Either way, we users are intimately aware of our providers' whims. But that's not all we're aware of. It's not like a meat counter, where the end product arrives neatly wrapped in plastic. Internet providers make their sausage in public. If I'm getting dropped packets I can do a traceroute and ping hosts until I find out who's responsible.
Users tattle on their providers, too.
If I have a bad experience with the phone company, I'm basically stuck. It's not like I'm going to sit down with a phone book and share the story with as many customers as possible. But if an Internet provider gets me sufficiently pissed off that's exactly what I'll do - and I'm not alone. The List offers a nice little interface for searching out contact information on ISPs. Even better, it used to let you annotate the listings with your own comments.