> Is this not what the government did to the telephone companies providing internet services, which subsequently caused them to stop investing in their infrastructure, thus resulting in the current market situation, where only cable companies provide broadband?
Last I checked, they never split up Bell into separate retail, wholesale, and infrastructure divisions operating as separate companies. Look at BT's organisation for how it's better done: BT Wholesale sell everything from the exchange to the backbones to retailers, and BT Openreach (generally) maintain the last mile. Then, there's a market of retail ISPs who buy services and space in the exchanges from BT Wholesale, BT Openreach, and other companies, and sell a whole Internet service to businesses and consumers.
If BT Wholesale or BT Openreach didn't get off their arses, there's now enough money floating around in the right places for any retail ISP or group of ISPs to invest in replacing them. They don't really want to, as there'd be a bunch of red tape and figuring out how the regulations apply, but they could if they needed to. We also have Ofcom, which is a very strong telecoms regulator which keeps this market running fairly (i.e. various parts of BT can't give out special discounts to retail ISPs, new services fall under the same regulations, etc).
We've had a few bumps, but all in all, it's going well for us. Many in the cities and large towns now have access to 70Mbps fully unmetered, unshaped Internet access through a number of ISPs for no more than their previous Internet package cost, and they can also often get Internet access through American-style cable companies (Virgin being the big one).
We're still trying to solve the problem of investment in rural areas, but there's actually been a couple of success stories regarding independent community ISPs, and I've noticed various towns you'd generally regard as "small" having their exchanges being upgraded to support fibre.
Last I checked, they never split up Bell into separate retail, wholesale, and infrastructure divisions operating as separate companies. Look at BT's organisation for how it's better done: BT Wholesale sell everything from the exchange to the backbones to retailers, and BT Openreach (generally) maintain the last mile. Then, there's a market of retail ISPs who buy services and space in the exchanges from BT Wholesale, BT Openreach, and other companies, and sell a whole Internet service to businesses and consumers.
If BT Wholesale or BT Openreach didn't get off their arses, there's now enough money floating around in the right places for any retail ISP or group of ISPs to invest in replacing them. They don't really want to, as there'd be a bunch of red tape and figuring out how the regulations apply, but they could if they needed to. We also have Ofcom, which is a very strong telecoms regulator which keeps this market running fairly (i.e. various parts of BT can't give out special discounts to retail ISPs, new services fall under the same regulations, etc).
We've had a few bumps, but all in all, it's going well for us. Many in the cities and large towns now have access to 70Mbps fully unmetered, unshaped Internet access through a number of ISPs for no more than their previous Internet package cost, and they can also often get Internet access through American-style cable companies (Virgin being the big one).
We're still trying to solve the problem of investment in rural areas, but there's actually been a couple of success stories regarding independent community ISPs, and I've noticed various towns you'd generally regard as "small" having their exchanges being upgraded to support fibre.