positioned to handle increasing broadband traffic and monetize its usage.

Wall Street liked what it heard. Valuentum Securities Inc., called themselves “big fans of Comcast’s cash flow generation.”

“We’re big fans of the firm’s Video and High-Speed Internet businesses because both are either monopolies or duopolies in their respective markets,” Valuentum concludes. “Further, we believe that both services have become so sticky and important to consumers that Comcast will be able to effectively raise prices year after year without seeing too much volume-related weakness.”

An other way to raise prices is to cap broadband usage and charge customers extra for exceeding their allowance, a plan Comcast has begun testing.

“As you know we announced two different flavors of plans,” Roberts said. “One was capacity linked with the tier that subs are buying and [the other] was just being able to buy blocks of capacity.”

Roberts is referring to Comcast’s pricing experiments now being rolled out in markets like Nashville. The tests will determine whether customers will pay higher prices for different tiers of broadband based on variable speed and usage allowances or whether a flat cap with an overlimit fee is the better way to go.

Roberts

“[Hard] caps are gone,” Roberts said. “We raised the amount people could consume to 300 gigabytes as a base limit. We have not announced the markets for the roll outs yet but I would expect something shortly.”

Comcast used to have a 250GB hard cap which, if exceeded, could result in termination of a customer’s account. Now the company is pondering whether a consistent 300GB cap with an overlimit fee is a better choice.

But Roberts also acknowledged Comcast has plenty of capacity and flexibility to adjust its broadband offerings to compete.

“[…] We have a great network that has tremendous flexibility and capacity to offer more speeds than we offer today and we’re constantly hoping that new applications and needs develop,” Roberts said in response to a question regarding potential competition with Google Fiber.

Comcast added 156,000 new high speed data customers, an 8% increase, over the last quarter. At the same time, the company lost 176,000 video subscribers.

The importance of Comcast’s broadband service was underlined by the fact broadband revenue was the largest contributor to cable revenue growth in the second quarter, with revenue increasing 9%. Comcast attributes that to rate increases, a growing number of new broadband customers, and the 27% of current subscribers upgrading to higher speed services.

Comcast does not and will not have to spend a growing amount of its capital on its broadband service. Comcast cut spending on its network by 5% in the second quarter to $1.1 billion. That represents 11.4 percent of cable revenue earned by Comcast. So far this year, capital expenditures have dropped 2.4% to $2.2 billion — 11.2% of its total revenue.

These days, much of Comcast’s capital expenses support the company’s expansion into business services. The company also expects considerable reductions in spending from completion of its transition to digital — freeing up capacity on existing cable systems instead of spending money to upgrade them. For the full year, including its business services expansion, Comcast expects spending on its own network to be flat.

Comcast’s new X1 platform (Image courtesy: BWOne)

In other Comcast developments of note:

• In June Comcast rolled out its new X1 cloud based set top platform in Boston and is currently launching X1 in Atlanta. Comcast is marketing the upgraded platform first to HD Triple Play customers, who can upgrade for a one-time installation fee. The company plans to roll out the new upgraded platform in five major markets by the end of this year, with a greater expansion in 2013;
• Comcast has increased broadband speeds, particularly in competitive markets, for no additional charge;
• Streampix now offers twice as many titles as the product offered at launch in February;
• Comcast has rolled out its marketing partnership with Verizon Wireless to 22 markets nationwide;
• The company’s ongoing rebranding under the Xfinity name now has a new catchphrase: Xfinity — The Future of Awesome;
• Nearly 75% of Comcast’s customers now take at least two products and almost 40% are signed up for the company’s triple play package;
• Comcast has saved more than $8 million by reducing the number of occasions the company will send technicians to customer homes. The cable company is heavily promoting self-install kits, which has brought a 65% increase  in the number of customers who install Comcast equipment and services themselves.

The views of the Adam Smith Institute, despite the near-global financial meltdown engineered by the Masters of the Universe.

Forbes columnist Tim Worstall is unimpressed with Google’s foray into fiber optics.

Worstall, a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, has repeatedly penned columns tsk-tsking the global broadband speed race.

