Verizon's FIOS fiber hasn't been profitable, and they've stopped building it out. Google would run into the same problem if they actually built enough that it had to make money, instead of only doing cherry-picked demo projects.

Technically, you don't need fiber to the home to get gigabit rates. Coax from the end user to the DOCSIS node at the pole is more than enough. Within 100 meters, such as in apartment buildings, CAT 5 is enough. The fiber connection to the DOCSIS node at the pole, the DOCSIS node, and the back end have to have more bandwidth.

The cable industry has a plan for slow migration to gigabit services:

http://www.cedmagazine.com/articles/2012/07/an-evolutionary-...

One unit at a time, in the chain from head end to end user, equipment can be swapped out for faster, but backwards-compatible, units.

Of course, in the end it's still Comcast.