system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What's stopping new ISP's from popping up and competing with the monopolies some ISP companies have within major cities? Why isnt there more competition?

Spawned from the Japan internet article posted on TIL (I think it was TIL, maybe it was politics)
gpt
Extremely high barrier to entry. To be an ISP, you need to have the cabling infrastructure. To have the infrastructure you need to dig and run lines (alot of lines) to literally everywhere. The costs associated with this activity alone are astronomical. 

Example: It's estimated that Google's Fiber project in Austin is going to run upwards of $94 Million to implement. 

Think back to the age of dial-up internet. There were a ton of small and local ISPs because access to the existing telephone infrastructure was cheap and regulated fairly. Barrier to entry was low and competition was high. This is not the case with broadband.