How would net neutrality work without that regulatory power? The FCC needs teeth to do its job. Net neutrality without anyone to actively enforce it is the same as no net neutrality at all.
Rand Paul (or his supporters) are just using semantics to try and wave away this pretty important issue.
I'd argue that, to some extent, we're already seeing this many of T-Mobile's more pro-competition moves in the wireless telecom space, though it's also easy to argue that the FCC is more necessary there as wireless spectrum is a much more finite, common resource than fiber in the ground (theoretically, you could run an unlimited amount of it).
As an aside, of course, many see T-Mobile's moves as bad for net neutrality based on principle, despite the fact that they're actually good for the consumer today.[1] I might argue that those people are making the same argument you are about Rand Paul: that they're " just using semantics to try and wave away this pretty important issue".
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/18/5822996/t-mobile-music-fre...
For most potential players, it simply costs too much to even think about entering the market. Truly unregulated free markets are great in theory, but are instantly distorted when you take things like reality into account.
Part of what the recent net neutrality rules did is ensure that power utilities must lease pole/conduit access to internet utilities at the same rates they lease to cable tv and telephone utilities. This helps reduce cost to enter the market.
Government research and subsidies brought us these. The market only sold them.
You do realize that the government pays (with private company tax dollars) other private companies to do things for them, don't you?
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-jus...
Except, all the evidence throughout history has shown this never to be the case. It never, ever works. It's what the big companies want you to believe to you'll buy into whatever ideology they're selling. It's libertarian nonsense with no basis in reality. It's a Koch brothers talking point - they literally live by that mantra.
The solution to the problem is to support organizations and institutions that have real substantive incentives to protect net neutrality -- not merely an inherently co-optable political mandate -- and to work in parallel to diminish the actual capacity of ISPs to actually abridge e.g. by promoting widespread end-to-end encryption of everything, etc.
The mindset of "we've got to address this potential problem by giving monopolistic coercive power to this single centralized institution" has just got to go away.