[wtallis]

If the regulation from below imposes standards that are actually restricting for the big players in the market, they can simply ignore the consumers' wishes unless the barriers to entry and scaling up in that market are sufficiently low that the interested consumers are able to organize their own supplier to meet their demand. Clearly, this is not going to be a feasible method for regulating internet backbones, because it's far, far too expensive to set up your own tier 2 network with only grassroots funding.