While the regimes aren't inviolate, Congressional action would probably be required to change the status quo. Besides that, the fact that you can reimagine the legal rules doesn't change the philosophical and political positions that led to the existing status quo. It's a mistake to think that the drafters of the 1996 telecom act didn't understand what they were doing. They made a conscious effort to try and deregulate the industry while conceding to keep much of the existing regime applicable to voice service.
All this could be changed if you let Congress have another shot at the classifications, but you really don't want that. The forces that made telephone regulation the morass that it is will conspire to turn internet regulation into a morass as well. It sounds good to say that rural areas should have access to internet service, but opening that can of worms is a disaster in the making.
Infrastructure regulation in the U.S. is a disaster because of the disproportionate power of rural voters. It's not efficient to build infrastructure to rural and exurban areas, but rural votes, particularly in the Senate, hold infrastructure projects hostage unless inefficient infrastructure is built in those areas. That's why Amtrak is obligated to run a nationwide network when it should just run a train line from DC to Boston. Indeed, the desire to provide universal service is responsible for much of the dysfunctional aspects of the telecom industry to begin with. Many cable providers are monopolies because municipalities granted monopoly status as a concession for building service broadly instead of just to the profitable locations.
Look at the aspects of the telecom industry that are actually getting people excited. T-Mobile's new LTE network, for example. The reason it works is because T-Mobile avoids a whole bunch of capital construction by only focusing on urban areas. Cities get LTE, and everyone else gets HSPA or 2G. Or look at Google's fiber service: hitting major urban areas and avoiding anywhere that doesn't yield a lot of subscribers per mile of fiber. That's the right way forward--that's how we get internet speeds in the U.S. that match countries in Asia and Europe that are much more heavily urbanized. Treating internet service the way we treat other public infrastructure will destroy that.
All this could be changed if you let Congress have another shot at the classifications, but you really don't want that. The forces that made telephone regulation the morass that it is will conspire to turn internet regulation into a morass as well. It sounds good to say that rural areas should have access to internet service, but opening that can of worms is a disaster in the making.
Infrastructure regulation in the U.S. is a disaster because of the disproportionate power of rural voters. It's not efficient to build infrastructure to rural and exurban areas, but rural votes, particularly in the Senate, hold infrastructure projects hostage unless inefficient infrastructure is built in those areas. That's why Amtrak is obligated to run a nationwide network when it should just run a train line from DC to Boston. Indeed, the desire to provide universal service is responsible for much of the dysfunctional aspects of the telecom industry to begin with. Many cable providers are monopolies because municipalities granted monopoly status as a concession for building service broadly instead of just to the profitable locations.
Look at the aspects of the telecom industry that are actually getting people excited. T-Mobile's new LTE network, for example. The reason it works is because T-Mobile avoids a whole bunch of capital construction by only focusing on urban areas. Cities get LTE, and everyone else gets HSPA or 2G. Or look at Google's fiber service: hitting major urban areas and avoiding anywhere that doesn't yield a lot of subscribers per mile of fiber. That's the right way forward--that's how we get internet speeds in the U.S. that match countries in Asia and Europe that are much more heavily urbanized. Treating internet service the way we treat other public infrastructure will destroy that.