Minneapolis is a beacon of hope, here. $40 for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps in much of the city, from a local fiber provider.
That's what kills me. Comcast's audacity is just so much more galling when you've actually experienced what happens with competition. And not that competition is a panacea, necessarily. I don't have a say in my water, gas, or electricity providers, but in exchange for that monopoly, they're subject to pretty serious regulation.
That's much better than nationally locking-in a pipes-and-sewers-like regulatory structure that freezes incumbents into a safe but slow-moving regulated approach, for decades.
The decades of Title-II-regulated AT&T telecom monopoly were not good for consumers or innovation. They were safe and slow.
I have 5Mbps DSL in San Francisco. It's plenty for HD Netflix and Hulu, VOIP, and video-calling.
I suspect you also have 3+ wireless options, some of which likely offer 20Mbps+ in bursts. Yes, it costs more. Yes, you'd like to pay less. Everyone would! But your desire for more modern luxury goods (massive HD bandwidth), cheaper, is not a public policy crisis.
Someone has to invest more to give you more, and market-floating prices for the existing paths are exactly what draws in more investment – or sends you a signal that you should 'self-help' to the nearest source of plentiful bandwidth.
And these are still better options than my family in the Midwest and New York have available to them. You just can't claim with a straight face that there's competition in this market.