Mike Masnick had an interesting article about the solution being competition, too:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140115/15035825890/losing...
I think there's a good argument for making the Internet be an utility like electricity is, but I think that also means there won't be anymore competition effectively (at least in terms of deployment), and they will upgrade their networks much more slowly. So the money for upgrades might have to come from the government (which actually did happen already, but with few results:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
That being said, we also can't just say "let the free market deal with it", because right now there's no free market in the broadband space. ISP's have managed to basically outlaw competition from their areas, so before we even begin to accept the idea of "competition is the solution, not regulation", then we need to actually make that true, and make sure all such restrictions against new entrants are lifted, and generally make it much easier for new competition to appear and exist.
If it becomes super easy to move from one ISP to another the moment one of them pisses you off, and there are at least several good choices, then this could work.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140115/15035825890/losing...
I think there's a good argument for making the Internet be an utility like electricity is, but I think that also means there won't be anymore competition effectively (at least in terms of deployment), and they will upgrade their networks much more slowly. So the money for upgrades might have to come from the government (which actually did happen already, but with few results:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
That being said, we also can't just say "let the free market deal with it", because right now there's no free market in the broadband space. ISP's have managed to basically outlaw competition from their areas, so before we even begin to accept the idea of "competition is the solution, not regulation", then we need to actually make that true, and make sure all such restrictions against new entrants are lifted, and generally make it much easier for new competition to appear and exist.
If it becomes super easy to move from one ISP to another the moment one of them pisses you off, and there are at least several good choices, then this could work.