Not Enough Competition? Abundance Will Be the Big "Problem" after 2020

While network neutrality is seen by some as protecting Internet “openness,” it does not address the underlying core problem of scarcity, according to Milo Medin, Google Fiber VP. Whether you agree with Medin or not, about openness, you might also agree with him that the decision does not specifically address or promote competition.

It might be true that "no consumers are seeing higher speeds than before the order was passed; no consumers are paying less for their Internet services than what they were paying for; no consumers are seeing higher volume caps that they had before; and no consumers have additional choice of providers than they had before," Medin noted.

All true, as far as it goes, but almost hugely misleading and arguably strategically mistaken. As much of a force as Google Fiber has been at spurring other Internet service providers to invest dramatically faster, Comcast’s recent moves to upgrade  all customer locations to gigabit speeds by the end of 2015, and 2 Gbps for 86 percent of all locations--also by the end of 2015--must be said to dwarf all the other efforts put together.

In fact, some of us now would argue that abundance soon will be the reality for most consumers, sometime after 2020.