I think you're looking in the wrong places then. While Comcast and Verizon are content to legislate their positions so they can rest on their laurels and get fat by fucking consumers, companies like Amazon, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are doing the same kind of empire-building that happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are arguably more ethical about it than Walmart and Amazon, but in all five cases the companies are relentlessly trying to extend their businesses both in breadth by going into more countries and in depth by more aspects of consumer life. Walmart and Amazon are trying to be the world's store, the only world's store, and they're innovating in that direction. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are each trying to be the cloud provider for the world, and right now Amazon is king in that arena. Google and Apple are working on products for cars, and self-driving cars. Google and Microsoft have projects to bring internet to remote parts of the world.
As an aside, three years ago I would have said Google was the most powerful of the five in terms of diversity of interests and global reach. Now I'm starting to think it's Amazon. They're working on being the world's store, the world's cloud provider, the world's favorite tablet manufacturer, and now they're attempting to establish a serious foothold into the Android market - and it may work. Unfortunately they also squeeze suppliers, squeeze content creators, work their warehouse employees to exhaustion, and avoid releasing any software as open source. So I'd say Jeff Bezos is making it a personal goal to teach Walmart and Microsoft a lesson in cutthroat business.