Why would a renter be dependent on the landlord for Internet? I rent (non-US) and have my own Internet, electricity, and gas contracts.

The utilities need owner approval to initially run the lines into the building and into every unit.

You're welcome to get your own contract, but if they don't have permission by the owner to dig into the ground and drill into walls to run the lines to you and a place to put meters and equipment, you're not getting the internet/gas.

Sure, but the gp clearly didn't mean that as they specifically mentioned the contract and the connection separately:

> everyone rents and you are dependent on landlords for your internet contract as well as your actual ethernet connection

Unlike in sane countries where the government has either an independent provider (like Australia's NBN) or mandates the previous monopoly to open up their lines to competition (like UK's BT's Openreach or Japan's NTT), there is no equivalent concept in the US. For calls, sure, there is a concept of an incumbent local exchange carrier, but there's no such thing as an ILEC for internet services.

So if you have a DSL connection, it's tied to a single provider that owns the cable? That would indeed make independent contract quite pointless as changing providers would mean adding new cables.

We have mandated infrastructure sharing both for fixed and wireless networks so the competition is pretty good with virtual operators almost always being cheaper than the brand name owning the infra.

> That would indeed make independent contract quite pointless as changing providers would mean adding new cables.

... if you even have the choice. Many Americans are only served by a single provider, and this isn't the "too rural" excuse but also with many metropolitan areas. There are exceptions, such as with Utopia Fiber (https://www.utopiafiber.com/) in metropolitan parts of Utah, but this isn't the case even in California, New York or Texas.

That's interesting, this is largely routine on the west coast, at least for residential renters. All without owner permission.

Here's my observation:

It's very different in the US/CA/AU and many other regions of the world. In the former, you are quite likely to rent from a corporate landlord. In many other regions, there are very few corporate landlords.

I am a sole proprietor landlord with one property, but also a shareholder in a large company which lets properties. I can be agreeable with my direct tenants in my own property. I always let them make small modifications to the property - fiber lines, hanging things on walls, swapping out furniture to an extent. And I don't mind discussing ideas like a complete remodel of the property if my tenants are long-term. But it is tremendously difficult for me to be so agreeable to my indirect tenants through the corporate landlord in which I am a shareholder.

Fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits is enshrined in law in the US since the original precedent in Dodge v The Ford Motor Company in 1919. Similar laws exist all over the world. They create a perverse and probably sociopathic environment for managers working in corporate landlords. They must maximize profit and do it this quarter. If a tenant would increase their rent payments on the condition that they can fund their own fibre line to the property, then it is in the interest of the business' managers. If a tenant demands that the business fund a fibre line and they are unwilling to pay more rent, then showing such charity is not in the interests of the business managers. In fact, strictly speaking, such a courtesy to the tenant is against the law.

With that said, shareholders can waive this fiduciary responsibility of their managers to maximize profit. But in my limited experience, in the US, every shareholder has to independently agree to this. And in very large corporate landlords with private and corporate investors, it is practically impossible.

All in all, rent from a small landlord and it won't be a problem. In most of the world, nearly all landlords are private. Proportionally, there are markedly more corporate landlords in the US, Canada, and Australia than in most other regions of the world.

I might be wrong about some of this so I would welcome a discussion. But this is what I've observed.