> I really love T-Mobile, but its also a validation of all the ideas that traditional telecom regulation rejects.
It's quite possible that traditional telecom regulation is ill conceived. Rural build out requirements are effectively a tax on providing service in urban areas used to subsidize providing service in rural areas. It's government interference in the market -- and maybe that's necessary to get what we want, but we should at least admit what we're doing so we can properly evaluate it.
In particular, if we want to have a subsidy for rural build outs, that doesn't automatically mean the money should come from telecommunication customers in urban areas. The premise itself is that telecommunications service is something good that we want to promote and make more affordable, so making it less affordable for urban customers in order to subsidize rural customers is robbing Peter to pay Paul. If we have to rob somebody then we should either rob somebody we don't like (e.g. tax cigarettes or gas guzzlers) or the money should come from everyone equitably via a tax on general sales/income/etc.
"Traditional telecom regulation" implies that we can't have gigabit fiber in New York City (population density ~27,500/sq mi) until it is cost effective to also install it in Loving County, Texas (population density ~0.1/sq mi). That seems significantly less desirable than, for example, setting aside a fixed amount of subsidy each year and dividing it between each carrier based on the number of citizens newly served who were not previously served at a given class of service. That way the market works and the most efficient markets are not delayed (i.e. NYC gets gigabit fiber right away) but as the low hanging fruit is picked and the number of new residents offered service per year decreases, the subsidy per each newly served resident increases until the subsidy for installing service to the last unserved resident finally exceeds the cost of installing the service.