A woman went into a butcher shop and asked the price for chicken. The butcher replied, "Two dollars a pound." The woman replied, "That's outrageous - down the block the price is only $1.50 a pound!"There is only one legitimate way of driving down the price of a good - and that is to increase the supply of it. I fail to see how reducing the profitability of increasing the supply of anything is going to cause its supply to increase.The butcher replied, "Then I guess you'll be buying your chicken there." The woman replied, "They don't have any chicken, though." The butcher replied, "Oh, that's different - when we don't have any chicken, we only charge $1.00 a pound!"
These "competitors" to whom the actual wirestringers like Verizon have been required to sell at a deep discount have the primary effect of reducing the profit of the telecoms attributable to DSL. If you buy DSL from a third party instead of Vorizon, Vorizon does all the work but gets less money for it than if you paid the same money to Verizon directly.
Maybe a given DSL line would be put in at the discounted price anyway - but also, maybe it wouldn't. It doesn't matter how low the price is if there is nothing on the shelf to buy.