or is, due to a long history of regulation and government involvement, inhibited

And this is really begging the question, in the fallacious sense.

Where does this "bureaucratic layer" argument come from? The only telcos that are going to be burdened by these regs are ones who are already doing shady stuff. In other words, the ones that need to be.

And on a more visceral and arational level? Fuck 'em. Fuck Comcast, fuck Verizon. They had years to get their house in order, and it wasn't regulation preventing them from doing so. It wasn't regulation that gives Comcast the worst customer satisfaction scores in the entire industry. It wasn't regulation that made Comcast's "capacity" problems magically disappear when Google Fiber shows up in the same city. It wasn't regulation that made Comcast acquire and abuse what amounts to a monopoly position. It wasn't regulation that made Verizon run what amounts to a protection racket on Netflix.

Nobody put a gun to the CEO's heads and said "be the biggest bastards you possibly can" - they managed to do that quite well with minimal government involvement.

Perhaps this market warrants a different approach because it's demonstrably broken and because the internet is more akin to infrastructure than a consumer good.