"why don't new small players arise as small cooperatives that serve individual neighborhoods"
I am just going to guess that it is a combination of (1) the expense of getting linked to the rest of the Internet, (2) the low density of knowledge i.e. most people who would be interested in a cooperative don't really know how bad American Internet service is, and (3) the difficulty one faces with laying cables. I could be wrong, of course; I only briefly looked at doing this sort of thing, and I was planning to use wifi (once I saw how expensive things would be, I dropped the plan).
1) Why should it be particularily expensive? Data centers do this and they are competitive.
2) It should be obvious that your internet connection sucks shouldn't it? If it isn't, maybe it's not an actual problem?
I think there should be one success story showing it can be done for a profit and then they will appear like mushrooms all over the country. You could crowdfund one I think.
I am just going to guess that it is a combination of (1) the expense of getting linked to the rest of the Internet, (2) the low density of knowledge i.e. most people who would be interested in a cooperative don't really know how bad American Internet service is, and (3) the difficulty one faces with laying cables. I could be wrong, of course; I only briefly looked at doing this sort of thing, and I was planning to use wifi (once I saw how expensive things would be, I dropped the plan).