Just want you to know I was joking. You don't really sound like a cruel, cynical bastard.
The telecom industry has been so heavily consolidated that it's not even close to competitive. You go elsewhere in the world and you find telecommunications services that far exceed ours in terms of quality, level of technology and value.
I honestly wish the government would break up AT&T and Verizon into about a dozen separate companies. They did it before and it worked out. There needs to be a lot more competition in telecommunications. The only other option is to limit the scope of what they do. If you provide telecom services, for example, you cannot sell phones. Or content. The only other option is to make them so highly regulated that their eyeballs pop out and let loose some consumer protection agency on them to sit on their necks until they stop charging $40 just to upgrade to a new phone (not the cost of the new phone, not the cost of switching the sim card since that's done by the customer. I cannot figure out why there is a $40 "phone upgrade" charge.)
I hate the phone companies. Really really.