said by koitsu :

The fact that Comcast considers AT&T their biggest threat is because Comcast *knows* they're not competing with FiOS. They can state they are, but they're not.

Let's get one thing straight here:

The instant Verizon starts offering FiOS in Silicon Valley, both AT&T and Comcast are going to sh** bricks, because they will easily lose half their customers.

But Verizon had better be fully prepared -- because if you screw up providing service in the Bay, a well-known trickle-down effect happens: your stock value drops sharply, while the number of customers telling others via forums and word-of-mouth "avoid Verizon, they suck!" quintuples. Verizon had better be ready to prepare for just how much bandwidth we chew up around here, and just how technically-savvy and picky we are.

This also explains why northern California is literally the *LAST* place to get broadband deployments (doesn't matter what company) -- the risks of being too hasty with deployments are VERY high here.

That said, I think the majority of us in the Bay are sick and tired of AT&T and Comcast -- both tremendously underpowered and atrociously overpriced. We don't have any decent alternatives (we can debate this some other time; 3rd-party DSL providers don't count, because they still have to rely on AT&T copper, and wireless/satellite doesn't count either due to high latency and crummy packet loss). A third choice (Verizon) would be a blessing.