Where that's true, antitrust action to create competition could make sense, or even perhaps specific regulations against abuses that actually happen. That is, focused on where choice is lacking, and tailored for particular abuses that are observed.

But in the US, most people have 2 or more wired internet options and 3 or more wireless internet options. The feared abuses are almost entirely hypothetical-future-risks. Any attempts to "hold communities hostage" would create massive openings for both competitive marketing and technological countermeasures.

By all means, any local communities being "held hostage" by a single provider should remedy their situation. Locally.

I'm not in the US, so maybe I've got the wrong idea. However, based on numerous previous articles and discussions, I was under the impression that quite a high proportion of US households really did only have one wired ISP available, that the relatively small number of major ISPs operating in the US at all tended not to compete over territory in this respect, and that there had been significant legal games played to block attempts by both heavyweight competitors like Google and local initiatives to create alternative provision.

In other words, almost all the evidence I've seen as an outsider suggests that much of the US does not, in fact, have a functioning competitive market for residential high speed wired Internet access, but rather a complete monopoly whose single provider will furthermore spend a fortune on legal manoeuvres to defend that position if necessary. The net neutrality movement and efforts to classify Internet access as an essential service subject to regulation seem to be the first serious moves at national level to counter some of the resulting problems.