True, but a decently-size metro probably only needs an engineer and may 3-4 tech support for every 50k households. In a metro area with 1 million subscribers,

True, but a decently-size metro probably only needs an engineer and may 3-4 tech support for every 50k households. In a metro area with 1 million subscribers, that's 20 engineer and maybe 80 tech support, then various administrative staff like payroll, manager, etc (say, another 20 people). Paying salaries of $120k per engineer, $50k per tech support, and $60k per admin, that's $2.4mm + $4mm + $1.2mm = $7.6mm in salaries. That's $8 per year per subscriber. Yeah, you need to pay for equipment and such as well. But there's plenty left in the budget for that. Even if equipment costs were as much as salaries, the ISP only needs to charge $1.25 per month to turn a profit. There's a reason Comcast, et al, are fighting so hard to maintain their monopoly: anyone could seriously undercut them on price and still make buckets of cash.