Chicago suburb. $120 for 50/10. I have one other option, but I stopped doing business with AT&T a decade ago. I agree this is better speed for the price than yours, but only marginally. Areas with affordable, reliable, fast broadband are the exception, not the rule. There are very few areas with competition.

I was one of the lucky citizens to have their "Broadband" connection de-classified... 18 down 1 up... Now they just call it "high speed"... all for the low low price of $70 a month! Thanks AT&T!

I live in a very densely area of LA and its either time warner or 768k down from at&t. Believe me you're situation sounds much better.

Things aren't substantially different in most "bigger" towns in my experience (I've lived in Boston, NYC, SF Bay Area, LA, DC and San Diego). If anything "smaller" places seem to have a better chance of actually having more options since they are more likely to allow for grand experiments or newly built municipal-managed networks. Of course, YMMV greatly depending upon exactly which small town.

I currently live in San Diego and my situation is mostly the same as yours. My cable option (Time Warner) peaks out at a higher speed, but the only other option is DSL at exactly the same rates you mention (6/0.5). And since the cable option is the only viable truly broadband option the customer service and uptime on it is pretty abysmal because with an essentially captive audience why bother making it better?

Maybe, but we're talking about Internet service here. Most of these competitors have fully amortized plant already in the ground. The major fixed costs most of them have is their own bureaucracy. Not a week goes by that I don't get a direct mail piece from Comcast suggesting I sign up for Xfinity broadband ... which I already have.