Are you aware that Covad got out of residential service years ago? You must be grandfathered in, and I hope your price is grandfathered in, because a 192K business DSL line from Covad costs over $100/month. Tell me you're not paying that kind of money for tin-can-and-string service????

My Internet service from the cable monopoly ComCast clocks in at 6.5 megabites/second download, half that upload. Costs about $60/month.

How much competition is there really for residential Internet service? You can't sweep viability under the rug: Just because Covad can provide crappy 192K DSL at an insane price doesn't make it in any way a serious competitor.

Have you ever actually tried to use satellite Net service? It's not viable either, being not only slow and expensive, but because of latency issues even to LEO to Motorola's recycled Iridium satellites it's unusable for any realtime service like voice-over-IP.

And cellphone data plans? Really, Tom? "Fast" by cellphone standards is 1.5 megabits. (Oh, right, that's DSL speed, you'd think it's fast) They aren't really "unlimited", you know. AT&T panicked when it saw realworld iPhone usage, and quietly added the fine print. Can you fit a month's worth of Net use into 2 gigabytes? Look at the five cents/megabyte "overage" charge and do the math.

Fact is, there really isn't much competition for residential Internet service. For most Americans, it's a cable monopoly or something distinctly inferior and more expensive.

Some choice.