What is the actual harm / collusion? You can choose from a wide variety of ISPs, which are decent to your own admission, but the harm is it is not fiber ?
The past two years should've made it clear that public education and the workforce increasingly depend on having access to bandwidth. Of course this was already a trend, but the pandemic accelerated it, affecting entire household bandwidth consumption at once. I disagree with the implication that wanting (needing?) fiber is somehow equivalent to whining.
I can effectively choose between two: Comcast and Verizon/their resellers. I said Comcast _downstream_ speeds are decent. Their _upstream_ speeds are atrocious.
Comcast only provides coax. Verizon and their resellers only support aging copper DSL lines.
No fiber is available unless I pay Comcast literally thousands of dollars just to bring the line to my house. Then they want to charge me $300 a month on top of that.
I did not suggest there was harm or collusion between Comcast and Verizon. I only pointed out that your experience of having a plethora of acceptable ISPs is unusual in most of the United States.