It’s the “public interest” folks that demand all that stuff. Municipalities see franchising as an opportunity to get stuff for free (fiber to schools or whatever), and to give service to residents below cost (requiring all neighborhoods to be covered, even ones that aren’t profitable to serve). Yes, it helps maintain the de facto regional monopolies (actual monopoly franchises have been illegal for decades), and it’s all the fault of the public interest people.

I mean, as much as libertarians like to complain about regulations being the problem, nothing you posted there sounds too onerous. That's all pretty standard stuff for a utility, and a few hundred thousand really isn't that much compared to the scale of investment of wiring up a municipality.

Google has counsel in house to cover a that more or less for free, and still essientially failed. There's deeper issues at play.

> Google has counsel in house to cover a that more or less for free, and still essientially failed. There's deeper issues at play.

Google refused to build Fiber in places that imposed most of those conditions. It demanded the opposite—free use of municipal resources for fiber huts, etc. and it absolutely rejected any attempt to impose one of the most common franchise stipulations: build-out requirements that require universal coverage of neighborhoods.

Google failed because even with all that special treatment, building fiber is not profitable compared to selling ads.