I tried. The modem didn't work. It was on the approved list. Had a tech come out, he installed a Comcast router and it worked. They waived the rental fee for 6 months. As much as I hate Comcast, I hate not having internet more.
Here in Australia, while we have our own problems, you could just switch ISP if they're playing shenanigans like that.
In America, don't like your ISP? Guess you're living without internet then!
I think it's something like 70% of US households have only one 'choice' for ISP.
Then there was the discussion[0] here the other week about blitzscaling, and how it's basically "borrow money to do a land grab for monopoly, then use your money to stifle competitors".
Even the lack of preferential[1] voting contributes to a lack of choice - either vote for a major party, or your preference is irrelevant.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19094703 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
Of course, I’ve lived in parts of those metro areas that were densely populated. I.e., where a competitor could reasonably expect to recoup the cost of overbuilding. In less dense areas, the economics would be far worse.
Verizon offers 5/1 "broadband" DSL for twice the price, and the other two regional providers (Optimum, RCN) don't service my neighborhood (which is by no means sparsely populated).
Before that Telstra owned an ageing, choppy and slow copper network and that was your monopoly unless another ISP decided your area was populated enough to set up something.
I admittedly have it much easier living in a metro area, but I have about 80 ISPs to choose from. But my relatives are all over Australia and the majority of them have at least a FTTN network to use now.
I still suspect it will be sold back to Telstra and/or privatised and it'll go to hell again, it's already been majorly neutered.
We have multiple ISPs in Germany too, but unfortunately they are all crooks. Sure, it beats a monopoly, but the problem is far from solved.
I lived in Ipswich for 1.5 years, prior to moving in I signed up for ADSL2 (no NBN available in the area yet) with Telstra as they are the only ISP servicing the area.
I was told that the local exchange has no available ports, and that I would need to go on a waiting list to be given a connection.
I was periodically getting their "Sorry we can't provide you usable internet yet, how about ADSL1 or some 4G data at rip-off prices?" for that entire time, until I moved out and cancelled the still-pending service.
NBN was supposed to fix this, not sure if it still will though with the neutering of it.
This rental was required as even the approved modems couldn't be provisioned for statics, later on at other locations we just bought Motorola (now arris) SB6121's since dynamics were all that were needed for those locations and really never had an issue.