[justina1]

I can't speak for the other three cities, but San Francisco has a number of problems that would make it difficult for a Google Fiber rollout.

First, AT&T is already in the process of rolling out fiber to the home, or in some cases, fiber to the node with last mile copper. They have faced nothing but problems trying to do this from people in the city: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Groups-sue-S-F-trying-...

Density can be a nice benefit, but lack of space makes it hard to place the equipment necessary to serve fiber.

Second, a local provider Sonic.net is also rolling out fiber by taking the approach of starting in the closest thing San Francisco has to a less dense suburb (the Sunset). They've faced exactly the same issue (battles over placing Utility boxes).

[discardorama]

People have been pushing for municipal-owned fiber for a long time in SF: https://www.change.org/petitions/make-fiber-broadband-a-prio...

But the Mayor thinks that WiFi is good enough. :-(

ATT's last-mile copper solution will barely be better than their current "Uverse".

The City (SF) has tons of fiber running all over the City. With some infrastructure investment, it would not be hard to use that as a backbone for municipal fiber. Residents can then sign up with any of the 3rd parties to jump on to the Internet.