You have a choice of ISPs?
The technical hurdles and push back from the tech companies, media, and public are being extremely underrated. This whole scenario is far more complicated than the ISPs making a greedy choice one day.
Regardless I'd rather we regulate actual threats rather than hand-wavy hypothetical ones.
Uh, how do you think these "nerds" are going to provide broadband? It's highly capital intensive to lay cabling so you're either going to piggyback off of someone like Comcast (who is going to charge you a lot) or you're going to piggyback off of someone's wireless which is also very expensive.
That was the solution in Canada to generate competition, as the laying of cables was subsidized already, it was never a free market, as I'm sure the telecom industry in the US was hardly a free market... not sure why it's such a crazy idea.
Why not focus on creating the basis for competition instead of centrally managing the intricacies of business... which has historically further limited competition.
And if two companies engage in monopolistic practices, such as colluding to offer the same packages, that should be the domain of antitrust courts.
It's not a _crazy_ idea (many have proposed such an idea) it's just not _possible_ in the United States in most areas.
I guess technically 48% is a minority. Sure is an awful lot of people, though.
(Yes, if you drop all the way down to DSL speeds then most people do have more than one choice of provider. Ever tried to stream video at DSL speeds? Or shudder satellite?)
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...
but given a new definition of "broadband", competition will increase significantly. Now you can not only choose between Comcast and DSL, but AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile/Sprint. See? Lots of competition!
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/ajit-...