To summarize, the article mentions four roadblocks:<p>1) Process: "Can you imagine the Seattle City Council keeping a secret like this and then acting on it in just one day? Of course not. We’d need to have endless community meetings and hearings and public floggings of Google Executives."<p>2) Pole Attachments: "At these rates, building a network on 100,000 poles to serve every home and business would cost Google up to $2.8 million just to rent the pole space."<p>3) Permits: "Attaching fiber cable to a pole in Seattle may require a pole attachment permit, a street use permit, and land use and environmental permits, among others."<p>4) Build-out requirements: "But the company has to agree to build out and serve every premise in that area. This is a lofty goal because it means all neighborhoods, rich and poor, get served, although it increases the overall cost because the company builds cable on streets with few customers."<p>None of these are unique to Google Fiber. These are hurdles ISPs, including incumbents like Comcast, face in nearly every large city. Google is just the 800-lb gorilla that refuses to play along. They'll only install fiber in cities desperate enough to sign a contract with Google without extensive public proceedings, who will allow bypassing permit requirements that apply to everyone else.<p>What the article really highlights is the <i>real</i> reasons for the lack of ISP competition. People imagine shadowy cabals conspiring to keep out competitors, but in most cities, it's the result of rules that aren't facially unreasonable. Rules like build-out requirements, which apply to incumbents and competitors alike, make deploying fiber economically unattractive, sometimes even for the incumbent.<p>Contrast the telecom industry with say the cell phone industry. It'd be illegal for an ISP to do what Apple did with its first iPhone: target rich buyers, then trickle down the technology to everyone else as it recouped capital costs. The rule is deploy to everyone, or don't deploy at all. Unsurprisingly, companies usually choose the latter. Except Google, which has the clout to demand exceptions to the rules, and the luxury of not actually being in the ISP business and only deploying in smaller municipalities willing to bend-over.