A few facts:

---In 2001, there were 9300 ISPs in America, handling the majority of US internet subscribers.
----By 2010, most of America was supposed to have a fiber optic service to the home as every state cut a deal to have the state utilities upgraded to fiber and to charge local phone customers.
---And every merger made the situation worse.

Unfortunately, the companies essentially lied about the deployments while competition was shut down, not through market forces but through a takeover of the FCC.

The FCC, in 2005, removed the right of small ISPs to use line sharing to offering service, and the competitors were removed by getting rid of the wholesale arrangements, both of which started when the Telecom Act of 1996 opened the networks to competition.

By combining the 'Broadband' service, which is Title II, with the Internet Service, an “information” service -- when the FCC mushed these 2 services together, they became, together, an information service, which stopped the obligation to rent the utility networks

– This caused Net Neutrality.

---7000 small ISPs were put out of business and then AT&T and MCI were put up for sale-- and merged.

Documented in: ‘The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal”-- a free download. https://bit.ly/2M7KzTE

The FCC is currently erasing all the remaining laws and regulations on the telcos, claiming 5G will fix everything. With a range a few blocks and requiring a fiber optic wire -- what this is really about is that we'll have a few companies in control with no more regulations or obligations -- and whatever they give us-- we will have to be thankful for.

My take -- this has gone too far and we need to start to break up AT&T again.... and separate the companies from the wires.

And, we also need to go after the billions in cross-subsidies where the companies have been able, with the help of the FCC, to manipulate the accounting to dump most of the expenses into the state utility to make their other services 'profitable'.

These 2 recent articles supply a short history of the mergers and the commitments that were never completed for broadband and competition; the second is the Verizon New York 2017 financial report -- published MAY 31, 2018

---“The Mergers that Created ATT & Verizon Were Failures. Time to Break Up AT&T…Again.” https://bit.ly/2JM5zRB
and
---“How Did Verizon NY, the State Utility, Lose $2.6 Billion in Just 2017? The FCC’s “Zombie” Rules.” https://bit.ly/2sLj2i0

I summarized the findings. So far, NO regulator has bothered to examine this new financial report and no reporter has bothered to dig into it.

We've all been played. Most people don't understand how we got here or that the FCC and telcos have actually rewritten the history-- it is said that the winners write the history.--We can't let this stand.

Netflix et al doesn't have to be ISPs... We need to reopen the networks for competition—wireline and wireless and let the customer choose which ISP to use over the networks customers paid multiple times to have upgraded.

And AT&T and Verizon should be separated from these utility networks—ie, all of the wires which would include all the fiber that was built for wireless, FiOS, etc).

No more tracking, blocking, prioritizing of their own affiliate companies, overcharging, and letting the networks deteriorate.