You’ve probably been there. Staring at a buffering screen, paying a premium for speeds that were outdated a decade ago, while your ISP promises that ‘fiber is coming to your neighborhood soon.’ In San Francisco, people have been waiting ten years for that ‘soon.’
Meanwhile, France just announced 94.9% nationwide fiber coverage. Yes, that France. The country we stereotypically associate with bureaucratic red tape has managed to wire up almost every home for symmetrical gigabit internet. And they didn’t do it through heavy-handed state planning alone. They did it by unleashing a chaotic market disruptor.
We need to talk about Free. Free is an aggressive French telecom operator that looked at the incumbent copper monopoly—Orange—and decided to burn the playbook. They leveraged regulation to their advantage, slashed prices to the bone, and forced the other three major ISPs to compete or die. The result? A hyper-competitive market that delivered universal fiber access without waiting for a government handout.
The market doesn’t fail when it’s forced to compete; it fails when regulators protect the incumbent from having to try.
Now look at the United States. We love to brag about our free-market efficiency, but when it comes to broadband, we’re stuck in a corporatist swamp. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently abolished the gigabit speed goal. Their excuse? It’s ‘unfair’ to slower technologies.
Let’s be brutally honest: that argument is regulatory capture dressed up in a tuxedo. By removing the gigabit benchmark, the FCC stripped challengers of the very metric they needed to hold incumbents accountable. Why upgrade your network when the government just lowered the bar to match your outdated copper wires?
You aren’t waiting for fiber because the technology is hard. You’re waiting because your ISP has no incentive to install it, and your regulators are ensuring they never will.
The great irony is that the ‘socialist’ European model won by fostering ruthless competition, while the ‘capitalist’ American model lost by protecting monopolies. The US gets the worst of both worlds: no coordinated deployment, and no real competition. Incumbents have no reason to spend billions digging trenches when they can just keep billing you for the same degraded infrastructure.
Broadband dictates where we can live, work, and create. France didn’t achieve 94.9% coverage by magic. They achieved it because they allowed a disruptor to break the monopoly. Until the US stops protecting its telecom giants, you’ll still be waiting on hold, watching that loading screen spin.
FAQ
Q: Isn't the US just too big and spread out for nationwide fiber?
A: Geography is an excuse, not a reason. The US has dense urban centers like San Francisco stuck at 55% fiber. The problem isn't rural distance; it's monopolies refusing to invest in infrastructure where they already hold captive customers.
Q: What actually needs to change in the US to get French-level internet?
A: Regulators need to reinstate strict gigabit benchmarks and allow aggressive challengers to force incumbents into price and infrastructure wars. Without a benchmark to hold them accountable, ISPs will never upgrade their networks.
Q: Is the FCC actively malicious or just incompetent here?
A: It's regulatory capture. When the FCC calls gigabit goals 'unfair to slower technologies,' they aren't protecting fairness—they're protecting incumbent ISPs from having to spend money to compete. It's a rigged game.