When I lived in Tucson I had a similar problem. IIRC Comcast offered acceptable speeds (15/1?) and Qwest or similar offered maybe 1.5 Mbs down and less up. "Competition" existed only in a theoretical sense.
I actually tried writing to the head of Qwest Arizona and Qwest nationally to try and convince them to run faster pipes to my area—a lot of students and younger people who like fast Internet access lived there—but didn't get any action.
"Qwest"---Century now, right?---has never been very serious about this, but then again I've read that unlike AT&T and Verizon they also didn't try to compete with the cablecos on video. So as I recall they didn't put egregious caps on their slow offerings.
Right now I'm in one of those locations that's outside of any city (but only by a hair, part of the property is inside one), so it's only AT&T. We could in theory enjoy ~1.5 Mbs down after a DSLAM upgrade some time ago, but we don't bother because AT&T, to protect their U-verse video offerings puts strict caps on DSL. Even in small-medium sized cities/metro areas like mine (Jopin), where they don't offer U-verse (besides that brand for new generation DSL), and pretty clearly never will. 150 "GB" as they calculate it, $10/each 50 GB over.
Now, having started in the bad old days when 1200 baud was fast, and if you were lucky you could get 2400 baud or greater on a direct link, I'm only so unhappy, with my parents disgruntled by this limit on Internet video. But we're certainly "roadkill on the Information Superhighway", and I don't, for example, see this being addressed by the White House/FCC proposed 300+ pages of new regulations. Then again, they're not yet public, but even the most positive descriptions indicate we're SOL.
Oh, yeah, the price keeps increasing, right now it's $39/month as long as you have an also expensive voice land line (all told with the nickle and diming taxes, another 30+ dollars).
On the other hand, AT&T i.e. SWB is a freaking telco, the service is rock solid. Everyone of my friend with cableco Internet service has notably worse reliability, enough to impact e.g. working from home.
Cox is a great provider in AZ, and in fact, in Tucson I don't think Comcast is allowed to sell in the city, only the county (if you actually live in the city, as most of my family does, your only options are Cox and Century Link).
I'm fairly lucky in Phoenix, with Century Link I get 40/20 for about 70/month.
And, Century Link I believe is currently in the process of rolling out Fiber in Phx (same w/ Cox)
I actually tried writing to the head of Qwest Arizona and Qwest nationally to try and convince them to run faster pipes to my area—a lot of students and younger people who like fast Internet access lived there—but didn't get any action.