It is a somewhat unfortunate fact that competition is hard to arrange for services that require a large capital investment for each customer. There is a reason why there usually is only one electric power company, one water company, and one natural gas company in any area. The same applies to a slightly smaller degree to communication services, which often can share part of the investment with the power company and historically have had implicit subsidies, either long distance service (pre-1984) or cable TV. Fiber to the home is slow to come partly because of lack of incentive for the substantial additional capital investment that would be required, but is reported to have produced a competitive response where Google has entered the market. Radio based internet service, with lower per customer investment requirements might be a competitor, although in the Salt Lake, UT area it does not seem to have made much of a mark in the last few years.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
