Port blocking and Restraint of Trade

I posted my retrospective on Port Blocking and Restraint of Trade a couple of days ago, and the subject appears to be gaining traction as an issue in the blogosphere (though my stats and lack of comments, plus the complete bafflement of people I know who did read it would suggest that it has little to do with my piece!).
Andy Abrahamson wrote this vitriolic challenge to the telcos that think they can control what we do with the 'dumb pipe' that we pay good money for.
The reason I wrote my previous ramble was because I see that government regulation and telco 'walled garden' approaches are increasingly out of place in the inter-connected world. You can't reasonably expect to control the spoken word, nor require that you can eavesdrop on a conversation (to protect against terrorism or whatever). Nor can a telco proscribe what kind of traffic you can or can't put down their dumb pipe.
China is trying to control the internet, other governments would like to, but need to take a more softly, softly approach to it. But is it controllable?
We are at the point where there is nearly always a way around it. Examples of Skype being used from the Himalayas or darkest africa, plus the value of commerce and business that is conducted over the web, renders governments individually impotent in the face of commercial pressures.
I believe the time has come. If people want a dumb pipe (and they do) then there is very little that regulation, or attempted port-blocking/service restriction can do about it. The market will move to somewhere that does provide the dumb pipe.

There's a hundred blogs that reiterate the 'stupid network' point, but Telepocalypse says it as clearly as anyone. The telcos have it all wrong, and unless they wake up and give their customers what they want, they're not going to have any customers!