[rodgerd]

Perhaps I've misunderstood the situation in the US, but isn't the problem that Verizon are a de-facto monopoly in many markets? If customers can't say "screw you" then all Verizon need to do is avoid getting hammered by the DOJ anti-trust department.

[hga]

Many customers, but perhaps not many markets.

I'm in the same position with AT&T, in a residence that's at the edge of two cities, but is unincorporated (not part of any city, just the county, state, and the USA itself). No cable service is available, the deals they cut with the two cities don't cover me. Those deals make them local monopolies, long ago the original AT&T (which got split up, and then recombined into AT&T, Verizon and Century) arranged a Federal and state level monopoly, except of course for many rural and otherwise expensive to serve markets, which are served by smaller telcos.

I have at least one option for a WISP, but it's awful; at least AT&T's ADSL here is reliable. For now, AT&T really doesn't want it's landline business, wants to drop it for more profitable wireless. Ditto Verizon.