While you are correct that telcos currently enjoy a certain degree of regulatory capture, they are also natural monopolies/oligopolies in the sense that competitors have an astronomical barrier to entry. It's tempting but naive to think that all we need to do in order to see the market right itself is to eliminate existing regulations.
What we actually need to do is to change regulations to encourage competition, both by eliminating explicit monopoly rights and by mandating and/or price-controlling B2B bandwidth/traffic sales so that incumbents can't kill new entrants without beating them on a level playing field.
Forcing telcos to act like "dumb pipes" is one type of regulation that forces them to compete against each other (otherwise they just lump their market power with media providers until they are once again too big to challenge).
> .. by eliminating explicit monopoly rights and by mandating and/or price-controlling B2B bandwidth/traffic sales ...
Are you willing to try the former before the latter? If so, I don't think we're far off .. I'm not an absolutist, if there is a compelling case after the artificial constraints are removed, then I might consider state intervention as a last resort. But not before giving the free market a fair shot.
In principle, I agree with you. In practice, I'm hesitant due to the analogy with the health care market. We've been giving them "just one more chance" to find the set of market regulations that promote progress for the last few decades at the price of trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives every year (in comparison to established single-payer systems). Without a concrete stopping point and with LOTS of money behind the lobby to perpetuate a pathological free market experiment long past its due date, I'm inclined to fight for utility regulation from the getgo.
"just lump their market power with media providers" is interesting considering that's Comcast, today. In a world without net neutrality, how do you stop Comcast from delivering NBC video content on the fast pipe, while degrading the performance of it's competitors?
What we actually need to do is to change regulations to encourage competition, both by eliminating explicit monopoly rights and by mandating and/or price-controlling B2B bandwidth/traffic sales so that incumbents can't kill new entrants without beating them on a level playing field.
Forcing telcos to act like "dumb pipes" is one type of regulation that forces them to compete against each other (otherwise they just lump their market power with media providers until they are once again too big to challenge).