Reddit reviews Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business

The fact that there was regulation and that a few tech companies 'took over the internet' as you say are completely unrelated.

For example facebook and google benefit from enormous network effects. This means that there can only be one winner. This can be easily explained by just imagining having to put up with 3 or 4 different social media websites just to keep up with your friends. Over time people simply gravitate towards the biggest and best run network. And as they gain critical mass, there is little to no room for small players. That is why Uber is spending so much money currently, because if they gain a critical mass in a certain market, they basically become a monopoly. If it is more likely you find a ride you will Uber, and if more people use Uber, that means more likely to find work as a driver.

As for Google, the more people use it, the better their search engine becomes. And the better it becomes the more people use it. So at some point there is going to be only one winner.

Now as for sharing of phone lines in 90's and 2000's, there was massive overbuilding during that time due to the internet hype. Huge amounts of fiber lines were built that were not used until now. And we used a fraction of the data we use now.

The reason companies like Comcast are rallying so hard against net neutrality is because people now use so much more data (see explosive growth of netflix). This means they need to upgrade their infrastructure, which is expensive. So it is much cheaper to lobby to get rid of regulations and make the internet pay to play with constrained infrastructure. They don't have competition in 85% of their market anyway. Since it is one big old boys club. See this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Cowboy-Malone-Modern-Business/dp/047170637X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500673040&sr=8-1&keywords=cable+cowboys

This is kind of shameful because their profit margins are huge (more than 50% of the national average):

https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/financials?s=CMCSA:NSQ&subview=IncomeStatement

If you divide net income by revenue you see that they have more than 10% profit margins. If you look at depreciation (which implies the amount of infrastructure they have installed), they could easily expand this by 50%, provide the US with the best internet the world has ever seen, and still earn $4-5 billion every year. But as I said, why not lobby and ruin the internet instead? Much cheaper.

Just finished both Cable Cowboy, as well as Shoe Dog.

The former is about John Malone's rags-to-riches story on building a cable conglomerate from scratch, while the latter details Phil Knight's escapades in building Nike. Both highly recommended books to learn about how business works, how to build a brand, what goes into margins, competitive strategy, etc. Shoe Dog in particular was a highly entertaining read.