[thwarted]

It seems that it is currently more efficient to bus people around, using (abusing, some might say) the infrastructure that already exists than to battle municipalities and telcos to provide/get/allow-you-to-install higher speed network connectivity.

[zach]

Good point, and it is a long game, although Google doesn't yet seem to be incentivizing people to move to Kansas City. And the buses are a good testbed for an autonomous vehicle fleet, like how Uber dispatches human-driven cars today in order to grow the market for 3-7 years from now.

In the post-WW2 era, suburbs like Irvine here in the LA area built up a large economy by providing growing industries with land use they couldn't find in the metropolis. And the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System provided an infrastructure that citizens appreciated and trucking companies were able to use to diversify goods movement. Maybe forward-looking municipalities or larger government entities have an opportunity to enable further economic progress by providing superior access to high-speed connectivity.