This is all very interesting and reminds me of what happened in the US during the mid to late 1990s. There was some sort of legislation passed that further deregulated the phone companies and forced them to lease space to competing data services inside the local switching station. I experienced the result of this first-hand during a time when Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) was only offering ISDN for very short runs, and the local cable company didn't have anything.

Practically overnight, there were a bunch of companies willing to run DSL to my house. The first one (I can't remember the name) actually buried a wire in the ground from the switch to me over a couple days. I used them for a few months, then they went out of business. I was back to dial-up for a bit. Then, Telocity was offering cheap ADSL and I signed up for that. They sent me a modem in the mail after a few weeks, and my old line was up and running again. Then, DirecTV thought it would be a good idea to buy Telocity. About a year later, they must have decided it was cheaper to launch satellites than maintain ground-based communications and shut down the service.

By that time, all the other third-parties stopped offering service out of my local switch and I was back to dial-up for quite a while. It felt like an eternity before Cablevision finally rolled-out their service to my area.

To this day, the DSL situation in this area is pretty bad. Verizon determines if you can get service or not based on distance. If you can get service, you have a choice of ISPs (including Verizon). If not, you have to opt for something else entirely. ISDN, cable, satellite, or wireless (as far as consumer services go).

I'm in a place right now that Verizon still doesn't offer DSL, and you can forget about FiOS (FTTP). So, if the cable company closes-up shop (unlikely), 3G is probably my best option. It's a sad situation.