As a Sonic customer, I agree with you: small ISPs can be awesome.
However, over 90% of American homes have at most 2 ISP choices. At most! So we are in a small but happy minority.
I lay most of the blame here on the FCC and the FTC, who have totally failed to regulate in a way that maintains a healthy market.
But I also have some blame left over for all the people who signed up with major ISPs while the small ones went out of business. It has always cost me more money to go with a local ISP rather than whatever the megacorp's latest intro rate would be. Now everybody is shocked that Comcast, Verizon, et al are giving shitty service and being total dicks about it. But it turns out I can't go down to the corner and shout, "WELL DUH! WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?!? TO THEM YOU ARE THE VEAL!" because nobody likes hearing I told you so. That or they don't like crazy people shouting on the corner.
