Top cable lobbyist says Google has ‘lesson’ to learn

“They said they were going to bid, asked for all those regulatory mandates, and they decided they’re not going to play,” McSlarrow said. “I have no idea if they’re going to do the same thing today.”

He said it is “unrealistic” for Google to be considered a new competitor for existing service providers.

“They’re not planning on turning themselves into an internet provider. It’s an experiment. It’s one gigabit per second and, by and large, there are very few PCs and laptops in America that can handle that kind of capacity. That will change over time, but you can’t even use that today if you have that kind of device.”

Cable customers already have access to that much capacity, but it is split between phone, video, Internet and other interactive services, McSlarrow said.

Google said it will apply net neutrality rules to its new testbed networks–something McSlarrow said he welcomes as an “experiment.” But he said he is “leary of asking the federal government to impose all those rules at the outset when we already have a world that works out pretty well…and has allowed companies like Google to flourish.”