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).

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.

I agree, this is completely lame until Google can serve the western tech capitol, San Francisco.

SF High Speed options:

Comcast. Max out at 100/10.

Sonic offers fiber in certain blocks of the Sunset, but are deploying painfully slow.

I have an ATT U-Verse box permitted to install on my block but it hasn't happened yet, and I'm not thrilled with ATT.

Monkeybrains requires LoS to Sutro tower, and permission from the building landlord.

Webpass requires at least 20 units in a building.

Google remains the only hope; build it, TAKE MY MONEY.

MonkeyBrains requires LoS to any one of their radios, which aren't all located on Sutro. Permission shouldn't be a problem if the landlord is OK with tenants' satellite dishes on the roof. Even then, you can install any communications antenna (within reason) on areas you control in your lease (e.g. a balcony) thanks to OTARD [1]

[1] http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over-air-reception-devices-rule

Suburbs of DC (at least NOVA) has a decent number of places that have FiOS. Also the cable situation isn't that bad if you have Cox rather than Time Warner.

But the dominating factor of what determines where people live in the suburbs seems to be schools more so than internet. Google fiber here would be more of a novelty.

Yes... there's also RCN in DC as well yet in my neighborhood I can only get Comcast.

NYC at least because each building is like its own little fiefdom that's already wired for at least one competing service. FiOS has the same problems rolling out, a lot of the older buildings would require substantial building-wide upgrades to support fiber, something Google is likely not interested in at this point.

I think that NYC and DC already have Verizon FIOS, as do the suburbs of Boston, but not Boston proper. Why compete with an existing and decent fiber service when you can stick it to Time Warner- sorry, Comcast and AT&T instead?

I live in DC and I'd love to have Google fiber. We supposedly have a municipal fiber network here, but as far as I can tell it's doing diddly squat and I'm stuck with Comcast.

1. Sacramento would be an odd choice for California. 2. I believe this would have the opposite benefit you intend - if you want lawmakers to be on your side, they need to feel your pain.

Fingers crossed that DC is in the next group of cities :)