I'm a huge fan of Martin Geddes's blog.

A few days ago, he said:  "Telcos that divide connectivity from service, by design or through regulation, are in a better position to survive."  He's pointing out that the song is not the CD, and people will always figure this out given a chance.

You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. It only takes one Napster to make people see that the music and the disc were separable. It only takes one Amsterdam [municipal fiber network] to succeed to blow away the “it doesn’t work” argument. Bit haulage and application service are equally separable and economically viable independently.

There has to be a way to make a strong empirical case in this country that we are being forced to cover the past outlays of inefficient, monopolistic telephone companies, and that these same companies plan to ask us to pay for services we don't want.  Meanwhile, we can focus on building our own wireless mesh networks that don't feed on regulatory barriers.

Bob Frankston has been talking about this and related subjects for some time.