'Fiberhoods' — Google Provides Neighborhoods With Faster and Cheaper Internet Service, but Are Some Being Left Behind?

Here's more on the power of contemporary social media companies.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Google Fiber Is Fast, but Is It Fair?":

Frustrated by the hammerlock of U.S. broadband providers, Google Inc. GOOGL +0.02% has searched for ways around them to provide faster Internet speeds at lower cost, via everything from high-speed fiber to satellites.

In the process, it is changing how next-generation broadband is rolled out.

Telecom and cable companies generally have been required to blanket entire cities, offering connections to every home. By contrast, Google is building high-speed services as it finds demand, laying new fiber neighborhood by neighborhood.

Others including AT&T Inc. T -0.40%  and CenturyLink Inc. CTL -0.27%  are copying Google's approach, underscoring a deeper shift in U.S. telecommunications policy, from requiring universal service to letting the marketplace decide.

As Google's model gathers momentum, it stirs up questions about whether residents of poor or underserved neighborhoods will be left behind.

U.S. policy long favored extending service to all. AT&T touted its "universal service" in advertisements more than a century ago. The concept was codified in a 1934 law requiring nationwide "wire and radio services" to reach everyone at "reasonable charges."

In exchange for wiring a community, telecommunications providers often gained a monopoly. Cities made similar deals with cable-TV providers beginning in the 1960s.

The emergence of the commercial Internet in 1990s led to a reassessment. Policy swung in favor of encouraging competition in the hope that it would bring more people online faster. Over time, Congress and regulators loosened the strings on Internet providers.

Google seized the opening in 2010, as it sought to stoke demand for bandwidth-hungry businesses, such as its YouTube online-video site. It solicited interest from cities for a new network, specifying that it sought "opportunities to experiment with deployment techniques." More than 1,000 municipalities responded.

In 2011, Google struck a deal with authorities in both Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., to build the service based on customer demand. City officials say they didn't push hard for universal coverage because they thought faster Internet service would boost the local economy and they were competing against so many other cities.

"The main point was to win and bring that infrastructure to our city," said Rick Usher, assistant city manager of Kansas City, Mo.

As phone and cable companies slowed their own expansion plans, more cities allowed the selective approach.

Mary Beth Henry, director of community technology in Portland, Ore., says broadband providers balked at covering the entire city. So Portland stopped requiring universal coverage in 2007 and this year signed a deal with Google that employs the build-to-demand approach.

Offering service everywhere is "too risky and returns are lower," she said.

In Kansas City, Google divided the region into areas of a few hundred homes it called "fiberhoods" and asked residents to pay $10 to preregister for a service that would operate at one gigabit per second, about 100 times the U.S. average. The service now costs $70 a month.

If interest exceeded a certain threshold, generally between 5% and 25% of households, Google connected the area. The threshold varied based on population density. Google also worked with local officials to speed the permitting and construction process. It skipped some areas entirely, because they were too thinly populated or because of construction challenges, a company spokeswoman said.

To date, Google has conducted preregistration in 364 neighborhoods; all but 16 hit Google's threshold for connection. Google hasn't disclosed how many homes in each neighborhood subscribe to its service...

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