They got around this in the UK by splitting the monopoly (well, except for Kingston upon hull) into BT and OpenReach. OpenReach provides the infrastructure, and are bound by government regulation to provide open access to last mile infrastructure for a fixed fee per product - this allows a load of ISP's to offer their own value-add services.
AAISP is pricey, but you get legendary support Zen is less pricey (and unlimited) and good support PlusNet is cheap as chips
The one are this is different with is FTTP - because of the slow roll out on OpenReach's part, plenty of smaller providers have stepped up and built their own infrastructure and cover various parts of the country.
Is it perfect? Of course not, but I'm paying 54 GBP a month for 900 down and 110 up FTTP.