I disagree. People would join voluntary local cooperative that can better deals with network providers. They can take a loan out to build the last mile and then just pay to connect to a bigger hub and then even have ability to switch.

Condo home owner associations get better deals for a lot of things than the individual could.

One might think that a city is just one big cooperative, but of course, its not really voluntary at all (except that you decide to live there) and is usually not as transparent or as responsive as a cooperative that forms without any coercion.

There's a certain point where increasing size of a group causes more overhead managing the size of the group (otherwise know as "politics and corruption" than it gets you in buying power.

Of course, such things can't really happen once a provider convinces a municipality to to make it a regulated monopoly. Once it is a monopoly, it can devote itself perpetually to reducing this regulation instead of improving its service, as incentives to do so are greatly reduced.