Neutrality Accelerator?

There has been a lot of debate about Network Neutrality, and I'm coming (fashionably) late to the party. Martin Geddes doesn't buy it, but others believe it is essential that neutrality of a resource as critical (try and live without it nowadays) as the internet. It has mainly been said already, but I wanted to summarise my thoughts and reiterate my view on the 'arms race' effects of Regulation and Licensing.

I tend to agree with Martin (and the rest of the gang, Susan Crawford particularly); attempting to regulate Network Neutrality would be a disaster!
The thing is that the licensing and regulation we have in place now are to protect the investment of telcos that spent heavily to build their infrastructure. The bills in discussion at the moment say as much.
But now it starts to look like the incumbents are poised to exploit their position of power, so we want to add more regulation to balance the cartel-effect created by granting the licenses/monopolies in the first place. This just increases the barriers to entry and reduces the competition!

If we agree that the customer wants Net Neutrality, then removal of licensing, regulation and any other artificial barriers to entry will produce it. If the customer doesn't care about Net Neutrality, then we would just create a very competitive market.

We have been in a situation where regulation and licensing begets more regulation and licensing. An opening up of the system and reduction of rules would ensure that people could choose the kind of access they want.
Interesting aside on E911 is that we don't require houses to have phones (as far as I know), so that implies that choice to refuse E911 already exists?

BellSouth, SBC et al would not be in a position to differentiate services, that the customers actually wanted, because their customers would churn somewhere else. If customers use VPNs, then operators can't tell what the traffic is, and if all VPN traffic is low priority, poeple will move.

If customers want a raw pipe to the internet, with no service differentiation, then government should make it possible for companies to provide it without undue hindrance.

Companies such as xG Technology and LocustWorld
enable communities to build their own networks, effectively recreating the internet as they go.
If the initial reports on xG's system are true, then mesh networks could span continents very cheaply (I am assuming that xG won't break the bank).
Fon is already attempting this with WiFi technology.

The technology is there, and there is a tipping point on the horizon. If the telcos decide to take away the internet from us, we can rebuild it. If the regulations and licensing allow us to.