It's interesting to see people bandying about ideas on how to get out from under the current large ISP topology we've got pointing out the same cultural and infrastructure roadblocks that were in place when folks were starting up small locally-owned ISPs in the mid 01990s.

(the small locally-owned ISPs ultimately did pretty okay for themselves until they sold to larger companies with deep pockets, in case you were wondering)

of course, it was a lot easier to provide for a few hundred customers with a fractional T1 backhaul back then than today, but I bet you can get a lot more transit for the same cost these days (my residential gig-e connection costs me approximately 10% of what I was paying for a half T1 in 01994)
@djsundog that leading zero implies a remarkable faith in humanity