The local ISP is tied to the local telco. They have a monopoly because they own the wires: you can have any dialup you want if you don't mind paying extortionate prices for the calls. The problem is that this monopoly are at best lazy, worthless pigfuckers and at worst dangerously incompetent.
Case in point, their tech support. After going through the motions of sitting in a queue and dealing with the tech support people who had no clue as to how to solve the problem, I find out that this monopoly has recently reconfigured their side of things and fucked me and plenty of others. Their engineers are finally getting around to looking at it, but they have no idea how long it will take to be fixed.
Short form: I could be left with just the Treo as my internet access until $DEITY knows when. I could easily lose an entire week because of these bastards.
This is why monopolies are bad.
