[megaman821]

Only $11 billion? That's nothing (we probably spend more in month or two on Iraq). Why can't the government roll out high speed Internet to everyone and lease the lines to ISPs? Somehow we have gone backwards, there was more choice and competition in the dial-up networking era than now.

[gbhn]

Another comparison: Yahoo Finance says Time Warner Cable's income in 2011 is ~$20B. I'm not sure I understand why $2B/year for five years is a big obstacle. Reaching 15% of the US cable market (60M households in Q42011 per Nielsen) is 9M subscribers, which at $120/month (current Google Fiber cable replacement rate) is $12B/year.

Anyone else understand why this is poor ROI? Obviously network construction is only part of the operational cost of a big network. But if it's a tiny part, then it seems even stranger that it's being presented as an obstacle. Internet-only rates would be ~$6B/yr, but that has substantially less overhead cost of content associated.

[warfangle]

Current cable+tv price: ~$100/mo Cost to build out goog fiber competitor: $166,666,667/mo Potential price point of fiber+tv to stay competitive with goog fiber: $120/mo

Why would a cable company spend $166m/month in order to get little additional revenue? No, they'd rather add Cable Box Remote Control Rental Fees - it doesn't cost them extra, and it increases their revenue.

Only if they're at risk of losing current subscribers through losing their monopoly status will this behavior change.

[ISL]

15.3 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_War

[wmeredith]

As many others pointed out, just as with poverty/healthcare/$other_big_problem this is not a monetary issue, it's a cultural one.

[LandoCalrissian]

It's honestly not a ton of money for Google either. On top of that I don't know why it would need to be all rolled out at once when you could do a slow roll out over many years.

[dsfasfasf]

And yet there are so many idiots that will "denounce" the waste in tax payer's money in funding NASA or projects like this (I know, I'm preaching to the quire) and yet say nothing about the waste in wars. Stupid is as stupid does I guess.