I would propose an easy solution: if a cable company runs its lines through city-owned property such as utility easements (and they all do) then those lines are no longer a private monopoly and must be made available to competing internet service providers at a fair price.

Conversely, if the company wants to maintain its monopoly and keep its service private, then it must remove all lines running through city owned property.

And while that might seem like an easy solution, any town that dares to pass such a law can expect an expensive lawsuit in retaliation. Of course, it’s unlikely to ever happen because most city councils and mayors are basically bought off by special interests far worse than state and national officials, as voter apathy has resulted in a situation in which elected city officials are typically lawyers who end up in a position overseeing the same companies that used to be their legal clients — and will be again once they leave office.

There are potentially 3 lines into most homes:

1. The Cable TV line discussed here.
2. The old analog phone line, that in many cases is no longer used (but still there).
3. New Fiber-to-the-Home runs. This is rarer, but it’s growing.

Right now, for most of America, #1 is the only real option. The phone line is lower-quality and hasn’t been able to keep up with cable TV, and so many phone companies aren’t even trying any more. And Fiber is just not available yet for a lot of people.

But we can do better.

While the traditional phone line can’t provide the same service as a DOCSIS 3.1 cable service, it can be made to do much better than the old crappy 6Mbps DSL service, and if the cable price goes much higher suddenly phone companies will have room to compete again.

Additionally, what really protects a lot of cable monopolies are city- or county- level franchises. If end users complain loudly enough, municipalities can revoke those franchises to allow more meaningful competition.

You’re right, it is a problem.

I used to work for a locally-owned ISP. We sold DSL internet service, on Qwest’s backbone. (Qwest is now CenturyLink.)

The problem is exactly as you say: Qwest was making money selling access to the lines, and was also a competing ISP.

Upshot: Qwest could offer nearly-free Internet service for a customer’s first year or two, only charge customers for the infrastructure access, and still turn a profit. We, obviously, couldn’t.

And that was back when DSL providers were obligated to share their lines with competitors; they’re not anymore.

I think the only solution is that infrastructure providers should be prohibited from selling internet service.

Your questions are reasonable, but not novel. They’ve been solved to some degree all over the world, including the USA—phone companies were required to share their lines with third parties until 2005. They argued it was unfair because cable companies didn’t have to do it; many other countries tried to level the field by forcing cablecos to share, rather than removing the telco sharing rules.

Typical ideas:

• All network providers have to share their lines with third parties. They get paid per user (a monthly fee, installation charges, etc), plus interconnection fees and possibly data-transfer fees if the third party wants the data brought to a more convenient aggregation point.
• If telcos abuse the above arragement, giving themselves advantages over third parties, they may be required to split the business into separate last-mile and internet businesses. This happened with Openreach in the UK.
• Municipal broadband, either full-service or an Ammon-like model.
• Municipal dark-fiber. Sonic.net has advocated for this model. Everyone gets a few dark fibers to a neighborhood interconnection point, and ISPs can rent space there.