Sure they haven't...

You're confusing regulation with censorship. I hope to hell that congress doesn't do the same.

You mean apart from domain seizures?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-...

I'm not so much striking down the "regulated" part, as I'm striking down the competitive one. In most places around the US coax and twisted pair lines (that were funded by the public purse in the first place) were sold to private companies at hilariously low rates to then milk the market in perpetuity while you are required to get permits to tear up roads and run your own network cable. And of course in most places that could happen, the cable company lobbies to prevent it.

So it isn't competitive at all. Though it is honestly hard to be competitive with infrastructure - how would you go about having multiple redundant private highways going to the same place just to maintain competition so that one road doesn't milk toll rates and let the quality degrade because they have a monopoly? Honestly, the latter is happening even now with public roads because without any competition or monetary motivation states just let their infrastructure crumble.