I recently did this with Charter as AT&T is also in our neighborhood. The person at Charter first tried to do an up-sell (which would have cost more money) and eventually came around to saying that they wouldn't offer the lower rate again. At which point I said, "I'm going to AT&T who will give me a better rate, cancel my service." Which resulted in a slightly rude interaction before they canceled my service. A week later AT&T internet was up and running.

It's was a very odd interaction given that Charter's fine print says that to qualify for the discount you have to not have subscribed to Charter's services for a mere 30 days[0]. Even with limited competition, now with MiFi hotspots a person could cancel their plan, do a pay-as-you-go MiFi hot spot for 30 days, and then resubscribe with the new rate. (Not sure if Comcast is the same.)

[0] "Offers are valid for a limited time only, to qualifying residential customers who have not subscribed to applicable services within the previous 30 days and have no outstanding obligation to Charter."

With our FIOS account I simply cancel service every year and and my wife sign up for new service in her name. Usualy we set this up to occur on the same day so practically no downtime in service. This has worked for 6 years now and while it feels ridiculous the savings are significant.

This is a good approach that I'm going remember next time.

It certainly helps to have competition but is not required. I have Comcast also, and there are no alternatives where I live (5 miles from Palo Alto, BTW). Sometimes when I call in they immediately give me the discounted rate, and sometimes I have to call in a few times to get a rep who can get it done. Kind of a pain, but worth it to save hundreds of dollars every year.

LOL, ouch.

In my case, windstream is the only wired option.. but they don't seem to realize it.

The service used to be completely unreliable too, but as I've complained over the last few years, they seem to have improved things a bit. It's now approaching the reliability of Comcast (i.e. still not great), but at ~1/3 the speed and slightly higher cost.