Plenty of countries have better (faster and/or cheaper) broadband options than most of the US, without having any Google involvement. Competition (or government enforced requirements and price caps) are what's needed, Google Fiber had a bit more of an incentive than most for aiming to undercut their competitors but ultimately I think you're overstating their importance.
Competition would be nice, but just the appearance of credible competition was enough to induce the incumbents to do better.
Google Fiber deployed to the Kansas Cities, making themselves credible competition. Then, they announced 20 cities they would deploy to. Suddenly, incumbents in 20 cities had deployment plans and deployed before Google Fiber got anywhere, and then Google Fiber decided not to do any new deployments.
Would the incumbents have deployed without Google Fiber's credible competitive announcements? Maybe? We'd need inside information to know for sure. It sure doesn't feel like they would have though.
> Would the incumbents have deployed without Google Fiber's credible competitive announcements?
Of COURSE they wouldn't!
If google fiber hadn't happened, all providers would have continued sitting on their collective asses, soaking as much money as possible, doing the least possible legally permissible work, nickle-and-diming customers as much as possible.
> Plenty of countries have better (faster and/or cheaper) broadband options than most of the US, without having any Google involvement.
Those countries have governments willing to regulate for the benefit of the consumer, or else to provide the service directly[1]. That there are better ways to do something doesn't mean it's not valuable to have done.
[1] Almost nowhere, in any market, had competing gigabit landlines in residential areas over the timeframe discussed. "Competition" is absolutely not the solution here.
Most countries have policies that expressly prohibit competition, or make it unnecessarily expensive.
Suppose the government owned the utility poles or trenches along the roads, paid for them in the same way as they pay for the roads, and access to use them was provided to all comers for free. All you have to do is fill out some basic paperwork and follow some basic rules to make sure you're not cutting someone else's lines etc.
People would install it. You -- an individual -- could go out and put fiber in the trench on your street, wire up the whole street, pool everybody's monthly fee and use it to pay for transit.
The reason people don't do this is that it's illegal, or to do it without it being illegal would require millions of dollars in legal fees and compliance costs and pole access charges.
Usually those countries have some combination of lower labor costs, higher density (you can run fiber and then hang 5x as many subscribers off it) and a more lax regulatory landscape (try getting permits to dig in a US city).
You don't necessarily need competition either. Switzerland's state owned telecoms provider provides 25gbit symmetrical fibre to practically all homes in all cities and it is very affordable.
