content: This isn't the issue. The point is that Google Fiber has low penetration even in the areas they now serve. As of late 2015, it was estimated that Google Fiber has a total consumer base of up to 120,000. Why? The problem is really simple. People are sick and tired of the Comcast/Time Warner monopoly and clammoring for any alternative. Google, like a white knight, announces they're coming into an area. People queue up by the millions. Google Fiber then spends billions of dollars setting up their infrastructure, labor base, and so on. They also spend years of time and millions of manhours. And finally, finally!, they announce they'll be turning on the lights and ready for signups the next day. Suddenly Comcast/Warner tell all their consumers, "Oh hey, we're going to price and service match everything you could get at Google Fiber." And... nobody signs up. It will be decades before they're ever in the green on their investments, and that's under the assumption that they're currently profitable with that tiny userbase. Of course Google knew this would happen. The only reason they competed was because they had an outside interest in improving the telecom infrastructure in the US. This is also the reason no other company would even consider touching the telecoms industry. This is more of a basic issue of our economic system than lack of competition. I think the laissez faire is the answer to everything guys take a bit of a naive approach to things. They pretend that the companies who are just overcharging stand idly by while somebody comes and sucks away all their companies. That's not how things work in reality. They'll adjust their prices in response to competition, and consequently anybody who wants to compete needs to factor this into their models. And given the big players in telecoms today spend next to nothing on actually offering their service, they can afford to drop their prices almost arbitrarily low to ensure there's no competition. This is why nobody competes against them - because they can't win.