Cold water for Google Fiber fans: Covering the whole country could cost $140 billion
Bad news for those of us who would love to see Google (GOOG) expand its fiber network out to the entire country: Doing so may be prohibitively expensive. Business Insider points us to a new research note from Goldman Sachs estimating that it would cost Google an estimated $140 billion or more to make Google Fiber available to the rest of the United States. Since Google has “only” $45 billion on hand and since its annual CAPEX budget is $4.5 billion, it’s highly unlikely that Google Fiber will be rolling into most peoples’ neighborhoods in the near future. And that’s not the worst part — according to Goldman, “even a 50 million household build out, which would represent less than half of all US homes, could cost as much as $70 billion,” meaning Google would likely have to take out a major loan just to get Fiber to most major markets.
