Less regulation has led to increased broadband investment

See Broadband CapEx Investment Looking Up in 2017 by Jonathan Spalter of USTelecom. Excerpts:

"As pro-consumer policy incentives for broadband innovation and investment continue to take root, the two-year decline in private capital investment in U.S. broadband infrastructure from 2014 to 2016 appears to be in the rearview mirror, according to a preliminary USTelecom analysis of the 2017 capital expenditures of wireline, wireless, and cable broadband service providers*.

U.S. broadband companies, excluding independent competitive local providers and fiber operators**, have invested between $72 and $74 billion in network infrastructure in 2017, compared to $70.6 billion in 2016, showing at least an increase of nearly $1.5 billion.

Many factors affect these figures—from the overall health of the economy to intense and rising competition, not only among broadband providers but across the internet with the ongoing convergence of entertainment, media and communications.

But as someone who closely watches and works with the companies that are among the leading investors in our nation’s economy, it is essential that we give substantial credit where it is clearly due—restoring U.S. innovation policy to the constructive, nimble and pro-consumer framework that has guided the meteoric rise of our economy since the early days of the internet.

It is no coincidence that the broadband capex slow down coincided with the previous  FCC—in its final two years—abruptly shifting course down a sharply more regulatory path headlined by the controversial attempt to subject consumer broadband services to heavy, archaic regulations written nearly a century ago."