Indeed. The late 90s / early 2000s were the golden age of the CLEC. There were certainly pain points (like getting copper pairs provisioned), but I remember not caring that my building didn't support Comcast Internet because I had an SDSL connection from Telocity and an ADSL connection from Speakeasy.
That said, most were either bought out, or went under within a couple years. It was a rough time for commercial SysOps in the mid-90's... not that I really feel bad for them. Times and environments change... The BBS and art scenes are still around today, but not nearly what they were in the early-mid 90's...
I miss it a lot... since most BBSes were based in a local area, there were a lot of get togethers, and you'd meet and talk to people you wouldn't necessarily do in today's internet, which is based in interest groups.
The Hacker News readership includes many people capable of starting ISPs. Comcast's large profits, which have been used to fund a string of high cost acquisitions, are a juicy target for potential competitors. Yet you never see discussion of ISP startups on Hacker News because the barriers to entry protect the current carriers. This wasn't the case in the 90s, and had Hacker News existed back then ISP startups would have appeared frequently.
The issue of telecoms not having competition has been the case for years. Back in the BBS days Jack Rickard used to harp on this in Boardwatch [1] magazine. I recall him saying something like, "Two guys with a screwdriver should be able to start a phone company."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwatch