[exelius]

Operating margin is a bad measure here. Net margin is a much better method because the telecom business is geographically constrained, meaning many of the tricks that technology companies use to avoid taxes (and thus boost profits) don't work in this industry. The revenue is generated in the US using assets that physically exist in the US, so it's a lot harder to dodge the taxes the way you can with IP assets.

Comcast's net margin is closer to 12-14%. And I would say that it's a pretty bold assumption that Google would be able to operate more efficiently than that: Comcast is a mature company in a mature market. Comcast's RF broadcast technology has some limitations, but it also has benefits: relatively low operational costs being a big one of them. Both Verizon and AT&T tried an architectural approach that is quite similar Google's, and their deployments stalled because of platform scalability problems.z