And the reason behind the lack of options is that the companies that 'laid' the fiber 'own' it, despite having been paid by the government to put it down initially. So they charge outrageous fees to let other telecommunication companies use the lines (See?! It is not a monopoly in the area if we 'lease' the lines to other people! It is not our fault that they cannot afford the price we charge being so high that it erases any chance of a profit), if at all. Hell, if GOOGLE has trouble cutting through the miasma of laws and restrictions being enforced by Comcast/TW/etc, then you can see why this might need government oversight for any sort of competition.
Not to mention that the big companies have been caught colluding to keep smaller ISP services from moving into their areas and have even brought lawsuits against cities/towns that tried to pay for their own fiber/lines to be installed, so they could be free of the big-4. Sure, some areas are lucky and have multiple options, some even have smaller ISPs available (In my area, I am 'lucky' to have 2 connection options - Blue Ridge or Verizon).
At the end of the day, the government let these companies run wild and now that their profits from the television-cable are drying up, they want to swap to milking internet-cable so they can keep having record profits year after year, while being subsidized by our tax dollars.
It is not like 15 or even 10 years ago, when having the internet was a 'luxury'. Have you tried to apply for a job recently? Many places do not even have a physical method of doing that, you have to go on the internet. Combine that with banking, basic communication, and almost any form of higher education, the internet is more important than ever, even if you remove entertainment purposes from it.
