In the UK, phone infrastructure companies such as British Telecom have been forced to allow other companies access to their networks to allow so called free market competition and prevent a monopoly from existing.
The effect has been for the main incumbent, British Telecom to be split up into two companies, BT Retail, and BT Wholesale ( now called 'openreach)
Openreach own and maintain the hardware side of things ( the cables/wires/ducts/poles/exchanges etc) who then allow other companies to access the infrastructure to provide their own services over.
There are also regulatory controls in place to ensure that openreach treat all providers the same, and likewise there are ( some) wholesale price controls in place to ensure that all companies are playing on a level playing field
So for a vast majority of people in the UK there is a good choice of phone/internet companies all competing with each other driving down costs
I'm surprised that similar things dont appear to exist n the USA, for example where AT&T own the infrastructure they dont appear to have much in the way of wholesale access for other companies to use at a fair price - unless i'm mistaken.
