Well, except that the local telco (e.g. BT in the UK) almost certainly has monopoly over the last mile of your connection, regardless of who your ISP is (they rent the last mile from e.g. BT Openreach or maybe TalkTalk) and it's not uncommon for them to refuse to fix congestions at their exchanges (or even admit their presence) for extended periods. So, you know, it's not like it's all utopistic here or something.
The worst bit is that OpenReach are publishing data where they will wire the cabinets, but are hiding information when the cabinets will be wired to your house.
They are actually going to court for this false advertising.
If by their own you mean one of numerous other cable companies that they purchased then yes. There used to be a plethora of small cable companies in the UK. Now there is only Virgin.
The widespread availability of high quality ADSL does seem to do a good job of keeping them honest though. I've been a pretty satisfied customer of them for many years now.
Virgin offer a "cable" service which is available where they have cable television (not a wide distribution area), and that this is what they refer to as their fibre service.
Virgin also resell the same ADSL that everyone else does (complete with BT line rental).
