[aaren]

Someone linked to B4RN [1] the other day: community owned, non profit, symmetric gigabit internet in the north west of England, for £30 / month.

If more of these networks spring up, then maybe something good will come of BT's tardiness in laying decent infrastructure. Granted, B4RN is strongly enabled by being able to easily lay fibre under farmland, but there are other models that are more appropriate in urban areas - see e.g. the guifi network [2] in Catalonia.

[1]: http://b4rn.org.uk [2]: http://guifi.net