America is a large country. Cities and towns are large and expensive to wire up. So in the early days a lot of cities granted exclusive contracts to the phone

America is a large country. Cities and towns are large and expensive to wire up. So in the early days a lot of cities granted exclusive contracts to the phone and cable utilities in return for making the effort of wiring everyone up, not just the neighborhoods that were more likely to afford it. Those monopolies (cough cough, sorry, franchise agreements) are now coming back to bite the consumers because, lo and behold, you can't string up fiber in a town that has an exclusive cable television franchise granted to another company. You're letting people view TV over fiber internet? That's a TV service and you're violating the agreement. So no competition means high prices. Hopefully the advanced wireless technologies will break some of that hold, but it's not quite there yet.