For those interested in this topic I might recommend Tim Wu's books "The Master Switch" or "The Attention Merchants". "The Master Switch" in particular is about the history of communications industries in the US and how the organization of those industries affected free speech. (Of particular interest: Bell had a government-supported monopoly for about 70 years, in part because people thought of monopoly differently in 1900 than in 1970.)

I read that Tim is also responsible for coining the term "net neutrality".