Not to disagree with any of the other points, but it's always worth remembering that any physical utility in the US has approximately 16x more land to cover than France. Not to mention the greater variety in climates (which do impact utilities).

Some cities only have one existing fiber line even coming into them, usually owned by one of the local duopolies (typically phone, since they originally were required to offer phone service to everybody).

This gives incumbents an immediate advantage in terms of reaching customers with physical infrastructure, before counting any of the (admittedly fucked) politics involved.