In most areas of the US that have broadband access, most consumers are pigeonholed into essentially two choices: cable or DSL, the former run by their local cable affiliate (likely Comcast) or the latter by their phone company. (likely Verizon, AT&T, etc, but never more than one of these) Even in areas where there are more than these simple two options, the “competing” companies are renting their telephone and cable lines to provide DSL and cable service to customers FROM the major telecomms – meaning “Jim’s Cable Internet” in Ohio is probably paying Comcast for use of its lines, and “Bob’s Low-Cost DSL” is probably writing checks to AT&T to use their existing telephone infrastructure.

Inherently this wouldn’t be a problem, but it means prices are more or less fixed across the board, with no one willing to give any significant competitive discounts or provide any significant additional services. It’s a stable equilibrium that the telecomms have managed to find their way into, and they have no intention of changing the game now. In fact, they’d rather turn their attention to intruding on one another’s territory (like Verizon trying to enter the TV market with FIOS TV and claiming “well competition is good now because we want a piece of the action.) rather than providing new and competitive services to customers.

It takes only a quick look at the business headlines to see this – AT&T merging with SBC and keeping the venerable AT&T name, Verizon looking to finalize its merger with Worldcomm/MCI, Comcast being the single largest cable provider anywhere in the country and owning the majority of the cable infrastructure, it’s all there to see, and I think the real reason infrastructure and pricing are both stagnant is because the US telecomm industry simply doesn’t have any motivation to reinvest their profits and upgrade services, even though they know they can at minimal cost to them and likely excellent return on investment, they simply don’t want to take a risk. What happens to change those facts though, if anything, is another story.

As a side note, I’m intrigued by the Bandwidth Buyers Guide – do you pull your same information from the sources that http://broadbandreports.com/ does?

Bandwidth Buyers Guide