For those who still say there is no real competition in broadband and that the broadband market has failed: Although I’m not prone to anecdotal blogging, I can’t resist this. Cable modem service was off-line in large parts of Sugar Land all day yesterday. I am not sure of the reason, but I will withhold company names, because the outage may have been due to external factors. With all the housing and road construction going on in the area, a backhoe could have easily snagged a cable or knocked over an electronics box. Still, first thing this morning my local phone company (which is neither AT&T nor Verizon) had telemarketers on the loose touting a DSL offer of two month’s free for switching, plus another two months free if I took a long-distance package wit the deal. The numbers were good enough to have me considering the prospect. I spent more time with the rep than I probably have with any since I set up basic service. I haven’t made a decision, but I am impressed with the speed and aggressiveness the local telephone company moved. I’ve experienced outages before, but never a targeted competitive response. Goes to show that even with just two companies, competition can be more than vigorous.