Probably because the morass of red tape and bureaucracy in the way of building a competitor has made such an endeavor difficult to accomplish and that this was

Probably because the morass of red tape and bureaucracy in the way of building a competitor has made such an endeavor difficult to accomplish and that this was the case from the very beginning of net infrastructure. Recall that Ma Bell was made national carrier in exchange for not competing against smaller carriers. When the government starts picking winners and losers rather than letting companies duke it out in the market place, you get long term consequences like incumbent carriers that are economically inclined to only do marginally better than its competitors, if anything at all. And that's not considering the extreme bureaucratization and state instituted monopoly clauses that prevent profitable investment in infrastructure even from titans like Google.