If the Federal Government can't determine what's fair, then who can?
Is it fair for someone to have exactly one choice of "broadband" ISP, when that choice is extremely unreliable, outdated, overpriced ADSL?
Is it fair that corporations get to ignore what customers want and only sell what's the most profitable for them, paying absolutely no attention to customer satisfaction, with a three-pronged "bend over and take it / don't have Internet / move house" ultimatum?
If the Federal Government won't stand up for its citizens, what recourse do citizens have left? Organize and march up to some corporate office and demand (peacefully or otherwise) to get what they want? Give up their job and completely change their life around to move to one of the handful of locations in the entire country that has actually good Internet?
Connecting to and participating in the global economy shouldn't be a privilege reserved for the upper crust elite. It should be accessible to everyone. Hell, there is an *enormous* financial incentive to do it, since without that connection, you won't sell nearly as much stuff on the 'net. Games, video, software, you name it.
You corporati would gladly tear down the national highway system to avoid paying taxes on roads, even knowing full-well that without roads, people won't be able to drive to Best Buy or Target or K-mart or Walmart to buy your shit.
Infrastructure is a special type of good. It's a GDP and productivity and economy multiplier. Infrastructure deserves special protection. Ever since man discovered the mechanical lever, we've been using infrastructure to enable us to do more than we could without it. The capitalist system has a significant weakness in that, if left completely unregulated, no one will pay for the infrastructure. Categorizing Internet service as infrastructure is exactly the move that needed to be made. IN PRINCIPLE.
Now what remains is to see what actual changes fall out in practice. The principle of the matter and the actual implementation may turn out to be very disjoint, which would be unfortunate. But leaving the system as-is would all but ensure that the current bad state of affairs would continue, since the old way was backwards *just in principle*, let alone in practice.