And really, think of CTL as a decades-long rollup of baby Bells in the north central / midwestern US and they make more sense -- just like AT&T is largely a rollup of the southern and western Bells and Verizon is largely a rollup of east coast Bells.
AT&T and Verizon were able to prevent Comcast from becoming a third national competitor (for now), but it looks like CenturyLink will just take their place. Look for them to get into cellular in more than an overbuilding capacity soon though. I will almost guarantee that Sprint ends up with Comcast and T-Mobile with CenturyLink -- though I also wouldn't be surprised if the opposite happens.
Our goal as people who use telecom services should be to get as much diversity in telecom as possible. Right now, it's a two-horse race: AT&T / Verizon and Comcast / Charter / Cox. If, in 10 years, we have a choice between AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and CenturyLink... that will be better.
Small, local competition for ISPs do not make sense over the long term. It may get you fast speeds over the last mile in the short-term, but doesn't get you a fast connection to everywhere else and the investment levels are going to be unable to keep up after the first generation. The oversubscription model benefits from national scale, and even a national last-mile telecom without a national fiber network will have problems matching the cost structure of their competitors (as we recently saw with TimeWarner Cable). The infrastructure doesn't scale operationally or financially otherwise.