It's not an issue of what companies to trust. The issue is trusting them at all.
Ideally this sort of thing should be a public work. Operators can be private but shared infrastructure should be publicly owned seeing as we're paying for it.
But if markets have to be involved...If we're willing to pay $X per customer we should give the tax subsidy to them. The market can sort out who is actually willing to get the work done and service customers to get the subsidy.
Yes, I have no idea how, in 2024, internet service is not considered a basic utility like power and water, and regulated as such.
My parents paid ~ $65 / mo for 6mb dsl for ages. They had constant outages, and ATT always stonewalled the repairs. Talking to the repair guy, he admitted that ATT basically hated supporting that DSL, and wished all their rural customers would go elsewhere. He even told them that if they canceled, ATT would not offer internet service to them again, they'd just decommission the service down their street.
They're now on starlink, despite being only a 1/4 mile outside of city limits, it's the best option they have.
I recall in 2005 in a major west coast city, having 6Mbps DSL service but it was very prone to disruption. The tech they would send out would be just trying different pairs from a big fat cable to see if he could find one that was not too deteriorated from age. Even two decades ago AT&T's infrastructure was falling apart, and again, this was in a major city everyone in the world has heard of. Even then, they didn't care enough to even fix their 50-year old copper (which is now 70 years old) let alone lay fiber. Meanwhile also in 2005 on the other side of the continent, FiOS was launched.
Ideally this sort of thing should be a public work. Operators can be private but shared infrastructure should be publicly owned seeing as we're paying for it.
But if markets have to be involved...If we're willing to pay $X per customer we should give the tax subsidy to them. The market can sort out who is actually willing to get the work done and service customers to get the subsidy.