Problem with local telecoms is that too often, there is a local monopoly. The problem with the government is its always in a de facto monopoly position. It has little incentive to change except during a voting cycle turnover, and at most voters can focus on a handful of issues at a time.

Funny enough, it seems like SpaceX has the solution for this and it's rolling out as we speak: https://www.starlink.com/ . Space-based internet that actually works and is actually fast is a game-changer.

Let's see how the telecoms respond to competitive pressure. If anyone can get 100Mbps within a year, I'm willing to bet Gigabit fiber/cable will be available nearly everywhere soon.

> effective oversight mechanism

Hard to do when the people who really understand broadband networking are working for ATT, Comcast, and Verizon and not for the government.

The US telecom companies were not given something like a hundred billion dollars. They were never paid those sums and they were also not given tax breaks in that amount either. That's one of the great forever repeating myths on HN (it's useful as a propaganda item, thus the repeating). There is even an HN member that has been repeatedly correcting the myth for years, here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556