This is true for both sides of the debate. On one side you have the lobbyists and big cable companies (and telcos). On the other you have the people who want

This is true for both sides of the debate. On one side you have the lobbyists and big cable companies (and telcos). On the other you have the people who want more regulation because these companies are too big-- but who ignore the fact that the only reason these companies are so big is that they are state granted monopolies in the first place. The "right" to run cable is a monopoly that the local municipality uses to extract money from the populace (via cable fees that the populace ultimately pays in cable bills) The "right" to operate a cell tower is a monopoly (or tri-opoly- only three providers are permitted per metropolitan area) that the FCC created when it "auctioned" off the spectrum. The reality is, both over cable wires and over the wireless airwaves, there is no natural monopoly. Spread spectrum technology (and the infinite variance in frequencies of light a single optical cable can carry) mean that there is no real scarcity of capacity. And while there are limits, there are huge swaths of spectrum that can be used, but that the government is keeping off the market to increase the revenue it gets from the "auctions". There's enough money in the industry to run separate cables. Many larger cities ran fiber rings and these could handle many, many competing providers. The cost of laying fiber to one cable complex is fixed, while the number of providers that could use it is pretty high (multiple providers per fiber and multiple strands per cable, and hundreds (thousands?) of wavelengths per fiber.) Further we've already seen what the government has done with the internet-- they tapped it. They started recording everything. They weakened cryptography. They have forced people to give up private keys. They have proven that they cannot be trusted with something as sacred as the internet. So, while "regulating" the internet might seem like a savior now-- we all get the bandwidth we're paying for-- and I'd certainly like that[1]-- I believe the end result will be further consolidation into ever larger, and fewer players, all of whome are very closely tied with the government, and even less privacy or security. Ultimately resulting in a return of an AT&T like monopoly which has no interest in innovation because it has no competition. Back in the "old days" of the internet, the primary impediment to getting good connectivity was AT&T and its remains after it broke up (into smaller still highly regulated and not-at-all-interested-in-what-you-wanted-to-do-with-THIER-phone-lines.) [1] I find it astounding that in south america, where the entire country has to share a single optical connection to north america I could watch netflix in HD, but here in a city that google is currently wiring for fiber, I can only get Netflix on SD over my "40 megabit" cable modem. So, yes, I've experienced this problem first hand. It pisses me off.