Actually, that's not clear either. The FCC has given Verizon the right to exclude other ISP's from their DSL circuits, too. That is set to take effect in approximately a year.
Verizon plans to deliver video content in competition with the local cable company (here it's Comcast). I doubt they're worried about bandwidth issues.
And inbound port 25 (SMTP) doesn't use any bandwidth to speak of.
That's a possible alternative. But the main reason for running my own mail server is the complete control over it. My spam blocking, for instance, currently is running at over 150 per day with almost 100% efficiency. I don't quarantine, and I don't worry about lost messages. If I have to rely on someone else then I'll still have to look at ~150 spams per day just to make sure they're legit. The ONLY spam blocker I trust is the one my current ISP uses, which also happens to be what I'm using.
There's lots of other reasons for running my own servers ... I can add domains for the cost of the registration, for instance, which is real useful with teenage kids around. At times I've hosted an IRC server for work. The list goes on. With my own system I'm free to do what I want with it.
John Meissen snipped-for-privacy@aracnet.com