Which is why other countries have gone full in on local loop unbundling

In the UK the last mile is either OpenReach, Virgin Media or KCOM. Because OpenReach has a virtual monopoly in last-mile infra across the country they are regulated and must provide access to other ISPs, in the old days through colocated DSLAMs in local exchanges (LLU) and now by having a set maximum price they can sell wholesale VDSL, FTTP and voice lines.

As a result, you have the gamut of ISPs from niche who focus on having amazing backhaul and customer service (AAISP) to "pile them high" ISPs like Vodafone, TalkTalk and then people like Sky who bundle talk, tv and broadband into relatively affordable packages.

As a result - there is a lot of competition almost everywhere in the country, and I can get a 384Mbps down 37Mbps up connection with unlimited usage and no traffic shaping for £50 a month.

>I can get a 384Mbps down 37Mbps up connection with unlimited usage and no traffic shaping for £50 a month.

After all of the rest of the comment, that's a pretty disappointing result. Fifty quid is currently $63. I can get symmetric gigabit FTTH for $65, or docsis 200 mbit for $40. This is not uncommon in urban areas in the states.

Asymmetric plans are really disappointing. Back at my family’s residence we have Verizon Fios which only offers [near] symmetric plans (200/200, 400/400c 940/880) which is fantastic. They’re looking to upgrade from our legacy bundle package of 30/30 to gigabit, which is exciting for them.

Where I am, in an urban apartment complex I had two provider choices: Frontier and Optimum. Frontier wired the building, but their plans were ridiculously underwhelming. My Optimum plan is ~$55/m including modem/router for 300/35. Their highest offering for upload seemed to be 45Mbps (or 35, plan descriptions between the site and sales were not consistent).

I’m not in telecom nor a networking expert, but what difficulties are there in offering symmetric plans?

Someone else more knowledgeable will have to expand on this, but I know that on Docsis the lower bands are used for upload and those can carry less signal. Something about those lower bands makes them more advantageous for node > hub communications but exactly what I don’t know.

How many of those offers in the US have traffic limits though?

It's also worth mentioning that there's no "equipment rental" fee on my DOCSIS connection for the cable modem.

I think the solution is to have municipally owned fiber that is open to many ISPs.

One challenge is that in many places (especially the most profitable areas), the last mile is already built out. So by saying "municipally owned fiber" you mean laying new pipes to replace existing pipes (significant material cost) or trying to wrestle control of the existing pipes away from large ISPs (significant political cost). A small to medium sized city cannot just tell AT&T "give me your fiber", and it often lacks the capital to put down new fiber. Even if a small project could be completed, the dominant ISP in the area would simply lower their prices enough to make the project uneconomical, thus preventing the project from recouping its costs and staining the idea of publicly owned internet infrastructure.

Then maybe more thought should be given to how the dominant ISP's as well as other anti-competitive business practices have put the local municipalities into a position where they 1) don't have the cash to lay down their own pipes 2)are put in a position where blatant anti-competitive behavior like strangling newly laid pipes would not be adjudicated fairly. A two prong approach of subsidizing local pipes and pressuring existing fiber to behavior fairly.

I'm not sure that's required, at least for urban areas cables are not that expensive. The problem might be deliberate anti-competitive collusion between the major ISPs.

More generally: government owned. i.e. could be provincial, federal, etc. Like how water pipes and electricity already are (in many places).