In his world view, nobody except certain specialists needs any connection faster than 2Mbps:

The most obvious being that outside certain very specific uses (video editing for example, where people can pay up for their own T1 line) there’s not really much evidence that speeds above 2 Mbps or so actually improve productivity or economic performance/growth. Sure, they’re great for consumers who want to download movies but that’s not really a justification for a large scale infrastructure program.

Worstall’s Luddite-like knowledge of broadband technology makes it difficult to take him seriously. Notwithstanding the fact a T1 line delivers just 1.5Mbps (at a cost several times a typical cable or DSL broadband connection), Worstall’s declaration that faster speeds are only good for “downloading” movies (the concept of streaming also escapes him) is simple nonsense.

Worstall’s tantrum is really part of a bigger discussion about how to do broadband better in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Incumbent providers are dragging their feet while reaping profits for overpriced, too-slow service. Consumers and businesses are fed up, and some are now increasingly turning to the government to do-something to shake up the status quo.

Government? For those slavishly devoted to free market ideals at the Adam Smith Institute, such a notion guarantees an intemperate outburst with phrases like “government takeover,” “government interference in private business,” or “government monopoly” — all ideas Worstall complains are “blindingly awful.”

“The idea that the solution to anything is a government run engineering monopoly just boggles the mind,” Worstall declares.

In his piece, “Why High Speed Broadband Just Doesn’t Matter,” Worstall has just a single litmus test to define broadband worthiness: how much economic value can be extracted from the Internet — Ferengi economics at their finest.

Worstall (Image: Forbes)

Worstall:

So more people can watch TV. Apologies, but this doesn’t really convince. Higher definition TV just isn’t the sort of technology that boosts the economy of a country. It might be nice to have but it most certainly does not justify taxing some to provide the service to others.

[…] The truth is that as long as you’re getting broadband of a kind (2 Mbps say) then it’s possible to extract that economic value. Faster speeds might be nice but they’re just not necessary for economic development.

Even if you accept Worstall’s inaccurate contention fast Internet is only good for watching online entertainment, he evidently forgets PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated the value of that industry at $2 trillion, and that was by 2011. Why even have a cable television business, if the only thing it is good for is watching reality shows and Law & Order reruns? Because it makes money — lots of it.

Back to Google, which is creating a bit of a pickle for the cable and phone companies — an increasingly fat and happy bunch earning easy profits selling broadband at duopoly market prices. Proponents for better broadband advocating for new, publicly-owned broadband networks have had to confront astroturf and conservative groups using popular memes that “big government” cannot do anything right and if there was a market for gigabit broadband, private companies would already be selling it.

Starting this summer, Google is.

That spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e for the corporate love muffins at the Adam Smith Institute and their industry friends who are quite happy with the way things are today, thank you very much. Google just happens to be an example of a free market success story — a ‘responsible’ company willing to invest money in the game-changing broadband Worstall and friends spent years arguing we don’t actually want or need.

As Kansas City residents line up around the virtual block, eagerly plunking down $10 to “pre-register” for Google service, it becomes difficult to continue the standard line that super-fast Internet is just a tech-geek curiosity.

So what does a free-market-knows-best-devotee do in light of all this? Change the story.

Worstall picks up a premise first offered by The Guardian and runs with it. Namely, Google is actually riding the wave of past phone company failures to cheaply benefit from assets those companies deployed first:

There’s a very large difference between being able to do something usefully experimental with an orphaned asset and having to pay for the construction of that asset in the first place. The telecoms companies lost fortunes on laying that fibre (indeed, several, including such as Global Crossing, went resoundingly bust for billions in doing so). That something that was built for $100 can find a use when it is sold for $1 (just to make up some numbers) is not an argument in favour of spending the $100.

Yet that is exactly what the argument being proposed is. Look, Google’s got really cool fast broadband, now we should build it for everyone! What’s being missed is that, at least so far as we know as yet, that really fast broadband isn’t worth the cost of building it. It only makes sense even for Google because they’ve not had to pay full price for it.

Google got a discount, so that is why they are in the business.

Worstall’s declaration is news to Kansas City, which has been enduring Google’s construction crews for months as they lay fiber infrastructure across the metropolitan area. Evidently Google hired illusionist David Copperfield to perform the masterful trick of shading the truth:  re-purposing already-there fiber while pretending it was being buried and strung for the first time.

Adam Smith didn’t have super fast broadband when he posited his views on unfettered free markets in the 1700s. If his devoted followers are left in charge, you won’t either.

Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) are incensed about efforts by CenturyLink to win waivers from the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect America rural broadband funding program that could leave WISPs facing new competition from CenturyLink made possible by surcharges paid by phone customers nationwide.

At issue is a filing from CenturyLink before the FCC that would allow the phone company to “change the rules,” according to critics. One of CenturyLink’s most prominent arguments is that WISPs have data caps that inconvenience customers. But CenturyLink buries the fact it has usage caps of its own in a footnote.

“The waiver application we filed … would allow CenturyLink to spend tens of millions of dollars to bring more broadband services to more rural and high-cost customers who do not have reasonable access to broadband service today,” CenturyLink said in a media release. “These funds would be provided by the FCC’s Connect America Fund, as well as additional investment dollars would be provided by CenturyLink. If the waiver application is approved, CenturyLink will build needed broadband services to thousands of homes in Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Oregon and several other states.”

CenturyLink claims WISPs charge considerably more for service, suffer from line-of-sight restrictions which could leave many rural customers without service, have limited spectrum which keeps broadband speeds to a bare minimum and often forces customers to endure stringent data usage caps.

The waiver request would allow CenturyLink to receive and use federal Connect America funds to deploy its DSL service to rural customers already served by WISPs if two conditions are met:

• The state where CenturyLink would spend the money has not independently verified the coverage area of the wireless ISP and objective data opens the door to an argument that a WISP cannot adequately service areas where they claim coverage;
• The WISP imposes unusually high prices ($720/yr or more) or severe usage caps (25GB per month or less).

Chuck Siefert, CEO of the Montana Internet Corporation (MIC), a WISP, argues CenturyLink has no case, and is attempting to modify the rules to accomplish its own objectives rather than adhering to the original goals of the program — to deliver broadband to the rural unserved:

CenturyLink is simply raising an old protest in a new venue. Having been designated as eligible for almost ninety million dollars of the Connect America Program (CAP), it wishes to have the opportunity to use more than a third of that as it chooses, rather than as the Commission designated after input and analysis from all parties. The Rubicon has been crossed with respect to this issue: unserved areas are those that are not served by fixed wireless providers.  Regardless of CenturyLink’s opinion of the quality of service provided, these areas have been deemed served by the Commission and CAP incremental support may not be used to build out broadband in these areas. CenturyLink is certainly capable of using other funding to build out in these areas; the Commission has not precluded that.

CenturyLink’s complaints that WISPs often come with data usage caps is ironic because CenturyLink is now imposing usage caps on its own broadband service. CenturyLink argues data caps expose the limitations inherent in wireless broadband in their filing with the FCC:

Satellite broadband also often comes encumbered with restrictive data caps. The same is true of many of the WISPs subject to this waiver request. They impose on their users highly restrictive data caps of less than 25 GB per month. Indeed, two of the WISPs impose a cap of just 5 GB per month.

It is no surprise that these WISPs would impose such unusually low caps; like satellite providers, they must ration out their highly constrained capacity among the various end users who compete for it. WISP broadband capacity—unlike the customer-specific links in DSL-based broadband—is shared by all customers within a given wireless cell or sector.

This means that the more customers a WISP persuades to sign up, the worse the average service quality gets for all customers unless the WISP sharply limits how much customers may consume.

That imperative may be an unavoidable consequence of the WISPs’ technology, but it further underscores the need to give the affected consumers a robust broadband alternative.

Siefert claims CenturyLink’s assertions about the quality of its DSL service, pricing, and performance simply fall short of the truth, and MIC does better by its customers.

Pricing

CenturyLink charges a $134.89 non-recurring charge plus $29.99/mo for “up to 1.5Mbps” DSL service, plus “up to” $99.95 for professional installation. CenturyLink’s DSL modem costs $99 and has a one-year warranty.

Siefert claims MIC charges $30/mo for “bursting speeds up to 10Mbps” and $250 for technician installation, but the company offers regular installation promotions that cost $99. MIC warrants its equipment for the life of the service and charges no fee for service calls as long as the customer is current on their bill.

