As far as the Obama appointment, let me be a bit more specific. It has been customary for a looong time for the majority party to allow the minority party to appoint two members of the FCC. In fact, legally the majority party can only have three of the five seats. So even if Obama/Congress had gone against tons of precedent and not accepted Pai as the nominee, McConnell would have just sent another similar nominee in his place. There was nothing to be gained by being obstructionist other than slowing down the appointment.
I’ll look into the sources you provided and reply to that portion after I’ve had a chance to watch them.
As far as Google Fiber, I think there are several reasons it hasn’t gone well. It was far more difficult and expensive than expected for them to roll it out. This had to do with many problems getting permits, digging and laying fiber, and getting sued by existing ISPs. Then the existing ISPs (who are far better at marketing their services and already have a huge user base that rarely switches providers) immediately increased bandwidth or decreased prices as soon as Google moved into new areas. Thus the consumers greatly benefited when Google Fiber arrived in their town but they had little incentive to actually switch to Google. For example, Time Warner announced in North Carolina that it was boosting its customers from 50 mbps to 300 mbps (for no additional charge) as soon as Google announced they would start rolling out fiber. See http://www.zdnet.com/article/i-wish-google-fiber-was-in-my-n...
Let’s also not forget most ISPs are also large TV and phone companies so they can offer bundles or loss leaders that a new entrant like Google cannot.
This is a great rundown of the many reasons why Google Fiber hasn’t gone well: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-google-fiber-failed...
I really don’t think it was regulations that caused their biggest issues. In fact, if there had been additional regulations requiring shared access to utility poles and other infrastructure then they could have actually tried to compete on a level playing field. Instead you see things like in Louisville and Nashville where “Google faced lawsuits from incumbents over the use of existing infrastructure like utility poles to hang its fiber cables.” I’d love to hear from Pai how undoing net neutrality will suddenly get Google and much smaller players access to utility poles and other basic requirements for launching service.