How Google Fiber could impact the net neutrality debate

National surveys regularly chronicle our dissatisfaction. In a 2013 Temkin Group survey, cable companies accounted for six of the seven worst-rated companies in the entire United States, with AT&T and Comcast neck-in-neck for dead last. The poor service, of course, isn’t just limited to cable television: Last year’s American Customer Satisfaction Index poll ranked Comcast and Time Warner last in both the television and Internet provision categories. In a tongue-in-cheek reader poll, consumerist.com gave the 2014 “Worst Company In America” crown to Comcast — this, of course, in a field that included SeaWorld and “lawsuit-lovin’, genetic-modifyin’ ” Monsanto.

For anyone who has suffered through the endless rounds of delay, disruption and “your call is very important to us” that qualify as business as usual for many cable companies, this may come as no particular surprise. That your cable company will make you pay too much, wait too long and give you too little in the way of service is a certainty worth placing in the company of death and taxes. Worse still, of course, is the fact any protests against the current state of affairs will almost certainly go nowhere because, in most markets, the cable company you choose is the only company you could have chosen. Quasi-monopolies and duopolies make this a market with functionally little choice and hardly any incentive for providers to improve.

Change, though, may be on the horizon. This past week, Google announced that Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Atlanta and Nashville were next in line for its fiber Internet service, joining Austin, Kansas City and Provo as test sites for what it hopes will be a national network to rival the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world. For many consumers, particularly those in hard-to-reach areas of the country, this is welcome news. After all, if Google is able to catalog the full breadth of the Internet, map the known world and make a car that can actually drive itself, surely it can make the cable guy arrive on time.

But there’s another reason to pay attention to Google’s moves in the Internet provision space — one that has less to do with consumer satisfaction and much more to do with the regulatory and legal architecture that underpins the Internet.

For months, the largest telecom providers have been able to take the position that the FCC’s net neutrality rules would strangle their ability to innovate and improve service. The basic argument: Without being able to charge for higher usage, create fast lanes or offer “paid prioritization,” ISPs would have to limit their spending on infrastructure and service improvements. The FCC’s actions, then, would degrade Internet speed and quality over time. It’s a convenient argument — and one that cleverly redirects consumers’ ire toward the federal government. The only thing worse than your cable company as it is would have to be your cable company with Big Brother’s hands all over it.

Enter Google. While Comcast, Verizon and their counterparts argue that regulations would limit investment in new broadband infrastructure, Google is taking the opposite tack. “The sort of open Internet rules that the [FCC] is currently discussing aren’t an impediment” to Google Fiber, the company declared in a statement. If anything, Google has suggested that net neutrality rules could encourage investment on its part, because such rules may open up access to the telephone infrastructure used by its competitors — dramatically lowering the costs of installing fiber service throughout the country.

For those who have been paying close attention to the net neutrality debate, this was the clearest signal yet of Google’s stance. And its opinion will be given more than a passing notice, if only because Google spent nearly $18 million last year on various lobbying efforts, putting it in the company of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast in total lobbying dollars spent.

With net neutrality taking center stage in the weeks to come, it is worth paying attention to Google Fiber and Google’s public statements about broadband. Not only because the search giant is speaking with new assertiveness on the issue — but also because it has the power to reshape the debate. For a long time, it was possible for the telecom companies to paint opposition to net neutrality as the only market-friendly position. Now that’s not so easy. Google is making the market-oriented case for net neutrality, and it may just catch congressional Republicans’ attention.