Where are you getting your reality from? Even here in NC in an "unsophisticated" municipality (as far as tech is concerned), the situation is precisely reverse

Where are you getting your reality from? Even here in NC in an "unsophisticated" municipality (as far as tech is concerned), the situation is precisely reversed. The municipality started the project for stringing fiber during the period where the FCC overturned the state law banning muni broadband. And they lease that out to an ISP with a contract requiring delivery of symmetric connectivity. The online reviews for that ISP are the pits; however, in this municipality that ISP hired the team that had been running the muni wifi program that started during that FCC-allows-muni-broadband period. I've been getting 300/300 for months; my ire is now wholly directed at the crappy state of wifi on my linux machines! :( Long story short-- I'd steer clear of taking an upshot about muni broadband in the U.S. unless it's from a user reporting what speeds they are actually getting on a business or residential endpoint on a muni broadband plan, measured over at least a few months.