It does sound a little bit like that, and other than for the incumbnets in KC, it's really an empty threat. But it will be interesting to see how TW Cable & AT&T react as Google Fiber services get deployed a bit more broadly in 2013. JB

Jeff -- That sounds like threatening somebody by playing Russian roulette: "Do what I want, or so help me, I'll pull the trigger!"

I haven't had a chance to read the full analysis , so i don't know how they arrived at that number and if it indeed included rural areas.  If anything, the report would seem to eliminate any fears that Google Fiber might start steamrolling in other markets, which quite honestly is not really the expecation....but interesting that someone took a stab at affixing a possible dollar figure to the idea of a national(ish?) rollout.

Google's never admited as much, but I continue to hear that they are really doing this to light a fire under the cable guys (and maybe the telcos too) to add broadband speed and capacity quicker than they have been. That possibility was raised even when Google launched the project way back when but it's come up again in my discussions.  Guess I'd be surprised if they expand this project outside of the KC area...depends on how the economics shake out. But I still find their approach interesting. JB

$140B should be no surprise.  Maybe even lowball.  It cost VZ $23B to cover 80% of its (reduced) footprint, mostly in cherry picked communities, with existing COs, engineering records, duct, pole attachments, aerial strand to overlash, workforce and vehicles.  Google or their contractors would have to replicate that.  Assuming "nationwide" truly means "nationwide", they would have to cover hard-to-serve urban areas and expensive-to-serve sparse rural areas. 

I'd speculate that the Google Fiber experiment has turned out to be a real eye-opener for Google.  And I'd be surprised if the conclusion is not that they should stick to their knitting and leave infrastructure to folks who do infrastructure.