I think they should do it at some point. It's just too major of a potential to ignore.
In the case of San Francisco, this isn't surprising; San Francisco's Congressional Representative (Nancy Pelosi) is a Comcast shareholder IIRC, and I suspect that's only one example of likely governmental interference with such prospects (and possibly one of the root causes; I'm not all that familiar with San Franciscan politics, but I'd reckon that - if she's truly representative of San Franciscans - then they've probably voted similar candidates into other municipal positions).
That latter aspect is closer to my point. If San Francisco's (for example) population is collectively willing to vote a Comcast shareholder into office as their representative in the federal government, what makes you think they wouldn't do the same for their own local government?
Not to mention that if any of them are her (or some similar politician's) "supporters", they'll likely lean toward the supportee's stance on a particular issue (like Comcast's marketshare in San Francisco being negatively affected by a hypothetical Google Fiber rollout).
The price is reasonable though regardless whether it's NYC or not. What Verizon charges for 0.5 gigabit is simply insane.
Because Verizon stopped caring about landline Internet for a while already. Not because it's not profitable, but because current Verizon execs are all from the wireless department (unlike previous Verizon CEO who was from landline part of the business and started FiOS effort to begin with). I.e. Verizon just wants more profits from wireless and wants to get rid of landline altogether. It's idiocy or greed or whatever. Nothing good anyway. We are lucky NYC actually holds Verizon accountable for their contract (since they got massive tax cuts for promising to wire the whole city with fiber).
> Verizon's lack of substantial profit margin on FiOS is well-known.
After Ivan Seidenberg has left, FiOS was doomed. Wireless execs weren't interested in making it more profitable. Not because it couldn't be, but because they didn't want it.
> The price they charge for 0.5 gigabit is what they have to charge to make up for their unionized workforce, build out requirements, etc.
That's nonsense. They charge lower prices for the same line (which is the bulk of what they get). Barely anyone in residential FiOS pays such crazy prices (businesses is another question). I.e. they can provide much more bandwidth even for their lower price tiers and still be profitable. They just want to rip off the higher one.
As to your point about ripping off for 500 Mbps--I don't think you understand how much cross-subsidization is built into the framework. As part of their arrangement with the city, Verizon has to pass a bunch of neighborhoods in NYC that will have very low FiOS uptake.[1] They have to recoup the cost of that from somewhere, and charging high prices for premium tiers is how they do it. It's not a "rip off" when the overall wireline profit margins are as narrow as they are. It's just like how Apple charges $100 more for $10 worth of extra flash memory on an iPhone (except their profit margin is comical compared to wireline).
[1] Something Google categorically rejects in Fiber cities.
pyvpx already explained it very clearly above:
> not when those dollars can be spent on LTE/wireless and see a far greater return. just because something is profitable doesn't mean there is something even MORE profitable to spend dollars on (in VZs case, wireless wireless wireless)
That's what I meant as well. They can have profits, but they want more profits. That's about it. I.e. it's a conflict of interests between their landline and wireless divisions. They simply see landline as unworthy, because wireless provides them higher profit margins. Not sure how it can be fixed though. May be they can be split into two separate companies.