A Faster Internet in 2015?

[Commentary] Telecommunications companies have been eager to offload their copper networks along with the burden of legacy regulation they carry -- the companies haven’t been eager to invest in bringing Americans superfast DSL as seen in Europe and Asia. Why not? Beginning in the ’90s, US regulators cast a DSL nuclear winter over the country, forcing phone companies to lease their lines at a loss to competitors -- exactly the sort of common-carrier regulation President Barack Obama’s supporters now want extended over every Internet carrier in the name of network neutrality. What happens to emerging business models for local Internet if investors and entrepreneurs suddenly discover they would be regulated as utilities? That’s a question nobody is asking. The new distribution business models would do infinitely more to meet the real broadband needs and wishes of Americans than the broadband-as-utility policy, which would likely just cast a pall over the willingness of operators to make such investments at all.