"We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company."

There was a similar situation when Google Fiber was rolled out in Provo Utah. Comcast essentially had a monopoly (they're the only ones allowed to put their cables on the power lines), they charge huge amounts for their internet, Google Fiber buries their fiber lines and suddenly Comcast drops prices begging people to stay.

I had to use Comcast for years, they lied to me many times and I finally escaped to a place with a different provider. Suddenly, this year Comcast comes and buries fiber lines in my area.

I will deliberately avoid Comcast, competition is absolutely required to keep prices down.

Why would they?

Spectrum's profits aren't even that high, so why would AT&T want to compete with them chasing down pennies, even 5 blocks away from HQ?

ISPs collude and have deals on which of them are zoned where. It's not a conspiracy, it's just reality. Go to any area in the US and whoever the major isp is, only has dysfunctional att or a crappy satalite provider as their "competition." if Cox, Comcast, and spectrum (pick three big names) had to compete in every area the consumers would have a lot more options. Yes, you can't force business to sercice areas, but I think the collusion of these companies is what should be regulated. We all know it's happening and when they do, if the regulators treated them as a single entity, we'd have the antitrust violations and breakups consumers are so desperate for.

When Fiber disruptors like frontier, Google, or local metropolitans enter the picture: suddenly the ISPs have a lucrative deals because they finally have to freaking compete. Suddenly the data caps are non issue and consumers can get blazing fast speeds with no infrastructure changes because they are holding out.

Regulators need to prevent this in the USA, but have been captured by the isp lobbies. Cable crooks is what I call them, because that's all ISPs are now, crooks. They'll have techs steal or break your equipment. They'll hide evidence when damage was caused by their techs. They'll lie when outages occur due to their own infrastructure failures despite sending out contractors to repair. They'll say whatever they need to, no matter how fraudulent, to tack fees and monthly charges to your account. They've weaseled their way out of being classified as utilities despite that being exactly what they are.

I loathe the ISPs in USA. Of course they will push bills like this. I see no end to the hell of having them the as tollmen of the internet.