Unlike in sane countries where the government has either an independent provider (like Australia's NBN) or mandates the previous monopoly to open up their lines to competition (like UK's BT's Openreach or Japan's NTT), there is no equivalent concept in the US. For calls, sure, there is a concept of an incumbent local exchange carrier, but there's no such thing as an ILEC for internet services.
So if you have a DSL connection, it's tied to a single provider that owns the cable? That would indeed make independent contract quite pointless as changing providers would mean adding new cables.
We have mandated infrastructure sharing both for fixed and wireless networks so the competition is pretty good with virtual operators almost always being cheaper than the brand name owning the infra.
> That would indeed make independent contract quite pointless as changing providers would mean adding new cables.
... if you even have the choice. Many Americans are only served by a single provider, and this isn't the "too rural" excuse but also with many metropolitan areas. There are exceptions, such as with Utopia Fiber (https://www.utopiafiber.com/) in metropolitan parts of Utah, but this isn't the case even in California, New York or Texas.
