What these new competitors will find is that no single technology meets all customer needs. Each technology has both advantages and disadvantages. Twisted pairs, optical fiber and coaxial cable all require long intervals between placing an order for service and installing the fiber or cable. But new competitors have to go through the pain and delay of cutting through streets and sidewalks to serve new customers. Once in place, it's easy to hook up additional customers.
Cellular service is available almost everywhere.
Once the local phone companies lower the interconnection fees they impose on cellular calls, which they are required to do under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, cellular service will become much less expensive. But cellular technology is mostly analog and will be for many years, channel bandwidths are narrow, and thus high-speed data is difficult to support. Perhaps PCS will overcome this limitation, but even so, it will take many years for PCS coverage to match cellular or phone company coverage. The fixed wireless technologies all have the advantage that they can employ highly directional antennas in order to reuse frequencies from one cell to the next. But they require direct lines of sight between transmitter and receiver, which may be difficult to accomplish for some locations.