I sometimes wonder if the real issue of the information age isn't right-of-way and the ability to dig a trench to lay fiber cable. Someone recently told me that the current limiting factor in the growth of the Internet is the ability of the manufacturers to make multi-mode fiber cable. I have this weird vision where all of the train tracks are replaced with four foot trenches filled with fiber cables. If this happens, there will be a lot of bandwidth available.
If there does end up being a lot of "dark fiber" for sale, many folks may just rent "st-to-st connector" physical links and run SONET. Who needs a common carrier?
With tons of low cost (not free, but low cost - like water) bandwidth available won't the cost transfer from transport to content? We don't seem to mind giving the UPS man $3 to deliver our $24 book in three days. Content always seemed to be the important part to me but the Internet seems to have it all backwards with free content and expensive transport. In my opinion that should invert in the future.