Wow, shit. it's been a long time since I've been here.
Did a search for my name
Anyway, to answer the question, there's more to it than just yes, no, because.
back during the dot.com boom companies spent mega bucks laying fiber in anticipation of mass sustained usage. But of course it went to shit and the bottom dropped out. That left all the 'dark' fiber in the ground.
As for cost? the costs involved with fiber is ungodly. The last time I managed a project where we did any fiber was on the Navy contract. a 144 strand of fiber (about as big as your index finger) was 70 bucks... a foot....
that's changed, but the point is the cost is huge. The fiber is the cheap part. the head ends they go to are the extremely expensive part.
Now, on to 'Internet 2'. Personally? Yup i do think it's coming, and if you watch the trends you'll see it too. Google has been buying up HUGE amounts of dark fiber, and the buzz right now is they are going to create a parallel internet that THEY own. Their intention would be to compete with small companies doing the wireless hot spots free. Right now the govt is paying for the installation of all these things because they want it up, but google doesn't need it, they can build it themselves.
So what happens? You go to the park with your laptop and you see the googlenet. jump in, and they have direct control over your whole connection. You can rest assured it will require special software to connect that also has the ability to force ads to you.
As an advertiser it's a huge bonus to be able to get things like this and they pay a fortune for it.
So, directly? no I don't think so. A business adventure? most definitely but the problem is who the hell could afford it? Google, and Microsoft.
Don't count MS out either. This is coming and it's actively being developed. This is a sort of 'the writing's on the wall' stage, but what other reason would google have of buying thousands of miles of fiber? They don't need anywhere near that much for their current search/infrastructure. In fact, google's first claim to fame was how you could do these huge search engines with cheap, small equipment.
dunno