Its why monopolies are bad for consumers. As long as BT and Virgin agree not to outdo each other too much they don't need to compete and can charge high prices for the bare minimum and they aren't incentivised to actually upgrade. It's almost impossible for other companies to start to compete because they either have to piggyback off of the existing cable network (owned by BT and Virgin) or pay to install their own.
I forget the exact details and my google fu is weak. I will retract that statement as I don't appear to be able to defend it, unless someone can step up to the task.
And I misread and thought that BT and Virgin are the biggest, like our two biggest here, but then again combined they hardly make up for probably no more than 50% of all the users.
In the US, it's partially a matter of concentration. We're pretty spread out in a lot of places, which means that the distances to run cable are further - making a higher barrier to entry. While we don't have the BT/Virgin thing going on over the entire coutnry, you'll generally only have 1-3 companies providing landline service to any given location. You can tell, because when Google Fiber shows up, suddenly the rates for really high-speed internet plummet from the other providers... in exactly the area that Google Fiber is, while remaining just as high as before in surrounding areas.
Also, by and large, the folks in the US can afford higher premiums, so we get charged higher premiums. No reason to offer an internet service that no one can afford.
Yeah, but that is the thing, if its about concentration it still does not excuse it, not really, when you can provide say, 500 or 5000 units with something like a grand total of 3 to 15 employees, so you only need to get access to a high speed uncapped cable and then resell it. That is how they did it here. (now they are all grown up and serious, well serious-ish at least at their offices.)
For 3 , having a income of somewhere around say 18 (adjusted consumer price by worldwide index for us)$ x 500, that would be 9000 dollars a month minimum for 500 units, shared in a three way split, after a 25% tax that leaves you with 2250 a month, if you don't offer the hardware for free and you can damn well offer the installation for free if you are the three IT musketeers, just drill a hole in the wall pull the cable through, cut it and sabot it, and plug it into a modem or whatever. This of course started in apartment buildings, so its close by and easy to cable people in, also we did not have to put the cables underground, I still find it stupid that we have to but EU things happened. But still, that 2250 a month is 12$ and something a hour. You may have to lay your own infrastructure, but your projected income is above the minimum wage in the US by at least 50%, so you can pull it off.
And that is the minimum price that we have here, adjusted for the US, after the companies got better at it.
My offer is quite a old one that I pay like 20ish $ for a 100Mb(this comes of course with the TV that i never voluntary use and the phone that i also almost never use, but the extra 10$ are worth it for when i have family over and they need something shiny and noisy, for eight or twelve days a year), but I am eyeing a new deal when any network comes over with the GB cable so I can get the 200 Mb/s at 20 $, and then pay a extra 4$ to get the gigabyte offer and have a download speed of 1000Mb/s and upload of 200Mb/s.
Now I am salivating over download speeds and feel that downloading a DVD quality movie in minutes is the stone age when i could have it in few seconds.
Or just use my cellphone 
