[snogglethorpe]

Isn't the issue really those square quotes? Maybe the U.S. nominally has such competition, but based on what I've read, it sounds like most people don't feel they have much actual choice.

Compare this to a place like Tokyo, where there's a vast number of real competitors for both last-mile infrastructure (wires / low-level communication) and ISP services, and perhaps even more critically, those two components seem to be largely decoupled. That decoupling seems like it would go a long way in helping to avoid the sort of net-neutrality shenigans than seem to be occurring with U.S. ISPs these days, by dramatically decreasing barriers to entry for new ISPs.