I'm not too young to remember that. Air transport regulation isn't a particularly good comparison. The current wireless cell phone industry is a much better comparison, because it's already regulated under Title II. If that really meant "ask permission before you do anything," cell phone providers would be having to go before the FCC -- or state commissions -- to introduce new service plans or even change existing ones. They do not.
I think it's too easy to leap on the "regulation bad, deregulation good" bandwagon; in practice, it's rarely that clearcut. Look at phone company deregulation in the 90s and the rise of CLECs, Competitive Local Exchange Carriers -- CLECs would never have existed without deregulation, right? That's true, yet it turns out that what created the first C was actually new regulation: incumbent LECs were required to share their networks with competitors. If that sort of "government interference in the market" had happened in the early 2000s with data communications, the end result might well have been having half a dozen different ISPs to choose from no matter where you lived, rather than a choice between your single cable company and your single phone company. (Of course, like what actually happened to CLECs, there's also a good chance that the lack of regulation meant nothing would prevent a series of ever more massive corporate mergers leaving us with the same lack of choice we had before deregulation, but never mind.)
>The current wireless cell phone industry is a much better comparison, because it's already regulated under Title II.
Quoting from the posted article and jiving with my memory: "[...] the FCC explicitly exempted wireless data networks from Title II in 2007"[1].
More specifically, I think only mobile voice services are regulated under Title II[2]. Mobile data (aka mobile broadband) is exempt, provided the FCC follows their own declaration made in 2007.
I think it's too easy to leap on the "regulation bad, deregulation good" bandwagon; in practice, it's rarely that clearcut. Look at phone company deregulation in the 90s and the rise of CLECs, Competitive Local Exchange Carriers -- CLECs would never have existed without deregulation, right? That's true, yet it turns out that what created the first C was actually new regulation: incumbent LECs were required to share their networks with competitors. If that sort of "government interference in the market" had happened in the early 2000s with data communications, the end result might well have been having half a dozen different ISPs to choose from no matter where you lived, rather than a choice between your single cable company and your single phone company. (Of course, like what actually happened to CLECs, there's also a good chance that the lack of regulation meant nothing would prevent a series of ever more massive corporate mergers leaving us with the same lack of choice we had before deregulation, but never mind.)