The balance of the US population had access to ISPs in neighboring areas. Virtually every national vendor provides access in the major urban areas, where access is, predictably, plentiful. This is consistent with the view of many analysts that Internet access is becoming a commodity business. Access in remote rural areas depends largely on the decisions of independent ISPs with no national affiliation. ISPs targeting users with modest needs the category into which most residential users and small business in the US fall require them to make phone calls to a local switch.
All consumers can access the Internet at some price.
The commercial ISP industry will provide geographic scope not as an end in itself but as part of a general strategy to target a particular type of customer. The survival of local and national ISPs has important implications for the geographic scope of the industry. Greenstein believes that only a few business models are possible. In the competitive markets of high-density urban areas, either of these business models uses Internet access as a loss leader for other services. To summarize, expansion of the Internet by ISPs is driven by the pursuit of commercial opportunities.