But Stop the Cap! found speeds and pricing less advantageous than Siefert might have the FCC believe. For instance, MIC’s $30 tier only guarantees 384kbps with speed “bursts” up to 10Mbps. Getting committed 2Mbps service runs $55 a month with the same “bursting” speed of 10Mbps. We also found CenturyLink willing to negotiate installation charges, and the company frequently discounts or even waives them if a customer signs up for a multi-service package.

Data Caps

CenturyLink now imposes a 150GB usage cap on customers with 1.5Mbps service or slower, 250GB for customers at higher speeds.

MIC claims it does not even monitor individual customer usage. Siefert says data use limitations are found in the terms and conditions of its service and are imposed only when a customer creates a problem for other users on the network.

“Rather than strictly applying data caps, MIC’s policy is to contact its customers and explain the impact their usage has on other customers,” Siefert explains. “As a small provider in a local community, MIC is able to do this in a way that a carrier like CenturyLink cannot. CenturyLink’s representations regarding transfer caps imply that WISPs arbitrarily and automatically shut a customer down once the cap is reached. This assertion is not based on evidence and is not an accurate statement of MIC’s approach to the caps. CenturyLink’s argument that WISPs operate like satellite and therefore WISPs service areas should be categorized as unserved areas based on how transfer caps are used fails.”

Stop the Cap! found different information on MIC’s website, however, including a 20GB monthly data cap and a $15/GB overage charge. Siefert’s submission to the FCC may suggest the published cap is a guideline more than a rule.

Performance

CenturyLink still uses T1-level circuits (1.5Mbps) to connect at least some of their remote D-SLAMs, according to Siefert, which helps the phone company extend DSL service to homes and businesses far away from the company’s central office. The net result is that customers fight for the bandwidth on an insufficient backhaul, which dramatically reduces speeds during peak usage times. In Helena, Montana CenturyLink “daisy-chains” D-SLAMs to support customers over a single T3 line, creating latency problems, packet loss, and further reductions in speed and performance.

MIC is capable of providing a total of 252Mbps per distribution site. The incoming next generation of wireless technology will increase that to 1.4Gbps. Additional distribution sites can divide the traffic load similar to how new cell towers can reduce demand on other nearby towers.

Speeds

CenturyLink sells speeds “up to” a certain level without guaranteeing customers will actually get the speed they are paying to receive. Siefert says CenturyLink customers in Montana currently can manage up to 7Mbps in some areas.

MIC says it can commit to its customers they can receive 10-40Mbps (and 80Mbps by the end of 2012) over its wireless network.

Independent Netindex.com suggests MIC does offers faster service on average than CenturyLink provides in Montana:

• Montana (statewide average): MIC 5.04Mbps vs. CenturyLink 3.8Mbps
• Helena: MIC 5.08Mbps vs. CenturyLink 2.73Mbps

The Wireless Internet Service Provider Association says their members are not eligible for federal Connect America subsidies, and most wireless providers are privately financed operations built with the support of their rural customers.

Said Richard Harnish, WISPA’s executive director, “We find it hard to believe that a company like CenturyLink that gets millions of dollars in federal support now wants more free money to overbuild unsubsidized rural broadband networks that WISPs already successfully operate. To do this, CenturyLink has attempted to discredit the taxpayer-funded National Broadband Map and invent its own standards in an effort to show that they should receive more than $30 million in additional subsidies.  Our strong opposition reflects WISPA’s view that CenturyLink’s arguments are factually and technically flawed.  We thank the other associations, state agencies and WISPs that support our views.”

Time Warner Cable last week intimated the only thing keeping faster cable modem speeds from Kansas City customers is consumer demand and they are not worried about the arrival of Google Fiber’s 1Gbps broadband speeds.

The cable operator claims they have the advantage in Kansas City, as the first provider to offer a triple play package of voice, broadband, and television service. Time Warner also says they are constantly working on new, innovative services, including the much-touted “tablet remote” the company says it already offers customers in Kansas City in the form of apps available on the Android and iOS platforms.

“We always have the ability to adjust our network to keep up with demands from consumers [for faster broadband speeds],” Time Warner Cable said.

Cable operators and phone companies have traditionally argued there is little consumer demand for gigabit broadband speeds because the services most customers access online don’t need or cannot support that level of speed. Cost has also usually been a factor, and many operators point out the majority of their customers are satisfied with speeds of 20Mbps or less.

