Yeah, unfortunately there's not much you can do. The big telcos are so politically powerful that any individual market (especially if it's a smaller one) doesn'

Yeah, unfortunately there's not much you can do. The big telcos are so politically powerful that any individual market (especially if it's a smaller one) doesn't have much bargaining power. This isn't a problem specific to telcos; this just happens anywhere you have one large unified side negotiating with a number of fractured parties with different interests (and would likely be the same when dealing with a government bureaucracy vs. a telco.)