[sottol]

Or maybe it's an oligopoly where the incumbents have carved up the market and stopped competing, milking their customers instead.

Broadband is then extra special if you let the ISP also own the infrastructure as everyone has to reconnect their service to every house instead of one company (or forbid, the govt) owning the pipes and several companies competing for providing services over those shared pipes.

Imo the competition model doesn't necessarily (always) work that well for infra.