Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the US which demanded network unbundling, splitting up the fiber/connections versus the internet service, demanding wholesale rate access to infrastructure. It was good.

Then the courts decided, meh, we just don't like it. We are going to tell the FCC otherwise. It all went away. The incumbent local carriers have now had monopoly power over huge swarths of the infrastructure. No access to dark fiber. https://www.dwt.com/insights/2004/03/federal-court-eviscerat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Telecom_Associat...

Verizon also sued, and said, sure, there's laws for unbundling. But, we really don't like them. We aren't going to deploy fiber if we have to share. And the court once again said, oh, yeah, well, that's fine, we'll grant that: we'll strike down congress's law because "innovation" sounds better. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/1...

It's just so so so much corruption, so much meddling from the court to undo everything good congress worked so hard to make happen, that was such an essential baseline to allow competition. I remain very very angry about this all. This was such a sad decade of losing so much goodness, such competition. These damn cartels! The courts that keep giving them everything they want! Bah!!

I think it was a other case,

And this is almost certainly the direct cause of the Dot Com Bubble bursting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcv0600V5q4

We were bamboozled on a massive scale.