This was a common way to do things before the telcos in the USA were deregulated in the 2000s and 2010s. At the time it was both internet and telephone but due to the timing of de regulation, it never really took off with real high speed internet, only dsl and dialup.
I used to work at a place that did both on top of the various telcos. We offered ‘premium service’ with 24 hour customer support and a low customer to modem and bandwidth ratio.
Most of our competitors beat us in price but would only offer customers support 9-5 and you may get a busy signal/ lower bandwidth in the back haul during peak hours.
There was a single company that owned the wires and poles, because it’s expensive and complex to build physical infrastructure and hard to compete, but they were bared from selling actual services or undercutting providers because of their position. (Which depended on jurisdiction).
It solved the problem we have now of everyone complaining about their ISP but only having one option in their area.
We have that problem now specifically because we deregulated common carriers for internet right as it took over the role of telephone service.
I used to work at a place that did both on top of the various telcos. We offered ‘premium service’ with 24 hour customer support and a low customer to modem and bandwidth ratio.
Most of our competitors beat us in price but would only offer customers support 9-5 and you may get a busy signal/ lower bandwidth in the back haul during peak hours.
There was a single company that owned the wires and poles, because it’s expensive and complex to build physical infrastructure and hard to compete, but they were bared from selling actual services or undercutting providers because of their position. (Which depended on jurisdiction).
It solved the problem we have now of everyone complaining about their ISP but only having one option in their area.
We have that problem now specifically because we deregulated common carriers for internet right as it took over the role of telephone service.