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So I should just disconnect myself from the internet?

Because it's either Comcast or a DSL provider that won't give me a straight answer as to whether or not they service my address. And this is in Boulder.

Interestingly, Boulder forced a few years ago the electric utility (Xcel) to bring fiber to the vast majority of houses in town, but the fiber sits unused because it was intended for realtime metering solutions and the town & utility gave up on that goal.

Imagine if that fiber were used as a community network! Unfortunately, the town is not planning to do this -- they've excluded the fiber from their plans to take over the Xcel infrastructure.

It's not really a free market to end consumers. To change cable companies, I have to go for some WiMax/Wifi type ISP (lower quality in most cases), DSL (also lower quality in most cases), or move my residence to somewhere in the service area for another cable company.

That's not an option for entirely too many people to be meaningful.