>Public utilities are regulated as such because of the high capital costs to deliver to everyone and the need to gain the right of way to serve people. In othe

>Public utilities are regulated as such because of the high capital costs to deliver to everyone and the need to gain the right of way to serve people. In other words, they're natural monopolies which we regulate because market dynamics don't work when you have a natural monopoly. The same reason we highly regulated and then broke up Bell Telephone and Standard Oil before it. App stores and online infrastructure are also natural monopolies, but they become so due to agglomeration and network effects. Regardless of the route, the end result is the same. >So now an iPhone is a “necessary tool”? A smartphone and its associated app ecosystem is, yes. Google's system isn't much better. And there doesn't seem to be much room for many other players. Again, regular home telephones were deemed necessary enough to regulate and break up. So was oil refining and finance.