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> The real answer is make it easier for there to be multiple companies to provide Internet access in a given area.

How? This is a serious question. Laying cable/fiber is tremendously expensive and is a natural monopoly. At best competing providers must lease infrastructure. So how does government induce "competition"?

And somehow in the more affluent parts of the city where I live, Comcast, Google and AT&T are all competing. AT&T and Google are both offering gigabit internet for $70 a month.

I moved into a brand new subdivision and I had a choice between AT&T fiber and Comcast. It's also ranked as one of the 25 most affluent counties in the U.S. I'm not bragging, any senior software developer making an average salary in the city could easily afford a house here.

On the other hand, in some parts of the state, they use to have a choice between low data cap cable and even lower capped DSL. But AT&T doesn't even offer DSL in some places that they use to. They either pulled out the market or are not accepting new customers.

Make it easier to get right of way to lay cable for internet. Also state governments are making it illegal for counties to offer municipal broadband. The government gives incentives for everything else, why not internet service?

> And somehow in the more affluent parts of the city where I live, Comcast, Google and AT&T are all competing. AT&T and Google are both offering gigabit internet for $70 a month.

Google is offering service in limited areas of 8 cities and have put on hold any future expansion. That is not comparative to the rest of the country and shouldn't be used as an example of competition. The country has no real competition for internet service providers.

Well, I guess that narrows down the metro area where I live....

But AT&T seems to be being more aggressive about their Rollout between DSL (slowly dying), and their newer fiber offerings.

https://m.att.com/shopmobile/internet/gigapower/coverage-map...

> [...] and you meet T-mobiles technical requirements, you can get zero rating. Everyone is on a level playing field.

The first part of that quote negates the last. You're not on a level playing field if you have to follow a single company's rules or risk losing your customers. You can argue these types of requirements exist elsewhere (e.g. app stores), but it's really hard to argue everyone is on a level playing field.

There rules are really simple - allow for adaptive streaming at lower bit rates - something that every single video provider has been doing for over 20 years since the advent of RealAudio in the mid 90s.

> there are four national carriers and a few regional carriers with their own networks. There is plenty of competition in the wireless space.

My experience of rural areas is that there is usually only one carrier that works. Not sure if my experience generalizes, but if I didn't know better I'd say the carriers were colluding either explicitly or implicitly to stay off each others turf.

I can't speak for the most rural areas. But when I visit smaller cities - populations around 100K, usually I see people on all four major carries. Going on the outskirts usually it's just Verizon and AT&T.

Northeastern Alabama here...my choices are Farmer's Telecom Coop's fiber or nothing. CenturyLink's DSL never made it to the nearest substation.

Fortunately, the speed's good enough and I'm happy with their service otherwise.