> because of his “lousy phone company.”

Highly dependent on where he lives.

There are parts of the country (I'm familiar with central/western MA) where there is no cable service, ADSL requires a short distance from the local POP (and <= 1.5Mbps is arguably not 'broadband'). FTTH rollouts have pretty much stopped, and 4G service is nonexistent.

There is a good talk on telecom monopolies linked in this comment (that thread has other good discussions, as well): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6124918