It doesn’t matter how shitty the deal is because exclusivity arrangements are illegal. But that doesn’t mean anyone actually wants to serve an area.
Baltimore has a non-exclusive arrangement with Comcast. But, as of 2016 when they were trying to get Google Fiber, literally no company had ever asked to come in and compete. It’s not worth it. Baltimore requires wiring up the whole city. A third of the city lives at or under the poverty line—it simply makes no business sense to build a fiber network that covers all of Baltimore.
That’s the basic constraint. Municipal politics makes it impossible to build a network just in the neighborhoods where people would sign up. There is a reason Google Fiber took its “fiber hoods” approach to cities in red states like Missouri and Kansas. At the same time, it makes no business sense for providers to foot the bill to wire up those poor areas, and the municipality doesn’t want to spend the money to do it.
> At the same time, it makes no business sense for providers to foot the bill to wire up those poor areas, and the municipality doesn’t want to spend the money to do it.
On the other hand, college neighborhoods are largely not wealthy and was one of the first places in my city to get fiber. I think it's because they tend to have a much higher density (e.g. a 2 story house likely houses 2 households) and I would guess are more likely to pay for faster and/or more stable internet.
Based on how telcos have been acting, I think they just wish everyone would pay $100 for 512k down and 64k up forever, while they get and keep government subsidies for broadband initiatives that never get rolled out.
I'm not even in a big city, just a solidly middle class red exurban county that makes it cheap to build infrastructure. We didn't even have public sewer and water in my neighborhood until 2015.
