Ummmm, no. Markets are segregated and each municipality grants a franchise to a specific company. Most markets in the USA have one cable company, one phone company, plus maybe some wireless and satellite coverage.
ISPs have been given billions of dollars in federal subsidies. Also, there are strings attached to every one of those dollars.
The FCC and FTC have pretty restrictive regulations regarding spectrum usage, how much power you can push over phone lines, etc.
There is a lot of regulation on the internet in the USA, which is why we can't let the market settle the Net Neutrality issue.
Interesting; I wasn't aware of this. I know that the original network design grew out of a DARPA project, but I wasn't aware of any significant federal regulatory involvement since the internet became open to general, non-government use in the '80s. Do you have any references you could point to that might provide more detail?