Why is it any different than a phone line? To ensure that all Americans can afford at least a minimal level of basic telephone service, the FCC will not allow

Why is it any different than a phone line? To ensure that all Americans can afford at least a minimal level of basic telephone service, the FCC will not allow phone companies to charge more than $6.50 for a single line. https://www.fcc.gov/general/faqs-telephone https://www.fcc.gov/general/faqs-telephone The Subscriber Line Charge and Universal Service Fund and Connect America Fund, and various other subsidies going back to the early 1900's were instituted to deal with all kinds of dissatisfaction of unregulated market outcomes. If people liked what the market arrived at, we wouldn't have such a complex pile of subsidies: subsidies for rural areas, subsidies for those in poverty, subsidies for hospitals and doctors, subsidies for libraries. Today's internet is effectively becoming a superset of the telephone, and it was massively subsidized especially for rural areas. Whatever the opposite of economies of scale is, that's what telephone service looked like in rural areas if only the free market were to apply. Same for roads in rural areas for that matter. Anyway, it might be fair to consider internet access a "basic human right" as hyperbole. It's not itself food, clothing, or shelter. But it's a means of obtaining and maintaining them. Perhaps it's a civil right to have affordable and reasonably performing internet service? It's certainly at least a civil matter, even if it's not a basic human one.