Technology

Oh, we broke up the big telecom in the 80s. But the behemoths which arose from those (and there were only 2 or 3 after two decades of mergers) and the cable TV companies which "compete" with them for data customers now are effectively regional monopolies anyway. Once a house has a provider, nobody else is willing to spend the money on fiber in the ground to compete. It's not even regional, really, but community to community or apartment building to apartment building (some of which have kick back deals to the landlord for exclusive service access to all the units). My neighborhood is less than 2km from a very large university with probably a Tb of connectivity. Everyone in my neighborhood has access to Comcast/Xfinity which, until last year ranged from 25/2 to 300/15 service, or Verizon DSL at 7.5Mb/768kbps speeds. There is fiber 300m from my house. I've contacted the fiber provider and talked with the CEO. He said they intend to do the whole town, except the captured apartments, but our neighborhood will be last if it ever gets done at all because the cost to install is higher than the newer and more dense neighborhoods.