I miss the days of competing ISPs. I remember having Speakeasy for my DSL back in the early 2000s and being impressed at the range of services they offered and relatively high speeds they offered for less than what Verizon wanted to charge for a DSL line. Usenet, a shell server, personal webhosting, a POTS phone bank you could use as a backup when you were on the road.
But the limitations of DSL meant they couldn't compete with FiOS. And since FiOS didn't have to deal with grandfathered common carrier laws Verizon wasn't forced to share and they have not. Amazingly, even though the customer service headaches are incredible, you can get a reasonably fast line for not too much money (100Mbit for $35/month) on FiOS. Probably because we have some competition from cable modems. Of course you can't get IPv6 on there, because Verizon's most advanced network ever doesn't support it.
But the limitations of DSL meant they couldn't compete with FiOS. And since FiOS didn't have to deal with grandfathered common carrier laws Verizon wasn't forced to share and they have not. Amazingly, even though the customer service headaches are incredible, you can get a reasonably fast line for not too much money (100Mbit for $35/month) on FiOS. Probably because we have some competition from cable modems. Of course you can't get IPv6 on there, because Verizon's most advanced network ever doesn't support it.