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DSL uses the phone lines to the central, of which there is (at least) one per household, so you just need to hook into a different router at the central. This is easy. For cable you have one cable running down the street, and access is binary, either you have everything or you don't. It's not practical to force the cable owner to "open up", like you can force the phone line owner.

Digital is changing this, very quickly.

I agree. The only choice we have now is cable vs netflix.

Currently, in my area, there are at least four different choices: FiOS, Comcast, DirecTV, DISH Network. At yet all four offer similar programming packages (big blocks of channels). This seems to be evidence against your hypothesis.