Re: What, never heard of "barriers to market entry?"
AT&T didn't pay for that network. They had a legal monopoly going back to the Bell era where they were just guaranteed profits. If they had some cost overruns or hired a million bureaucrats, they just raised costs. Basically works the same way today. They just need to informally coordinate prices with Comcast and a few others. This arrangement is good for no one except the telcos. US data service is worse than most developed, and many developing, nations and still more costly. That's how monopolies work.
Second, Google isn't expecting Obama to just hand them a network as you seem to imply. They will pay for it. Read the articles. In Nashville, for instance, AT&T and Comcast refuse (and have bogged down in red tape via their government bureaucrat lackeys) access to 44,000 utility poles. Google will pay to install fiber, pay for usage rights, etc, but they are getting a no go from the cigar smoking crowd and their friends in local government... because AT&T and Comcast know there are huge cost efficiencies to be found in their models and don't want the competition. Google isn't asking for a handout. The telecoms are asking for their handout to be continued by not allowing serious competition, because they know Google isn't going to be cool with informal pricing fixing and will sell that fiber at the lowest price economically viable. Google doesn't care if they break even on fiber. They just want online services to work like online services should work. You can argue with their online model if you want (I think it is awesome), but there is no doubt that Google is the good guy in this situation.