When I was in United States, one thing always puzzled me.
When we took comcast internet connection, comcast guys came over to our place, setup router etc, but they never had to lay any cables.
This made to think that unlike in India, in US houses are perhaps "planned" in the sense that telephone wires go underground or inside wall etc, basically invisible and comcast people just connect the routers with these ports on wall.
But this arose some more questions. who ownes these underneath running telephone wires? are they owned by government telephone companies and what if I took internet thru telephone by 2 different companies say comcast and verizon, how would it work? How will both companies use the same telephonic wires? In such case, do they lay separate cables?