There's pockets where it's getting better and I'm seeing more and more of it happening. I'm familiar with at least one local ISP who has received a lot of state funding and is expanding their fiber network throughout many parts of the county. They've even run throughout entire local neighborhoods and installation is at no customer cost. It's like $85/mo for symmetrical gigabit, which is still a little pricy, but Comcast off-contract pricing is around $112/mo, and that's for gigabit with only 25 up. Nobody is going to be able to build something like Comcast's nationwide fiber backbone without some serious funding though, and even then it's going to take years.The big companies also lobby local governments for regulations to keep others from starting up and competing with them.