It's more than just lack of competition. What's happened is all cable television and phone companies have realized they are completely fucked. The Internet is way more disruptive than they originally thought. With VOIP and Netflix/bittorrent nobody needs a phone or television anymore. So there is a conflict of interest growing among the only companies that are providing broadband internet.
These companies don't want to be relegated to simple utilities with low profit margins, and so they are doing everything in their power to keep the cost of data rising even while their cost of the bandwidth drops by half each year. With bandwidth caps and usage-based billing at 5000% profit margin they are simply begging the government to crack down on what ends up being highway robbery.
These companies don't want to be relegated to simple utilities with low profit margins, and so they are doing everything in their power to keep the cost of data rising even while their cost of the bandwidth drops by half each year. With bandwidth caps and usage-based billing at 5000% profit margin they are simply begging the government to crack down on what ends up being highway robbery.