Hey Logan, Wendell, and the tek syndicate team plus everyone on the forum. In the small Wyoming town I live in we recently got city wide fiber optic internet that was laid out by one of the local ISPs (TCT west) with the support of the city. Since TCT used city money to lay out the fiber so it can easily connected anyone's home, the city passed a law that makes it illegal for any other company to lay out their own fiber optic network. So, even if Verizon or Google wanted to lay fiber in my town they couldn't. This has allowed TCT to corner the market on fast internet speeds since all of the other providers are either DSL or satellite based. The price per month for an up to 100 Mbps connection is almost $182.00. I would like to know everyone else's thoughts on this policy and if it’s happening where you live. I think that it is absolutely stupid that no else can lay fiber and offer a competitive price to TCT.
There has been tons of articles touching this kind of issues on Arstechnica lately, I highly recommend you check them out. Similar stuff happened in Kansas, but that was lobbied for by larger ISPs not a local one, too bad really they are supposed to be the good guys. Basically it seems to be state to state, not nationwide laws, but excuse me for my ignorance, this is only an educated opinion I've gotten from said articles, as I am not a US citizen so I do not know about it more than that.
What I can say though is that your Tele/Internet infrastructure and the issues surrounding it is really fucked up. Too much lobby-ism, shady job transitions from FCC positions to working as a lobbyist for the telecommunications corps and downright corruption... There was a great article on NyTimes lately too about this exact issue. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/business/media/comcasts-web-of-lobbying-and-philanthropy.html?ref=technology&_r=0
Hope your local ISP get that monopoly revoked and that they introduce the possibility for competition.