You are working on a different notion of "bundling" than rayiner. He's not talking about selling you TV with your internet.
Bundling, in the sense that the FCC is referring to it, is the bundling of internet service with the physical infrastructure it's delivered on.
Un-bundling in this case doesn't mean they have to sell you ESPN without HBO, it means they have to let third-party operators operate on their wiring, switches, and other physical infrastructure for a regulated price.
Given your premise: I can imagine that, with improper price setting by the FCC, this mandatory wholesale infrastructure sharing could be problematic (long-term unprofitable and thus discouraging towards infrastructure investment).
Priced appropriately to the cost of provision of service, however, how does this put the infrastructure builder (Comcast, Level 3, or whomever else) on unfair footing? It just means Comcast the builder has to expect the same rents from Comcast the service provider as it does from Netflix the service provider.
Forgive me for missing the point - I expect you and rayiner understand this far better than I do and I'm trying to catch up.
The hard part is pricing it appropriately. When the government gets involved in price-setting, there's huge political pressure to extract discounts and generally keep the rates artificially low: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140219/TECHNOLOGY/140... ("The mayor recognizes this as an economic justice issue, and economic justice issues tend to be fought in the courts.").
People who think that either rate-setting in the context of unbundling or in the context of municipal-fiber will be based on a rational analysis of how much revenues will be needed to justify investment are delusional. Rates for everything from electricity to sewage are artificially low, and consequently in many cases utilities are stuck with century-old infrastructure. Public utilities are a big reason the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we have a multi-trillion backlog of infrastructure capital expenditures.
The folks who think we should upgrade the fiber networks to enable cloud services will have to get in line with the folks who think we should upgrade our power plants and get rid of century-old polluting coal ones, or upgrade our sewage systems so they don't dump raw sewage into rivers when it rains. And they'll be shouted down by the folks complaining that grandma's electric/water/internet bill is too high, and asking "how can you afford fiber service when you can barely feed your family?"
Public utilities are a big reason the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we have a multi-trillion backlog of infrastructure capital expenditures.
That's an interesting notion, given that market pressure would be to invest as little as one possible can while extracting as much cash as possible. I certainly have the impression that, in Sweden, the public utilities, which were making sure the power grid had adequate excess capacity and good reliability because this infrastructure is in the "national interest" did a much better job in that respect than the market-based solution. There is simply no comparison between power reliability in the U.S. and in Sweden.
Bundling, in the sense that the FCC is referring to it, is the bundling of internet service with the physical infrastructure it's delivered on.
Un-bundling in this case doesn't mean they have to sell you ESPN without HBO, it means they have to let third-party operators operate on their wiring, switches, and other physical infrastructure for a regulated price.