Who were they buying the uplink from? When the company that owns the cables is also a retail ISP, selling cheap uplink to another retail ISP is never a good ide

Who were they buying the uplink from? When the company that owns the cables is also a retail ISP, selling cheap uplink to another retail ISP is never a good idea. EDIT: From reading a bit, it looks like these neighbourhood ISPs managed to get off the ground and develop significant clout before the telecoms companies managed to start providing consumer retail broadband services?