Shopping for internet service

My friend is in the process of a messy move from a situation with roommates (the cause of the mess in the first place) to her own apartment, without the pesky roommates.The strange thing about things like cable is the regulated monopolies that locks you in to effectively a single provider for a lot of services. In the case of West Seattle the choice that's been made for you is Comcast.So we were looking at the packages that are offered by them and they are quite whack. So you can get 6mbps internet for $50, but you can 25mbps service for $30 for six months then goes up to $45. Ummm... why on earth would you get the more expensive slower one.But you can get almost the same deal with HBO for only $10 more, plus TV and other stuff.Like I was saying, the pricing seems completely whacked. Someone rolled the dice and came up with some random prices to charge for random sets of services.Go figure.I'm not complaining about Comcast. Most people seem to complain, but in my year-and-a-half with them I've not had any issues at all.