They keep using terms like "Internet Freedom" or "Open Internet", but this isn't so much about the internet as it's about ISPs. They are the gatekeepers of the internet and Net Neutrality requires them to keep the gate open and free of obstacles.
5G technologies in particular are going to make it extremely easy for startups to break into existing markets. I did a speedtest.net run the other day in Annapolis, and I got 150 mbps--what I get on my fiber connection at home. And that's just with LTE-A. Fiber might still be faster, but that doesn't matter. It's fast enough for plenty of people and would be meaningful competition for incumbents. Cities just have to get out of the way and let companies build those networks in an incremental and demand-driven way.
(I'm not free market fundamentalist--I think it would also be fine to just have to government build the networks. But this stuff is expensive and somebody has to write those billion-dollar checks, and you need to make sure they have the incentive to do so.)
Property rights of holders of real estate?
The real hurdles are cable franchise and zoning boards. When AT&T tried to build fiber in SF, it wasn't individual property owners that tried to stop it from building fiber cabinets--it was NIMBY's acting to get the city to stop development. When Verizon tried to build fiber in Baltimore, it wasn't property owners that stopped it; it was the city, which wouldn't give it a TV license.
Also, wireless can be nice, but it is in no way a competitor to wired internet.
Take a city like Baltimore: it has too many poor neighborhoods for competitors to commit to a city-wide build-out. It's also too poor for the government to be able to afford to build its own fiber network. The alternatives are some competition in wealthier areas (with hopefully knock-on effects everywhere else) or no choices at all.
If broadband deployment to poor neighborhoods is an important issue, then raise taxes and pay for it. Trying to get private companies to pay for it just creates a special tax on broadband. You impose extra taxes on products you want less of, like cigarettes or alcohol, not products you want more of.
As to wireless, it is absolutely a competitor to wired. Throughout Verizon's FiOS footprint, its uptake rate is under 40%. That means 60% of people who can get it choose to get cable instead, even though FiOS is vastly superior. (I don't know why--I think people like the TV packages better on cable.) 5G fixed wireless is absolutely as good as cable--hell, even LTE-A has better upload speeds than cable. Wireless doesn't have to be better than fiber to be a meaningful competitor; it just has to be good enough that it's a viable option for many people.
Is latency comparable? Whenever I use mobile data the latency sucks (might be my provider though rather than a technical limitation).
Also, how reliable is it during torrential rain?
Obviously you're not going to get that on your phone in a crowded mall. But for fixed deployments you're talking about having about as much shared bandwidth per subscriber as cable at similar if not better latency. At vastly lower cost.
I remember it being couched more in terms of far flung houses in rural america than poor suburbs, so I could be mixing things up.
Telcos are expected to pay for building out to lower income neighborhoods in urban or suburban areas through cross subsidies (everyone pays the same price even though customers in neighborhoods with high uptake ratios cost much less to connect than customers in neighborhoods with low uptake ratios).
[1] There is a "$200 billion" number floating around that's completely false.
[1] https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Record%20High%20...
5G fixed wireless is just entering trials. Maybe it'll be a game-changer, but relying on new technologies to create competition is why there isn't effective competition now.
FiOS upload speeds are vastly superior, but some Comcast plans offer higher download speeds at cheaper prices. Typical LTE-A upload speeds seem to be worse than cheaper cable plans.[2]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14207640
[2] http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-mobile-network,review-2942....
Two reasons. First, BT Openrearch was originally a government-owned monopoly that was later privatized under specific terms. U.S. networks, in contrast, were built almost entirely with private money in the first instance.
Second, the U.K. policy was designed and implemented by smart regulators at a national level, who did a lot of theoretical work on balancing the need to ensure adequate investment with the need to protect consumers. U.S. policy, in contrast, split up between the FCC and state/local regulators. The latter are the same folks responsible for our roads, subways, and other infrastructure being worse than those in comparable European countries.
'FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Net Neutrality.'