“They have a glow about them,” Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt told analysts this morning. But he sees the search company’s effort to expand its speedy fiber optic broadband system to Austin — intensifying the competition with Time Warner Cable that began in Kansas City — as “no different” than other overbuilders that have failed to overtake cable operators. Execs say that there’s been a “de minimus” impact so far on Time Warner Cable. While Google is “very aggressive on price” its products are “essentially the same” as the cable company’s, Britt says. “The video's the same and the speeds for the last part (of the broadband service) are faster but they connect to the same old Internet….I question the economics of this, and therefore their motivation.” He adds that Google has an “obvious a public relations intent to depict the cable and phone industries as stuck with old technology.” But when it comes to business services, which need high Internet speeds more acutely than residential customers do, “we're pulling tons of fiber.” Google’s “imagery painting is very effective, but not the reality.”
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