Politically the makings of a similar situation already exist. Goverment has swung the USF funds to fuel rual broadband, strongly favoring FTTx where it makes sense. While companies like Verizon enjoy not having to share their fiber lines now, these same forces will conspire to drive unbundling in fiber, just as it did in copper. What they are getting now is simply a first mover advantage.
It's a bigger first mover advantage. They've learned their lesson from the copper unbundling and they are being allowed to deploy fiber in ways that will make it hard (impossible) to sell it on an unbundled basis later.
Government at the end of the day will fund the 20-40% of America which is profitable in the long run, but not in commercial time scales. They will also fund the 10% of America which will never be profitable, no mater what. It happened with Electricity and Telephone, and I suspect the societal drivers to do the same with the Internet will be even stronger. Companies will have to accept an unbundled tail to get access to this 30-50% of the market; and while they aren't interested now, they will be very soon.
Maybe, but, if what is happening now is allowed to continue, it will: 1. Not encourage competition anywhere. 2. Allow existing monopolies to preserve and extend those monopolies. 3. Cost even more than it already has. 4. Continue to lag behind the rest of the world. 5. Result in an inferior solution. What is needed is for regulators to step up with a bold vision for the public good. We need to encourage (or even require) local authorities to deploy (themselves or by contract) independent L1 infrastructure (yes, I like the 4-8 strands per residence star topology idea) to every structure within their jurisdiction and make it available to L2+ service providers on an equal-cost-per-subscriber basis in each jurisdiction. Yes, this means that the cost per subscriber will be lower in denser jurisdictions than it will be in less dense jurisdictions. However, users in those jurisdictions should expect to pay more for services and the ability to attract L2+ service providers can be achieved in a variety of ways. The important thing is to make sure that if public money is being used to build infrastructure, it becomes infrastructure that is useful to said public and not just a subsidy to some corporation for extending its monopoly in a manner that is often contrary to the public good. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the money is going today. Owen