This doesn't happen in a healthy market. If the barriers to the market are low enough that anyone with some business sense can enter without requirement for a lot of money and lawyers to fight against the incumbent, then demand for a decent ISP simply makes one happen. I've witnessed this multiple times and had been an engineer at such ISP once (to be fair: halfway across the globe, in a different urban environment, but still...)
Seriously, I've seen it myself - if some ISP starts to do shitty things to their customers, if the market is healthy (a competition is possible and anti-monopoly agencies watch out for collusions, etc.) - things get fixed just like that. A contender comes, says "hey folks, we have simply decent service with no BS" and people sign up in droves.
Please don't get me wrong, though. I totally understand the present-day US-specific issues. Net Neutrality seems to be a necessity, but it must be treated as a temporary measure at best, always mentioned with a large footnote to it. It is not a solution - it's a band-aid until the wound is allowed to heal (if it is allowed, and NN by itself _doesn't_ heal anything), so such solutions should really focus on ensuring that they're not hindering any grassroot competition but rather welcome them. And specifically in the US (which is way less dense than most places) some push towards community fiber projects may be a necessity.
The barrier to being an ISP is literally owning a wire that connects to everyone's house. That's the exact opposite of a low barrier to entry. It's a natural monopoly.
Wait, do you mean ISPs in the US don’t need licenses and/or permits for the wires? I have heard this was the case, and that those are hard to obtain (particularly because of the regulation barriers supported by large telecoms, as it looks kind of benign yet builds a moat around their fiefdoms), and sometimes outright impossible because of exclusivity agreements.
they need all of those. I was saying that even in the absence of regulation, needing to physically network every customer is a huge barrier to entry. it's basically the same as the hypothetical where there were multiple sewer networks or electrical grids just so you could choose your supplier there
What is wrong with communal fiber for the last few miles? As long as it’s truly a “public road” (for a reasonable network size) without any small print, owned by the consumers themselves so they decide on the peering? (But are legally prevented from exclusivity traps, which might be already the case - need to read up on this).
Need just one of those for every place, and relaxed zoning laws between such IXes (where ISPs come to play). That assuming that those singleton last-mile networks are ran by the people for the people, in a low corruption environment (which I believe the US is, at least on a smaller-scale levels). If democracy doesn’t fix unfairness I’m not sure what can do.
That's not strictly true these days, given that T-Mobile offers home Internet access via 5G and also Starlink, though neither of them are a replacement for a hard line.
neither tmo nor starlink work where i live. tmo would need to spend money to serve me, and i'd need to spend thousands of dollars or rent a bulldozer and learn to use it to clear trees. Fixed wireless would work if it wasn't on the 2ghz+ bands (i know because i had this, too, until at&t canceled both versions)
USDA won't give grants or "guaranteed loans" to anyone trying to start a community WISP if the area is "served" by incumbents - you have to gerrymander your service area which i find seedy. Definition of "service" is 1.5mbit downstream.
Seriously, I've seen it myself - if some ISP starts to do shitty things to their customers, if the market is healthy (a competition is possible and anti-monopoly agencies watch out for collusions, etc.) - things get fixed just like that. A contender comes, says "hey folks, we have simply decent service with no BS" and people sign up in droves.
Please don't get me wrong, though. I totally understand the present-day US-specific issues. Net Neutrality seems to be a necessity, but it must be treated as a temporary measure at best, always mentioned with a large footnote to it. It is not a solution - it's a band-aid until the wound is allowed to heal (if it is allowed, and NN by itself _doesn't_ heal anything), so such solutions should really focus on ensuring that they're not hindering any grassroot competition but rather welcome them. And specifically in the US (which is way less dense than most places) some push towards community fiber projects may be a necessity.