Select "wired" and you're back to what FireBeyond said. One provider. As I replied to you earlier in another thread, cellular internet isn't equivalent, nor is it priced comparably.
re: EDIT: I didn't DV you but you shouldn't be surprised. There probably isn't a single HN'er without direct experience shopping for an ISP, and thus few without the knowledge that the many promises of "broadband" service are often mere pie in the sky.
But the argument here is "broadband monopoly" not "wired broadband monopoly", which municipalities have direct control over on who gets to lay cables. The "broadband monopoly" argument should stop since American consumers aren't limited to one broadband provider.
Anyway, one of the wired ones that's listed (CenturyLink) does residential internet from what I can tell[1]. Another wired one that's also listed for residential in Olympia is MegaPath (owned by Platinum Equity, another wired one)[2].
>But the argument here is "broadband monopoly" not "wired broadband monopoly"
No, to repeat myself, cellular wireless ISP service is neither functionally equivalent to other wired nor even to other wireless ISP service offerings. Cellular offers include low data throughput limits, and are not priced comparably. If there were two DSL offerings and one was priced higher for a lower level of service that would also not be reasonably considered a competitive market situation.
As for CenturyLink in Olympia, Wa. the poster already replied that Century Link do not offer service to his/her residence.
I'm not going to audit the claim about Megapath, but instead just assume that FireBeyond was truthful and correct when they said that Megapath did not offer residential services to their address.
Are you going to claim that AT&T offering (typically) a 10GB cap / month (without huge overages) is a realistic broadband offering?
Also - yes, I'm aware CenturyLink does home internet. Not at any of four addresses, including mine and major streets in 98501 where it says they are available according to the original site.
Megapath (the one I found) does residential - in theory. After inputting my service address (and I'm in the heart of the residential area, in a division less than ten years old), here are my options:
1. "Symmetric Ethernet: 6.0M to 45.0M (* Requires Business Account)"
2. "SDSL: 192k" (fairly sure that doesn't meet any current definition of "broadband")
3. "T1: 384k to 3.0M (* Requires Business Account)"
I wouldn't call that a realistic residential broadband offering.
Apropos of anything else, it's as much as you can't just blindly point at broadband.gov and say "look, healthy marketplace!".
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/olymp...
There's Comcast, Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile and a host of others.
EDIT: Facts deserve downvotes?