“We’re ready to compete any day, anytime, anywhere, with anyone,” said Time Warner Cable spokesman Mike Pedelty.

AT&T, which has been providing U-verse in parts of Kansas City since 2007 says it isn’t threatened by Google Fiber either.

Chris Lester from AT&T Media Relations notes AT&T now offers U-verse to more than 400,000 households in and around Kansas City and claims the company has gotten a “great response” from consumers, but declined to specify exactly how many of those households have actually signed up for service.

Both the dominant cable and phone company in Kansas City are betting on subscriber loyalty and consumer resistance to change to maintain their subscriber numbers. Statistically, they have a good chance of holding most of their current customers, at least for now.

The threat of Google’s fiber fast speeds may not be limited only to Kansas City, however. The Wall Street Journal has learned Google may be intending to bring its fiber network to other American cities, as long as they are not already served by Verizon’s FiOS fiber-to-the-home network.

Incumbent cable operators facing new competition from phone company IPTV (AT&T U-verse, Verizon FiOS) have not lost as much business as they first anticipated. In most cases, only 25-35% of customers eventually left for a satellite or phone company competitor. The older the subscriber, the less likely that customer is to consider a change, unless the service is poor or the price becomes unaffordable.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCTV Kansas City Competition for Google Fiber 7-26-12.mp4[/flv]

KCTV in Kansas City talks with AT&T and Time Warner Cable about their newest competitor.  (2 minutes)

No cable operator has reported alarming results from subscriber defections, either from competition or cord-cutting behavior, and Wall Street analysts are watching subscriber numbers closely.

So far, reports on the ground indicate AT&T and Time Warner Cable are following the playbook first established when any new broadband provider arrives on their turf — aggressively market discounts tied to a contract with a stiff early termination fee to discourage customers from switching. At least one local provider has been reportedly sending salespeople door to door to try and lock customers in with a multi-year service contract. When that does not work, both companies use their customer retention departments to offer customers cheaper service in a last ditch effort to keep them from heading for the door.

Even with those defensive measures, some investors still see Google’s new fiber service as something new and different in the broadband marketplace — “the most disruptive thing since Gmail,” concludes Business Insider‘s Matt Rosoff.

Rosoff says Google Fiber could completely change the broadband landscape in the United States much the same way Gmail changed e-mail.

Back when Gmail launched, the other free email providers like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail were offering less than 5MB of storage — that’s five megabytes,” Rosoff writes. “Google trumped them all with 1GB of free storage. With so much storage, there was no need to trash anything. You could archive it and keep it forever.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fox Business News Google Stirs It Up 7-26-12.flv[/flv]

Fox Business News explores Google Fiber and finds phone companies telling reporters consumers don’t need 1Gbps broadband.  (2 minutes)

Gmail has since captured a large share of the email market, while also paving the way for Google’s increasingly profitable business apps. Some also argue Google’s “save everything online” approach was like training wheels for the cloud computing concept, where consumers think less about local storage and more about going online to access content. Google Fiber’s speeds make accessing online content effortless, and with no usage caps, customers need not ration their usage.

As of Monday, Google has already achieved the minimum number of needed homes to install Google Fiber in several, mostly affluent, Kansas City neighborhoods.

Rosoff says much like Gmail exposed the weaknesses of former email leaders like Hotmail, Google Fiber embarrasses incumbent Internet Service Providers and illustrates just how slow they have been to innovate.

“Google Fiber makes the cable-based ISPs look pathetic,” says Rosoff. “It promises to offer speeds up to 1,000Mbps downstream and upstream, for only $70 a month.”

In comparison, Time Warner Cable charges $100 for 50/5Mbps service in Kansas City. AT&T’s U-verse can only offer up to 24/3Mbps service, and it charges well over $50 a month for that, except on a new customer promotion. Both Time Warner and AT&T also sell “lite use” packages from 1-6Mpbs for $20-25 a month — service Google intends to give away for free after a $300 installation fee.

Many industry observers suggest Google is using its new fiber network in part as a hedge against market abuse from dominant cable and phone companies who are fiercely opposed to Net Neutrality and favor monetizing broadband usage.  Both are serious threats to Google’s business model which seeks more usage, not less. The more time consumers spend online, the more likely they will be exposed to a Google ad, use a Google product, or purchase a current or forthcoming service owned or partnered with the search engine giant.

