Maybe you're willing to pay more. Most people probably aren't. (FiOS uptake rates are under 40% even though its always been much faster than competing cable services.) And the brutal economics of fiber really punish you for that. If your uptake rate goes from 50% to 33%, your per-subscriber costs have to go up to compensate (which puts even more downward pressure on your uptake rate).

The average Comcast customer paid something like $150/mo in 2017.

Replace that with a $100/mo. FTTH plan, plus Netflix and you're still saving money. And many people have Netflix + Comcast already.

I image that $150/mo average include cable and landline? I spent between $35-65/mo at my last 3 apartments (CA, KS, MO) for ~100-200mbps through Comcast for internet only.

An extra 50 a month is definitely worth not ever dealing with Comcast support or their shitty network.

FIOS includes TV. The real issue is Verizon is not that much better than cable companies.

I'm not sure I understand your first point? TV is a major part of the economics of fiber deployment. Chattanooga's fiber system also includes TV, so does Google Fiber. As to your second point--have you ever had FiOS? Verizon's wireline division is run like old-school AT&T--FiOS is very high quality.

I have used FIOS for the last 5 years. For a while they where throttling Netflix just like the Cable companies, so better sure but they also wanted to kill net neutrality just like the cable companies.

As to TV, you spread the network costs over both internet AND cable TV and should include a portion of TV/equipment rental revenue when calculating payback periods. Cord cutters are significant, but many people still want cable TV channels and rent DVR's.

I agree you need to include TV revenue--that's why I threw in Verizon's $110 ARPU (which includes TV), and suggested that Boulder's more expensive system would have to hit an even higher number like $140 (including TV).

> $100/mo for FTTH vs. $69/mo for 250MB/s Comcast? I'll take the FTTH and leave Comcast and Century Link behind, thank you very much.

It's $100/mo only if you hit 50% uptake rate. If your uptake rate is only, say, 33%, because most people don't care about gigabit and would rather save the $30/month, your per-household cost shoots up (as does what you have to charge to recover the investment).