2) The telephone network was a marvel of engineering at the time. Same for the power grid, power plants, oil refineries, etc. That infrastructure is the product of huge amounts of "hard engineering."
30% of Americans have 1 or fewer wireline broadband connections. Satellite and 4g cover a lot of them and provide at least some competition.
That 30% is mostly rural or small urban pockets that are just outside of DSL's effective range.
Verizon: http://www.broadbandmap.gov/about-provider/verizon-communica...
AT&T: http://www.broadbandmap.gov/about-provider/at&t-inc/nationwi...
Even if latency and packet loss weren't an issue for my use, there are additional restrictions that come in to play. For instance, my HOA doesn't allow any satellite dishes or microwave antennae to be mounted in the neighborhood. While petitioning my HOA for change would be much easier than trying to petition for national legislation, why should those companies be allowed to divvy service areas like gangs agreeing to stay out of each others' "turf"?
A duopoly is no better than a monopoly for all intents and purposes. It creates the illusion of choice. ISP A sucks at this, this and this, whereas ISP B sucks at that, that and that. There's a voting analogy to be made there, but let's try to stick to the topic at hand....
Multipoint systems used by most WISPs are TDMA-based and should have a fixed latency well below 10ms depending on how many active users are on a cell.
HOAs aren't allowed to prohibit antennas under 1 meter in diameter per OTARD [ http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over-air-reception-devices-rule] You should educate your board and contact the FCC if they balk.
Actually, it's often less because the microwave travels in a straight line while the fiber has to follow the utility poles or trenches (which often aren't in a straight line due to right of way issues). High frequency traders performing latency arbitrage use microwave dishes instead of fiber because it's a fraction of a second faster than using fiber connections on a cross-country connection.
Microwave dish systems are, however, a nightmare to support because transmission can be affected by the weather, birds, and a whole lot of other things. They also aren't very high bandwidth, and if you have a lot of dishes that means a lot of interference. I'd say they're perfectly fine for things like extending your LAN to your cabin up on a mountaintop, but not great tech to run an ISP off of (though people still try).
Once fiber is run to every house, I can't imagine why it would ever need to be replaced. I think it's actually physically impossible to have a faster data transport medium.
The question is whether a regulated monopoly could provide good broadband connectivity at a good price. Equipment upgrade scheduling is an implementation detail.
And it's a detail that is already priced into the service. It should be possible for such a monopoly to provide the same level of connectivity as Verizon or Comcast at lower prices, because for their current prices Verizon and Comcast already provide that level of connectivity plus content and software and marketing.
Big ISPs do everything necessary for connectivity, but they also develop and sell products that run on that connectivity. For example Comcast's on-demand and DVR everywhere solutions compete directly with services like Netflix, HBO Go, NBC.com, ESPN 3, etc. Developing, maintaining, and marketing that costs Comcast a lot of money--money that a connectivity-only monopoly would not need to spend.
It would be like if your electric company owned the lines, owned the power station, and sold you appliances like TVs and washing machines. Instead, electric companies just sell electricity, and everyone else sells you things that use electricity. I can't think of a reason that a similar architecture would not work for the Internet.
We need last mile liberation and we need to prevent ISP into entering content business.
As for your second point, my comment is only about dum products, not competition in production of said products. The cheaper you can produce a product, the more reliable the product chain is, the better a given company will do in profits.