OK, I'll put my hands up: I don't keep up to date with every last FCC ruling/regulation/commission meeting. I do see your point about governments tending towards a power creep.
I have a degree in telecommunications and telecom law was my favorite course. One of my textbooks was a 1000+ page volume, printed on ultra-thin paper, that was a review of every regulation and court ruling since the Communications Act was created in 1934.
Understanding telecommunications, how it works, how the users use it and behave, etc. is all a large mess of technological, economic, sociological, and psychological understanding. Unfortunately the Federal Communications Commission is headed up by politically appointed individuals who have been heads of trade organizations or lobbying groups and have no experience at all in the modern technology. Any of them with real communications experience haven't dealt with any actual networking and broadcasting technology and information in decades. I'd be willing to guess that the last time Commissioner Wheeler dealt with anything on a technological level that there wasn't even home dial-up.
No,
@Danoff what you're missing is that government bodies regulate corporations, and regulate internet infrastructure. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars were given to cable companies without any way to keep them accountable and those greedy bastards didn't improve service at all! Now there's no competition because the barriers to entry into the market are so high that only established huge corporations can afford to enter the market, and they can keep their oligopolies. These greedy corporations bribe Congress so they can change the laws to benefit their companies and keep cities and smaller companies from competing!
Fortunately the local governments have allowed for competition. Imagine that. The way the government was supposed to work, most things done on a local level, has managed to reach better results.
In most states is some form of a public service commission. They set regulations on a state level, require what kind of access must be provided to whom in order for a business to operate within the state, etc. Then on a town/city level the town/city council will negotiate the contracts for the local utility service providers. This includes everything from water to Internet service. They even negotiate rates. The company can't change rates and plans without getting approval from the local authority. A company's monopoly lasts only as long as it is allowed to. It should be noted that these authorities cannot affect content. Attempts have led to 1st amendment violations.
In larger urban areas they now often allow multiple providers in for things like phone, cable and TV. You unfortunately can't really share water and electrical networks. Nothing sorts your drops of water from your competitor's. I have seen areas where there is a cable company that provides phone, TV, and Internet. Then you have something like AT&T and Windstream that also offer the same, but over different lines. And with the much more affordable satellite services that allows another competitor in that doesn't even have to get local authority, other than register as a tax paying business.
In some rural areas there are monopolies, but the companies involved are small and local and they are so small that if they screw up they are easily overtaken. And then they still have to compete with what a satellite service and mobile service can offer.
Ultimately, all of this is why I think that net neutrality is a non-issue. If you look at it from a national view it looks like you have these giant, monstrous companies that are just lumbering over the citizens like Godzilla. The fact is each large company is comprised of thousands of tiny contracts in every city/county and what they can pull off in one city won't get passed in another. Living between Louisville and Lexington I see price and package differences between the two all the time, even though they both use Time Warner.
The real threat is in the situation I am in. I live in the state capital, which uses Frankfort Plant Board, a municipal owned utility company. Will the city approve the rate hike requested by the city-owned cable company? Yes. They control water, phone, electric, cable, and Internet. They pay carrier fees to Windstream because Windstream's lines pass through the city, but they don't allow Windstream to offer their own service, nor can any of the long distance phone services, such as AT&T. Being a monopoly every one of their ads claims them to be the fastest Internet in Frankfort. I laugh because their maximum speed is equivalent to some of the lower tiered plans offered by Time Warner.
And that is even more telling. Windstream owns the physical network in the state, despite Time Warner being in all the major metropolitan regions. Heck, if I lived two miles up the road I could have choices between Time Warner, Windstream, and AT&T. I'm so close to the edge that I am on a different water network. The point is that Time Warner would face multiple issues if they chose to engage in practices that harm consumers. For one, any throttling would have to be on their servers. They have to explain themselves to Windstream to maintain their access contract. Then they have to get the state and local authorities to allow the new practice. It is an uphill battle to force consumers into a plan that is nothing but harmful.
I am not completely versed in every state in the union, so there are likely some incongruities between how I describe it and how someone else might have things happen.
