This would be believable except that lobbyists often step in at the state level to knock out community buildouts of self-financed infrastructure at much lower costs than what the big telcos claim.
It's important to break down barriers to community fiber deployment, but it's a footnote in the big picture. In most states, there is no restriction on such deployment, yet you still see very little of it.
Because all it takes is a very few public examples to discourage the activity at all. Just like businesses want stability to make capital investments, so do community projects. What happens if you get 90% of the way through, and state lobbyists make your project illegal? All the invested capital becomes stranded or lost - do you risk that in your state if there are examples of that outcome in other states?
