The "guaranteed neutral" service is a superset of the other service. You're complaining that you can't buy something when the reality is that you can't not buy something, which is different.
> This new federally-mandated kind of service, as it meets extra legal constraints and prevents certain kinds of side-payments from happening, is almost certainly going to be more expensive and available from a smaller set of fewer, larger providers.
You're talking like there is some kind of vigorous competition going on at present which is going to be impeded. And the side payments you're talking about don't make things cost less, they interfere with competition in other markets that actually are competitive, which would ultimately make things cost more.
> Title II/common-carrier regulation does nothing to create new provider competition, but rather assumes that monopoly is the only possibility and cements it into place.
That's because it is. Utilities are natural monopolies. The duopoly that was created by accident when telephone and cable TV both merged into internet has been a disaster.
The bulk of a last mile ISP's costs are based on the area they offer service in rather than the number of customers they have. A strand of fiber costs the same amount to install and maintain whether it carries the traffic of 100 customers or 200. That means if you want to have two ISPs you would have to pay almost twice as much for internet service at the same level of ISP infrastructure investment and profits because each ISP would have to cover all the same costs with half as many customers. If you want to talk about what makes things cost more, it's trying to "create competition" in a natural monopoly market.
A utility isn't a natural monopoly because the government said so, it's a natural monopoly because adding competition makes prices go up.