I am not angry about Google Fiber, I'm disappointed. This project reminds me of Google Fiber in that it had a kind of optimism backed by a tremendous amount of

I am not angry about Google Fiber, I'm disappointed. This project reminds me of Google Fiber in that it had a kind of optimism backed by a tremendous amount of capital, both in cash and in goodwill. For fiber, of course I knew about the incumbents. The 1990s were an enormous giveaway to the telecommunications industry in terms of tax breaks in exchange for a nebulous set of promises and, as far as I can tell, no teeth -- what penalties for failure to deliver? They took the money and devoted it to lobbying and eventually as much regulatory capture as they could manage. We knew going in that it would be tough. And of course infrastructure, physical infrastructure, is tough. You have legal requirements, like permits and easements. You have the "merely" physical task of digging all of these trenches, mile upon mile. You have an huge outlay of equipment, from ordering to configuration and maintenance. You have the relentless horror of the last mile. Most importantly, the competition wouldn't like it. Not one bit. They even spoke of it. I don't think anyone didn't know this going in, but the promise was that Google could and would deliver results because they knew all of this beforehand. Somehow, despite all of that, it didn't work out, but they were very certain at the time it would. They even managed to convince me and I come with a fairly dour outlook on these kinds of pitches. This has much the same smell as did Google Fiber. This I can be a little annoyed at because it sounds as if lessons were not learned.