You don't need to allow completely unrestricted access to the network. However, there needs to be a process with a defined cost to certify your hardware. The cost can be expensive and time consuming but it needs to be known and published and the cellular companies need to be held to it.

The problem right now is that even if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, I STILL couldn't reliably get a piece of hardware certified for the cellular network. I would have to set up a company, spend untold amounts of money bribing^Wwooing cellular company executives for a couple years, and, maybe, just maybe, I could get my phone through the certification process.

The technical aspects of certification are the easy part.

The problem is that the cellular companies fully understand that when it happens their power goes to zero because they suddenly become a dumb pipe that everybody just wants to ignore.

That's why this will take legislation.

Monopolists always talk about the tragedy of the commons, but don’t see anything wrong with the tragedy of the monopoly and don’t want you to think anything can exist in between.