... and people have decent options in most markets aside from "Comcast and the slower one." I just have Comcast broadband and they will NOT stop bugging me via mail and phone about wanting me to get other crap from them.
Bingo. I had Comcast, then when the local DSL provider finally made faster than 5 Mbps available in my neighborhood, I switched, even though their 20 Mbps DSL was still slower than the 50 Mbps Comcast was giving me. (And upload is terrible - 1 Mbps vs. Comcast's 20.) And the DSL is only $10 cheaper.
But it's not Comcast.
The bad thing is, our phone line has been getting steadily worse - I've had it repaired twice in the past two months, and have the tech scheduled to come out again tomorrow. I had to reboot my DSL model earlier, because I was only getting 1 Mbps.
I have zero other options. It's DSL or Comcast. There are two fixed-wireless providers in town, but they require line-of-sight to their transmitter, which I don't have.