I believe that 'competition' in the last mile is a red herring that simply maintains the status quo (which for many broadband consumers is woefully inadequate). I agree with you that the USA has too many lobbyists to ever put such a proposal in place, the telecoms in a
large
number of states have even limited or prevented municipalities from creating their own solutions, consumers have no hope. one has to wonder how different the telecom world might have been in the USA if a layer 1 - layer 2/3 separation was proposed instead of the at&t breakup and modified judgement
jy
I like the *idea* of having the infrastructure separate but I am not sure how well that could work unless there was a national infrastructure company that could spread costs over the entire customer base. If you look at what AT&T did in Fairbanks after the 1964 EQ, it was amazing what they were able to do in such a short time. They could draw on resources nationally and spread those costs over the entire operation. A local infrastructure company couldn't do that. I think it would have to be a national layer1 company. Maintaining infrastructure is costly and charges for services help subsidize infrastructure expansion/repair. Then you get to the finger pointing problem where the service provider points at the wire company and vice versa. Then you have to ask yourself ... is the current system really all that broken? The *only* problem I see with the current system is a lack of competition for broadband in many areas. Address that problem and I think the other problems work themselves out. Even if there are only two choices, that is much better than one provider only.