> What exactly did they prove?

They proved that the Free Market doesn't automatically provide functional competition, if you think about it, the Western-style free market is very keen on creating and maintaining monopolies, even cheating isn't going to help you here.

> The company laid down fibre because of what they saw as a potential competitor (municipal fibre).

The OP is about free market failures, not about competition. As another example, many people have pointed out that there is much more competition in China than in the US. Hope, this is enough for you to understand the difference.

So this shows competition works, but I thought the original post was about the free market. When the two companies were asked to fill a need for the people, they refused, and the people were not otherwise about to independently provide the service based on their own funds. I feel as though if the only way of getting companies to do something without organic competition is to use underhanded methods (such as lying about another competitor), then the free market has some places for improvement, no?

> ...one day, one of the municipal counselors just called up a friend who worked for a fiber laying company and asked them for a favor: put out a press release saying that they were “investigating” laying an undersea fiber to power a municipal fiber network on the little island.

They called in a favor that put pressure on the company from public expectations.

Sometimes commenters all over the internet write like this because they just got incredibly jealous after reading the parent post. I've been thinking more and more about how most posts are jealous or depressed outtakes against the world, system, or other person. This fundamental human behavior won't change, and is as reflexive as a monopolistic company reacting to a press release, proving the parent correct despite their scathing response of the child.

It's worth noting that 4chan and Reddit also live here because both sites are insufferable.