There’s some additional nuance here. My position is that government does have a role in the commission and contruction of access networks. It’s not necessarily a lead role, but a role nonetheless. “Pragmatic libertarian”, maybe.

The 1996 didn’t deregulate the industry, it just shuffled the regulatory pieces around and preserved the key bottlenecks, just in smaller regions.

Infrastructure doesn’t always respond to the price mechanism well, because price signals that have to pass through too many layers from diffuse demand get lost. The transaction costs mean we have to find other ways of collectively deciding to create infrastucture — or be beholden to a usurious private monopoly supplier.

As you rise up the stack you get ever close to the realms of political speech, and government becomes less and less welcome.

The middle ‘C’ of FCC leaves an ambiguity as to where up the stack they’re supposed to stop. So I think we’re in considerable agreement, but I don’t see salvation in the current regulatory model. Only new finance and funding approaches will work — and not enough space here to give it the depth it needs.

The FCC has no interest in abolishing itself, only in perpetuating the status quo. If you’re dependent on political caprice to wrest control from monopolies, good luck — you’ll need it.