High fixed costs aren't what's keeping competitors out of the market; legally mandated monopolies are. City/Neighborhood/small scale ISPs work just fine where they're allowed to exist. There's no natural reason people should be married to one ISP based on their address without any alternatives, the overwhelming majority of services do not work this way for good reason. It'd be like banning FedEx anywhere UPS owns one truck.

If you're really worried about the coax network then push for what I suggested: unbundling the last mile. It worked great for the phone network.

I'm not arguing that the proposed plan actually helps anything (although the smaller scale and unconventional ISPs that should be encouraged are harder hit by neutrality requirements and compliance obligations in general)

I'm arguing that tilting at the network neutrality windmill doesn't actually deliver much to end users. There's about a million ways an ISP can suck and network neutrality, if you can even get it to happen, kinda-sorta fixes one of them.

There's a real problem (shitty monopoly internet providers) that has a real solution (the entirely proven strategy of eliminating monopolies).

PS: People in areas where the indoor plumbing water isn't safe to drink use competing water companies, mostly those bring-your-own-container 25c water vending machines you see in front of stores in low-income areas. If they waited for regulation to solve their problems they'd all be dead.

> More to the point, can you imagine how fast the knives would come out if the FCC announced this deregulation and also a federal universal broadband plan where they use taxpayer money to deliver fiber to the home of everybody in the country in order to insure healthy competition?

I think people would be more confused than anything, since this FCC just voted to drastically restrict choice under the existing universal service find.