But that's because Sweden has open carrier fiber network, while the wireless network is carrier specific.
The last mile isn't some nationwide open carrier network like Australia's planned NBN. In some places there are municipal open access networks, in some places it's co-ops of homeowners, but in many places it's all private networks (in every apartment I lived in in Malmö, it was all private fiber - either Telia, Tele2, Ownit, etc). But even though it was private it was better than what you can get in most US cities.
Im not against regulation -- competition is what brings out the best in us, but games are only interesting if the rules are reasonable.
I completely agree with this.
> But couldn't a lot of that be addressed by requiring a certain number of different spectrum owners?
I suppose it could, but is that not the case in the US? I believe it only works if you can expect that cartels won't exist, which unfortunately is not a safe assumption. It's also an expensive barrier to entry for new actors.
Community owned last-mile utility is what has worked on electricity, phones, and forementioned fiber in Sweden. Anything else has proven to somehow fail to be competative. I feel comfortable in drawing an assumption off that. I wish more people agreed or that I was proven wrong.
Likewise games stop being fun if the rules can't enforce a reasonable playing ground.
The question then is how to best regulate the allocation of spectrum. Because cell networks are relatively easy to deploy (on top of an existing fiber network, and relative to the work of the fiber buildout), it seems to make more sense to break regions (city or county) up in to 10 or so spectrum slices, and lease them out to carriers. Regions are free to choose to have some or all of that operate as a utility, I suppose, but I think a regular co-op or corporation likely performs as well, as long as you require that fundamental carrier diversity.
Then just a bit of regulation about unlocked phones (when you pay in full!).
Private doesn't even have to be a problem if competition is maintained. In Sweden there's a mix of public, privatized-minority-government-owned, co-op and private providers and competition is quite healthy.