Google Fiber could actually widen digital divide in Kansas City

It's funny to listen to monopoly thinking in action. There is absolutely no reason Google can't scale its model into lower demographic zones. First, of course, it will go for easier win areas to achieve last mile scale, as it already has significant parity across the mid-mile and WAN. It hasn't even begun to talk about enterprise, SMB and SOHO. Why not? because then it will really begin to scale. And lastly, as there is a bandwidth war, Google will turn on its advertising and subsidizing model and provide "free" or highly subsidized last mile access to lower demographic zones. Let's not forget the potential for high capacity wireless and mobile (droid) that it can achieve with second tier carriers to drive low-cost high capacity access to lower income zones. The author of this article should consider some of these issues before positing a monopoly-like outcome.

I am slightly worried, though, about why Google didn't grant a bit of open access to other service providers. If it's trying to prove that density and scale transform the economics for fibre (and let's be honest, this is not new as it's already been demonstrated in fibre deployments in parts of Europe) then why not improve the economics by letting other providers in who might offer differentiated business services that Google doesn't?