Thanks for the clarifications. Useful stuff.
Massive corporate ISPs like AT&T and Comcast are only a relatively recent thing. Expecting a massive corporation to do the right thing is naive. If they can profit from it, they’ll screw consumers.
Regulations like these are a necessary evil to prevent monopolies. If you look at the 3-tier system in the US for alcohol. It seems weird but it has been an effective anti-trust tool allowing competition from much smaller businesses. Compare this to New Zealand, Australia, or UK, and the smaller alcohol manufacturers just can’t compete against tied houses. Market forces can’t change the actions of a monopoly. If one company prevents a consumer from seeing a new product, the market may not even know they want that delicious, delicious thing because the monopoly fears anything new and does what it can to destroy the new thing.
My only optimism is that cities are starting/planning to invest in infrastructure like fiber and doing it right but just laying the fiber and allowing private companies to maintain it and provide access over it.
