IIRC, a post to NANOG a while ago claimed that the cost to run fiber to the home is well over $1k/household. I think the math works out to the conclusion that neither Netflix nor Google has enough money in the bank to run fiber to a large fraction of America.

So the question becomes: if you get fiber to 1% of America, is that going to be enough of a demo project to convince someone to come up with the money for the rest of America?