"Cell service is compeltely broken because the government "sold" radio frequency spectrum. They sold all of it."

Usually the government selling something off is not cited as an example of government intervention. Most lazzei-faire types believe that is exactly what government should do - sell off the property to put it in the hands of the free market.

The actually problems are three-fold. 1) The government still owns large portions of spectrum that are underutilized 2) the government restricts changing the use of spectrum, such as changing UHF TV into 4G and 3) the government does not charge any sort of property tax based on the value of the spectrum, so there is no incentive for the spectrum to end up with the highest value use.

"ISPs, again, are poor government intervention - almost all of the ground wires were laid under government subsidy upwards of a hundred years ago for some phone channels, "

Most people in my state get their internet via cable wires laid in the past few decades.

"In addition, these private providers will contract with local governments to provide exclusive service, and will bribe the town council to block competition from laying their own lines (or heavens forbid, the township itself own the fucking wires running under their streets)."

Local governments are much closer to small market players than they are to the leviathan state. There are thousands of towns and cities, but usually only a couple cable companies in any area. The exclusivity contracts are usually given out of position of weak bargaining power.

"and even if you could, you are at an insurrmountable competitive disadvantage because not only does your competition already have all their wire laid decades ago, they can readily drop their prices to run you out of the market because they have barely any overhead in providing your service."

And here is the problem that has nothing to do with government - broadband wired internet is a natural monopoly. There are extreme capital expenses and the company that builds the first network has a huge advantage, it is usually not profitable for a second business to enter the market.

So yeah, competition is good. But initiating competition in the cable market might require government intervention. It might require the government to subsidize a second network. It might require the government to block mergers between the cable companies and content providers. And even in the best case you are probably not going to have more than two or three broadband options in one town. So the government would probably still want to regulate the internet providers as common carriers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier ) and ensure network neutrality.

"AT&T owned phone service for 60 years by government mandate"

Keep in mind that AT&T pretty much built its monopoly on its own. The government had the choice between breaking it up, and converting it to a regulated monopoly, and chose the latter. This may have been the wrong choice, but the country was probably better off for having at least some government intervention, and not allowing the monopoly to be completely unregulated and dedicated solely towards shareholder profits.