There is a very easy solution to this. Electric utilities should be required to lay fiber along with electric. They can choose to offer internet (better) or offer fiber with a choice of carriers.
EPB in Chattanooga has been providing fiber to homes for decades.
A private business sure as hell wouldn't be so foolish as to sign such a contract.
The government is ostensibly giving them money and saying, "We hope you choose to do the thing we want with this money but you don't have to, no pressure."
Exactly what you'd expect happened, they took the money and did nothing. I honestly have a hard time finding that nearly as unethical as the government being incredibly irresponsible with our money, either through naivety or corruption.
They aren’t saying that. They’re saying the ethics are functionally irrelevant. It’s not dastardly enough to provoke a standard. It’s just monumentally stupid on the government’s part.
Corporations exist to make a profit and that’s fine, but they don’t need to claw and steal every penny they can find. Why do we perpetuate this idea that the appropriate behaviors for an organization are these horribly antisocial actions.
I now have four separate companies' fiber running through my property, of which I am connected to only one, but I could switch to two others anytime I wanted to, and then they'd run the "last connection" to my house. It's kinda silly.
(The fourth is a business line, which I could connect to but that involves more work as it is older.)
It's crazy we still haven't won the fight of "if you build a house the literally state controlled electric company has to hook you up" but here we are.
Adding regulation to force power companies to run dark fiber on new runs only addresses part of the problem. You still have to deal with the millions of miles/kms of installed grid that sees proactive maintenance _maybe_ once a decade.
Not to mention the state laws in dozens of states that place onerous rules on municipalities installing their own broadband service, or even outright forbid the practice entirely. These laws are often the result of ILECs lobbying state governments or using their lobbying groups to directly write "model legislation" that state governments subsequently adopt.
Michigan also has one of the most unique laws here. A municipality needs to put out an RFP to build the broadband network. If it gets three or more qualified bids it cannot proceed.
"a public entity may provide telecommunication services within its boundaries after issuing a request for competitive sealed bids to provide telecommunication services and receiving less than 3 qualified bids from private providers."
If you get enough bids, the assumption is that the price is competitive and therefore it's cheaper to use a private company and not have the gov't itself do the infrastructure work.
Connection to AT&T backbone surcharge..............................$39.99