Sure, as long as the competition is:

1. An equal playing field - ie, no one carrier has a technical or legislative advantage over any others.

2. Carrier lock-in is eliminated - any device allowed on any network, no long term contracts.

3. There are little to no barriers for new carriers to enter the market.

This would increase competition, in the favor of wireless customers.

1) Technical advantages are welcomed, just not legislative. 2) Arguing from the perspective of the Cato institute, who are you to place restrictions on the phones carriers sell? The root issue is whether providers have a monopoly or not. But keeping a distinguishing feature just as phones to yourself is just good business. 3) Completely agreed.

This paper (circa 2004) was written from the perspective that internet service is not a monopoly. In this situation the answer is clear; (to a libertarian) government has no business dictating how we should do business.

A large debate within libertarian circles is what to do when monopolies happen. The reflexive answer is no government interference allowed no matter what, the market will figure it out. Obviously in certain situations that doesn't work too well, as far as I know it's still an open question.

Would you count patent protections as technical or legislative? Patents are supposed to be used only to encourage technological progress, but all too often they screw up the competitive landscape on an entire market in ways that are obviously unfair. If we could reform our patent system to get rid of software patents and raise the bar for physical inventions, then it might be okay to say that technical advantages [protected by patents] are fair.

This is sort of a divisive issue for Libertarians. On the one hand, patents extend the reach of Capitalism into new places, which some libertarians who are reflexively pro-Capitalism like. On the other hand, patents are government restrictions on what you can do with your property, so more consistent (imho) Libertarians tend to be against them.

I would personally list patent protections as legislative. There was an article posted to HN recently about patents and what I took away was that they do little to protect someone who isn't a large corporation. I believe this is related to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2034262 , patents (in any form not just software but also physical) are just another way to prevent a free market from forming. And libertarianism is based on a firm belief in the free market.

IMO, the presence of (3) from that list will go a long, LONG way in eliminating (1) and (2).

Given an easy way for competitors to enter the market, carrier lock-in wrt devices and features will decrease dramatically. Citation: See the UK and (to an extent) Indian telecom markets.

Wow. The idea that profit-motivated corporations would voluntarily do what you describe is an idealistic fantasy. That's why some regulation is needed.

Exactly - everywhere there's a natural monopoly, it should be regulated into being a common carrier, when possible.

This allows innovation to flourish on top of a commodity service - fundamentally, the only thing that this kind of provider offers is the last mile, just like the water or electric company.

Can you give examples of natural monopolies?

The only ones I can think of government granted (including US broadband, because of the local city/muni exclusive contracts purchased).

See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Personally, I think their definition is a bit broad - I tend to think of natural monopolies are where the universe's physical limitations cause obvious problems either physical or practical for competition.

For example, in a totally libertarian society where you would pay a toll to drive on any road, you wouldn't want hundreds of companies trying to making their own roads between points A and B - it wouldn't be an efficient use of space, and just imagine that turnpike.

Still, someone needs to manage the road to your house, power/cable/telephone/etc. thus the government manages the companies that manage that service.

The reason that these monopolies are "natural" is that there's a physical limitation involved - it just also happens to be codified with a contractual agreement.

Regulatory capture.

Not really. As far as the bandwidth, latency and reliability required for a decent desktop connection the current competition is none at all. I had a friend that had one of those services where you use wireless internet for the house, she did nothing but complain.

Of course there are things in the future, there is 4g and all of that, it is yet to be seen whether 4G will be doable if everyone in your building is using 4g at full speeds.