> The question, in my mind, is whether it's reasonable to ask that
> regional providers reach the same bar as privately owned campus
> networks.you are comparing LAN to WAN, never a bright idea
Today's residential internet speeds ("WAN") are greater than the LAN
speeds of 20 years ago.
Users generally don't care about "LAN" vs "WAN", and just want their
stuff to work fast and well.
I would counter your statement with a warning that it's never a bright
idea to simply discount what people want to be able to do just because
it would involve what us techies call a "WAN." It's too easy to forget
what users want to be able to do; for example, maybe at&t didn't really
properly predict that users would be downloading huge amounts of
YouTube, pictures, app-driven data, and movies over their "3G" network,
which is kind of the ultimate example of the general point I'm making.
It's likely correct that WAN speeds will never match LAN speeds, so from
that point of view, you're correct, but that doesn't mean that it might
not be nice to be able to backup someone's PC over a SOHO cablemodem to
a corporate backup server, and in fact some people try to do that, since
the alternatives are not good.
Bleh 
... JG