> did they actually prove customers will pay more for fiber?

Who said fiber will inherently cost more? That assumption only makes sense if you think that ISPs charge people at a reasonable consistent margin, and arent't just jacking up the prices up to the maximum they can get away with.

From my personal experience, finer didn't end up costing more in most cases. I am paying about $60/mo for a symmetric 1Gbps fiber from Google Fiber in a high cost of living city in the US. No data caps, no random fees, easy billing, easy to work with customer service. I paused the service once because i was out of state for about a month, and then resumed it again. It was as easy as calling their customer service and spending less than a minute on it (not counting the little time at the start of the call where I had to verify my account information). Transferring service to a new address (within the same apt building) was extremely easy. No lock-ins, month by month, so I can easily cancel any time and then sign up later. No "installation" fees or any other bs. Just paying the agreed upon monthly cost, plain and simple.

Just before that, i used to live in another large city with a cheaper cost of living (Atlanta). I was paying about $20-30 more per month for a locked contract with Xfinity. It was a nightmare. Data caps, them adding "by mistake" equipment rental fee to my bill about half a year into it (despite me using my own modem + router, and me giving them their equipment back on day 1), as well as me wasting hours to get it resolved, only for the fee to get added back to the bill a few months later. And I got lucky that me and my roommate at the time spotted that fee getting added sneakily both times. And don't get me started spending over 4-5 hours on the phone trying to get the service canceled a couple years after living there (because i was moving across the country). I legitimately ended up having to lie to them that I am moving overseas, otherwise they kept insisting they could just transfer the service to my new address, no matter how many times I told them that I wasn't interesting.

An interesting development came shortly after. After I moved out of Atlanta, Google Fiber finally arrived into the city. In the areas of metro ATL where Google Fiber entered, Xfinity dropped prices significantly, but they barely matched Google in cost (but still had tons of random bs fees and costs that made the price higher), still was a locked contract, and the speeds/service was much worse, it was closer to 100Mbps (it wasn't fiber, it was DOCSIS). Guess what happened in the metro ATL areas that were just right outside of Google Fiber coverage? Instead of dropping the price, Xfinity jacked up prices there for the same old crappy service.

As soon as I initially heard that Google Fiber was coming into ATL area, I was excited for my mother finally getting a cheaper and more reliable internet provider that wouldn't sneakily add random fees or "deals" that force her to deal with it. At worst, I expected that Google Fiber won't expand to her house (just a 30 min drive up north from ATL midtown), but with Xfinity at least giving a cheaper rate, given the competition was encroaching. Except the exact opposite ended up happening.

Oh, and to make things better, that apartment building I lived in back then didn't get Google Fiber for years since it became available in the city, despite being squarely in the coverage area. Guess why? The apartment building management made a 5-year exclusivity contract with Xfinity (aka Xfinity paid them off) to be the sole ISP offered to the apartment building. So even if I wanted to switch, and Google Fiber was available in my area, then too bad.