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.
Not the same thing -- it's missing the critical detail that separates transit from the Telco's own ISP business.
My post goes on to describe how things were, not how they are now.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was like the wild west. All these companies came out of the woodwork willing to run their own infrastructure from your local switch to your house. The DSL lines that were run to me were not installed or maintained by Bell Atlantic, nor did they themselves offer DSL services in my location at the time. The lines were dry. Unlike today, the services varied widely between ISPs (SDSL, ADSL, RADSL) and the price structures did as well.
Today, if you want DSL, you can have a choice of ISPs. But, like you said, it's all over Verizon's infrastructure and the speeds offered are uniform. Prices can vary by a couple dollars, but that's the only difference the customer will notice.
In the NY metro area, Time Warner Cable was deregulated and has to allow other ISPs on their cable modem service. It works just like DSL does now. Most people call Time Warner and use them as an ISP by default, but you can also choose Earthlink, AOL, and a handful of other smaller ISPs. The speeds will be the same, but the third-parties don't charge you a $10/month penalty if you don't also subscribe to cable TV. When I lived in a Time Warner area, I chose Earthlink as my ISP. It saved me $10/month over 5 years. The majority of people don't realize they have a choice.
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