It's expensive to install infrastructure, but the costs aren't as high as these companies would have you believe, and further, they've been receiving money for years that was specifically intended to deliver fiber to the home.

There's already so much capacity sunk into the ground you wouldn't need to dig for another decade, you could just upgrade equipment on the end-points. Expensive but a lot less work than getting permits and ripping up roads.

If the rumors about Google are correct, they may be in for a rude awakening.

Your ISP and the company that owns the wires to your house need not be the same. And I doubt the company that provides your copper backhaul is going to be involved in any "six strikes" laws.

Incidentally, I hope the ISPs that own everything lose their common-carrier status when they start disconnecting people over copyright claims. Look at the rage that copyright enforcement has when audio is stripped from YouTube videos. I don't think people are going to be happy when their net connection is cut off.

> Your ISP and the company that owns the wires to your house need not be the same.

s/need not/are/

That's the default, but the telco will happily sell you a non-Internet wire that you can connect to the Internet yourself. (Or rather, pay some other company to do. Speakeasy used to work this way: they were the ISP and the telco owned the copper.)

I guess I should have qualified my statement: yes, technically it doesn't apply if you can live with dialup or DSL. Of course, if that's the case you don't use the Internet for very much anyway.

(I see from the website of Megapath, which is what Speakeasy seems to have morphed into, that they do actually provide broadband, but it looks like "small business" broadband--i.e., priced too high for a home user. Their offerings at home user prices are basically DSL.)

It's an interesting question... does this policy (assuming it is enforced to a reasonable degree) provide enough disturbance among customers to galvanize the telecom industry into reform?

I doubt it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see small scale upheaval given enough brouhaha.

Unless it is one selling point among many. What if Google starts rolling out fiber service to larger markets?

I would think if Google started getting big enough as an ISP, they would also implement the six strikes. Google has it's fingers in a lot of pies, among them selling media on Google Play. They'd have more to lose if the media conglomerates didn't give them access to their media than if they pissed off a few customers with the six strikes.

Google Play? You think Google makes enough on Google Play to break even? I see that as a "me too" business to keep pace with Apple and Amazon.