The only alternative to complete control by a monopoly should not be complete control by governments. There is a middle ground and it's proven to be quite functional.

Look at how this is solved in other places such as Canada or the UK where they instead force the ISPs to lease lines at reasonable rates. It's caused a massive shift in cost and speed of connections.

The federal government forcing ISPs to do anything falls into the "complete control" category. The "right" thing to do would be to strip states of their ability to enter into abusive, monopolistic agreements to begin with, but then there'd be the massive issue if the federal government stomping all over state sovereignty which is its own minefield of hazards and political suicide.

There would also be the issues that 1) it doesn't work. The cost of building a last mile network is a massive deterrent to competition even in Europe, which as Americans tend to like to point out in discussions like this, has a far higher population density than the US, which makes it more cost effective, - places that allow it rarely see a proliferation of competitors, and certainly nothing like the EU/EEA competitive situation where having access to dozens of ISPs is the norm most places. 2) if it does work against all odds, there would be massive issues with companies digging up the streets all the time.

The "complete control" in the EU is very limited. The details vary by country, but the telecoms directive required each member state to ensure that access to the last mile was guaranteed. Most countries have opted for a solution where the incumbent was forced to separate out the operation and maintenance of the last mile infrastructure, regulated its prices on a cost plus basis and outlaw differentiated prices per provider, and provide access for competitors to lease space for equipment in local exchanges.

The rest of the ISP space is mostly unregulated.

What has been regulated is access to critical last-mile infrastructure. Nothing but cost stops people from building additional last-mile infrastructure.

In the UK, for example, we have numerous fibre ISPs operating their on physical infrastructure in the larger cities, where you can cover a lot of subscribers for relatively low cost, as well as Virgin Media (cable provider) that maintains their own cable infrastructure, and anyone can pay for access to install additional conduits.

But the point is you can start a competitive ISPs without it. In fact, due to backhaul (you can get IP handoff of your customers connections at a set of central locations rather than having to put your own equipment in), you can start an ISP very cheaply, and grow by adding equipment in exchanges as it becomes cost effective).

In fact, this solution has made control harder. E.g. the court decisions to block the Pirate Bay applies to a set of the largest providers only, presumably because they figured it was the most "bang for the buck" in terms of court costs. But pretty much anyone can choose from any of dozens of other ISPs without such blocks in place if they can't be bothered the hassle of working around it. Similarly the infamous "child porn filters", is something that the largest ISPs have been coerced to "voluntarily" sign up to, but because the government does not have the balls to try to push regulation of it through parliament, anyone who oppose the filters (good reason to: there's no oversight over what exactly is being filtered) can chose from dozens of ISPs that don't use them.

> Look at how this is solved in other places such as Canada or the UK where they instead force the ISPs to lease lines at reasonable rates.

The FCC will now have the authority to do that for all Internet access, if they want to.

Up until now, only telephone companies were regulated as utilities, and they were indeed forced to lease access to their lines. I buy DSL service from a "CLEC" (competitive local exchange carrier)--a company that is leasing access to the existing phone network in my area.

But until this recent FCC ruling, the FCC did not have the same authority over cable networks, fiber networks, or wireless networks.