Early indications from Kansas City show the cable and phone companies do have something to be concerned about. In more affluent areas of Kansas City, Google passed the minimum number of households willing to commit to the fiber service in just two days. Enthusiasm has been so overwhelming, tech entrepreneurs drooling for fiber service are hiring door-to-door promoters to visit nearby residents to encourage them to show their interest, in some cases even paying Google’s $10 pre-registration fee on their behalf.

More than 20 percent of the eligible “fiberhoods” in Kansas City, Mo. have already passed their signup goals. In poorer, mostly minority neighborhoods, Google is still waiting for their first pre-registration. In less affluent Kansas City, Kan., Google is finding considerably less interest, and pre-registrations are running below goal in all but three “fiberhoods.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDAF Kansas City Competitors Gear Up For Google’s Challenge 7-26-12.flv[/flv]

WDAF says competing cable and phone companies cannot deliver the speeds Google Fiber will offer, but they are betting consumers don’t need or care about faster broadband speeds. (3 minutes)

Google formally announced its new fiber to the home service to residents of Kansas City today with game-changing pricing for broadband and television service.

For $70 a month, Google will deliver consumers unlimited 1Gbps broadband service. For an additional $50 a month, customers can also receive a robust television package consisting of hundreds of digital HD channels, and throw in a free tablet (they call it ‘the remote control’), free router, free DVR with  hundreds of hours of storage, and access to Google’s cloud backup servers.

Google has also found a solution to affordable Internet for poorer residents. The company is promising free 5/1Mbps service for up to seven years if customers will pay a $300 installation charge, payable in $25 installments.

Customers who agree to sign up for multiple services and a service contract can waive the $300 installation charge.

Google’s new service will roll out to different areas of Kansas City. Google has split neighborhoods into “fiberhoods” that consist of around 800 homes. In a masterful public relations and public policy demonstration, Google intends to show up the cable and phone companies who have repeatedly declared customers have no interest in fiber-fast broadband speeds by asking would-be customers to pre-register for Google Fiber, which will cost $10. Those “fiberhoods” with the largest number of pre-registrations will be the first to get Google’s new fiber service. At least 80 families (around 10%) of each “fiberhood” will have to be willing to sign up for Google to activate the service in each neighborhood.

Google hopes consumers will evangelize the possibilities of fiber broadband with friends and neighbors nearby and get them on board. If the telecom industry’s predictions of lukewarm interest are true, then Google won’t collect many $10 registrations and will not be able to publicize the number of customers who want nothing more to do with incumbent cable and phone companies. If Google is correct, they will have successfully proven America’s phone and cable companies have been dramatically overcharging Americans for service and large numbers are clamoring for a better choice.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Google Fiber In Kansas City 7-26-12.flv[/flv]

Google’s formal introduction of Google Fiber in Kansas City this morning. Presentation begins at around the five minute mark.  (1 hour, 6 minutes)

Google has the goods to entice technology fanatics. Those signing up for television service will find Google has moved way beyond the traditional cable set top box that still won’t reliably record your favorite shows. Google will supply customers with:

• a free Nexus 7 tablet that will come pre-programmed to function as a remote control (but can be used for other things);
• a Bluetooth-based traditional remote;
• a combination set top box and DVR system that can record up to 500 hours of programming;
• a Wi-Fi enabled Gigabit router;
• an iOS (Android coming, of course) app that will let viewers manage everything over their tablet or mobile phone;
• a 2TB storage locker;
• a free terabyte of Google Cloud storage

But Google’s current television lineup does omit many popular cable networks, either in an effort to control programming costs or because the company has not completed negotiations with every programmer they want on the lineup. Among the missing:

• ESPN and regional sports networks
• Disney networks
• Turner networks like TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies
• Rainbow Networks’ AMC
• Time Warner-owned channels like HBO, CNN and TruTV
• Fox-owned networks like Fox News Channel and Fox Business News

Time Warner Cable’s response to Google’s network seems to indicate, publicly at least, they are not that worried.

“Kansas City has been a highly competitive market for a long time and we take all competitors seriously,” said spokesman Justin Venech. “We have a robust and adaptable network, advanced products and services available today, and experienced local employees delivering local service. We are confident in our ability to compete.”