New Zealander here. The hopeless state owned telecom was sold off then forced to break up (into a line provider and a separate phone/ISP company). It has taken a very long time to come right, but NZ is now a great place to get internet and many good options are available from a range of companies. Gigabit fibre is here for a huge portion of residential customers. Connections of 2 and 4 gigabit are scheduled for early next year. I just tested a wall plate I mounted and am getting 920Mbps, for about US$80.

Even SoCal has plenty of areas with only a single broadband provider. :/

SF is finally starting to get competitive between gigabit options from Sonic, MonkeyBrains and WebPass. There's also of course Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.

That's the case for most of LA, as far as I know. Certainly true for the two apartments I had there. No gigabit, obviously.

Midwest here. I've got 100 Mbps cable for $70/month and can get 1 Gbps fiber for $100. Then there's the 0.5's like a couple DSL services.

Midwest US..., with locations in several states (and internationally)

While I only have 2 choices for my home, getting Business Fiber runs has been no problems, normally at least 3 companies if not more will provide them. Of the 5 companies that will provide us fiber at main office, only 2 of them also offer Residential Services (ATT and Comcast), the others are B2B only companies, and offer services at a faction of what ATT provides business services for, but considerably more than a Residential line, which is why there are only 2 choices for a home, there is not much money there

Northern suburbs of Indianapolis. I have two fiber providers, a cable provider, and fixed 5g available to my home. Hardly europe or SoCal.

Austin, TX. Known for being tech hub. I have two choices. Spectrum or AT&T. Both overpriced with mediocre but acceptable service. Known that we have it better than most of the USA. Your situation is an outlier and not the norm.

My wife and I mostly work at home and our kids are avid gamers so loss of internet access causes havoc, especially for the IT guy (me). I solved most of my problems by just getting the fastest service from Spectrum and a medium speed backup from AT&T.