> It's funny that you (and many others) say this because we had this from 1996 to roughly 2004. Oh, I know that. The US also had more "competition" in the ISP

> It's funny that you (and many others) say this because we had this from 1996 to roughly 2004. Oh, I know that. The US also had more "competition" in the ISP space nationally because all of the regional telephone companies and cable tv providers hadn't yet consolidated into the mega-corps we have now. > Telcos loathed it and pitched many mighty fits and threw every (physical and metaphorical) wrench they could in front of their brand new competitors. Separating (e.g.) AT&T from their last mile infrastructure (and placing barriers to them re-obtaining it) would go some of the way to preventing this. Someone operating the last mile infrastructure that is not also a direct competitor to their customers[1]. It's a conflict of interest that no law or regulation is going to properly resolve. [edit: I should clarify this. No law or regulation is going to properly resolve the situation unless we remove the incentives for the last mile operator to find loopholes to screw their customers.] [1] the ISPs connecting to people over the last mile infrastructure