>Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors serv

>Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors service. The less enticing it is to be comcast the better. The government can play a valuable role being a "competitor of last resort" in stagnant markets. I remember when I lived in Singapore (where the government builds a large quantity of social housing at a reasonable quality), the average quality of private housing would be considered stellar elsewhere - simply because the government had set the bar so high.