[cereal_cable]

This happened with copper lines for telephony providers. Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers have to provide access for Competitive Local Exchange Carriers to enter the market and break up their monopoly. This effectively made DSL and T1s available via CLECs as they could acquire access to a copper circuit directly.

Internet has yet to be regulated that way and fiber lines aren't considered the same as those copper lines.

Also, fiber to the home is done using most often a PON system purchased from a specific vendor and is a time shared medium. You might only get 1Gbps service but you also aren't getting 100% of the fiber to yourself. The home side device will filter information from your neighbors for instance.

There's always ways to do this of course but, it wouldn't be as straightforward as patch the fiber from your home in the same way that they did with copper lines.

[Phileosopher]

The trouble goes back to a 1910's telegraph bill. The US created a de facto monopoly on each carrier for each zone of land. On a particular parcel of land, there is only 1 carrier for any telecom tech, with those parcels as tradable on a market. M&A has allowed it to become a bit of a duopoly (e.g., Verizon + ATT).

It did make sense at the time of the law: carriers kept clustering around the major metro areas and wouldn't expand to the boonies. Nowadays, that law has outlived its purpose.