Break them up. There should be more competition in this industry.
Competition doesn't work in a market where you can't get information about the options because people are lying cheating and stealing.
This strikes me as a failure of the regulators and justice department on not stopping false advertising, punishing fraud, and generally enabling access to justice.
I think the parent commenter leans that even if you had the regulators stepping in more, they simply couldn't do it enough to make probability_of_getting_caught * fine_of_getting_caught > money_made_defrauding_customers (which based on the latest level of corporate scandals like VW emissions and privacy related tech scandals seems to be true, regulators just can't keep up or penalize harsh enough)
With competition, you always have someone enforcing your behavior... the other guy, who will happily step in and take market share when you falter with customers.
Edit: but frankly if the law was regularly enforced I expect fines would be enough here.
I hear you on the fines, but probably the purest form is to allow deregulation for competition but regulate to protect consumer safety (a balance if you will)
There are many ISPs who could compete with one another, but have an unwritten agreement to not compete. Competition drives lower margins, which just aren't worth it when you consider the upfront investment to start building out networks in a competitor's neighborhood - especially since the competitor is likely to retaliate by doing the same in your neighborhood. It is more cost effective for them to milk everything they can from the regions they currently dominate.
Whatever the solution looks like, I think it will have to actively incentivize ISPs to compete for each other's customers instead of just adding more ISPs to the market.
Last mile service is a natural monopoly, no amount of pounding the table will fix that. The only reason cable and phone people even compete with each other in the space is because they didn't originally and still try not to.
So it's pretty clear that we're paying for it through our taxes, and being billed for it at exorbitant prices.
Municipal-level ISPs make so much sense but, of course, face huge challenges by both established corporate interests and the kind of people who don't believe the government is capable of doing anything.