A new set of PG&E leadership settled in -- bean counters and control-focused policy. The old engineers, for good reason, considered their "job well done" and went to play golf or whatever. The new management hid money, played hardball with sub-sub-contractors, and told old people on pensions to pay up, as business people tend to do..
source: attorney from the time of the Enron price crisis in California
There isn't much of a difference on the service side either; the trucks which come around here are all third party fulfillment firms regardless of who your ISP is (and they have super-bland, forgettable names like "Dependable HomeTech")
It's extra sad because it didn't have to be this way for internet, but the US chose to privatise public internet infra back under clinton and then double and tripled down under bush. Meanwhile, it still maintains at least 1 set of infra for itself (I don't know if siprnet and jwics use separate cables).
In Canada, that body is the CRTC. I think they largely do a good job, though some of it ends up in the courts, and TekSavvy happily engages customers by bumping monthly rates up or down in response to the rule changes, and encouraging us to write our elected representatives if we like or dislike it. Examples:
https://www.teksavvy.com/in-the-news/2019-press-releases/tek...
https://www.teksavvy.com/in-the-news/2020-press-releases/tek...
Letting anyone tear up the street to run their own wires whenever they want isn't feasible. From a competitor perspective,that's super expensive and a massive capital investment, so any preexisting competitor with a large enough warchest could just lower their competing prices to drive the new competitor out of business. But from a municipal or society perspective, cable right of ways/culverts are already a constrained resource, and installation disrupts traffic and residents. So basically that last mile infrastructure is a great example of a natural monopoly.
If it wasn't such a natural monopoly, a market could be a great solution for increasing ISP quality, but since it is a natural monopoly, market based solutions fall flat due to lack of competition.
This is where the socialism bit comes in. If america were less anti-socialist, it would treat the last mile of wires like it treats public roads. It doesn't solve the natural monopoly issue, but it does solve the issue that ISP users have no means by which to get the ISP to improve service. Unlike, a private ISP whose only constituents are the shareholders, a governments constituents are the people being governed, so if they want a better ISP, they can vote for improving it through bonds or taxes or however they want to finance it. But that's socialist and america hates socialism, so instead state governments pass anti-municipal-ISP laws and/or municipal governments grant multi-decade-exclusive service contracts in exchange for the ISP deigning to maintain the infrastructure or promising to marginally improve it (but of course at a rate that never threatens their quarterly numbers).