[skywhopper]

Varies by municipality, but pretty much everywhere the "last mile" is a local monopoly, granted by the town, county, or city with the rights to do so. And so long as that's the case there's no real competition and thus no way for Internet users to route around these abusive practices of their ISPs.

[klipt]

What's funny is that now the incumbents have the monopoly (paid for using taxpayer money) they're pushing to prevent new competitors like Google fiber from working with the municipalities at all: http://consumerist.com/2014/01/30/kansas-legislature-wants-t...