I was actually lucky enough to have been on a fiber-optic trial (through Telus) for Telephone, Internet and Digital cable when I was much younger (I think it was in 1998); at the time you could get 15Mb/s bi-directional internet through them. Telus believed (at the time) that they could eventually pay back the massive per-house up-front cost if they were allowed to offer services along the line to meet everyone's communication needs because the physical fiber optic cable is a one time cost; hypothetically speaking they could eventually offer 1 Gb/s internet on the same cable 10 years from now.
What eventually killed their plans was the CRTC pulled their cable TV licence; at the time many people claimed that it was a highly political move as a 'certain' local cable company heavily 'supported' the federal Liberal party who was in power at the time and Telus entering the cable industry would impact their monopoly.
Anyways ...
Fiber Optic is an amazing technology but requires a massive upfront cost and I expect that a company would need to have a very diverse buisness plan in order to recover the costs.
