> Yes we did. Look at phone rules. We 100% decided that.
We decided, in the 1930s, to bring phone service everywhere. That has been done and the expenses have been incurred. We never decided to take on new expenses to extend that concept to broadband. We certainly never decided that the way we should achieve that outcome is through wired communications, rather than cheaper wireless communications. The FCC's attempts to do so have been achieved by unelected bureaucrats through regulatory fiat.
> You don't need trains and airlines to serve every house.
But you do need trains and airlines to serve every region above a given size, and that raises the same considerations about duplicated infrastructure.
> I'd say. Do you think "no merger, no rules applied" would have been better?
The merger is a red herring, since TWC and Charter did not previously compete with each other. What I think would've been better would have been to abandon build-out requirements, so that they (or other companies) could come in and compete in areas that will support competition. Then, if there are areas that we feel like aren't being sufficiently served, we can use tax dollars to close those gaps. That allows you to serve the people who need it (and subjects those efforts to cost-benefit analysis in terms of whether cheaper or more expensive technology is used to achieve the result). And it prevents you from distorting competition in areas that could reasonably support 2-3 ISPs.
> ...I think that directly contradicts "The idea that you can rig the merger so that it comes out of corporate profits with no consumer impact is nonsense."
In what way? The government can't control what the company does with the savings it achieves from the merger.