The big national ones are all deep into "A plague on all your houses!" territory, though.

is that sooner or later, and usually sooner, they'll get bought up and you'll be sucked into the vortex.

Happened to me repeatedly in Ontario. I finally just settled on the cable company. Basically, it will be devil and deep blue sea no matter what you do, when it comes to the big ones.

If you're interested in the issue, google things like crtc bell rogers. The former (the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, the govt regulatory and rate-setting authority) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the latter two, or so the co-vivant, who spends half his life hating Rogers, tells me daily.

The big guys offer bundled deals. I use Shaw - Shaw Phone (ie, VOIP), Shaw Cable TV and Shaw internet. I get a bundled price that's "OK", but quite a bit less if I ordered them individually. I'd love to punt the TV part. Generally pleased with both performance and service.