A cartel, by my understanding, would require the act of collusion to take place. The issue in the telecoms market, at least IMO, is the high entry price (spect

A cartel, by my understanding, would require the act of collusion to take place. The issue in the telecoms market, at least IMO, is the high entry price (spectrum access sometimes meaning there is no option aside from buying an existing operator), combined with scale of the operators (usually large and national-level) meaning there is little entrepreneurial spirit to drive costs down. It can cost a large company 100x what it would cost a small company to do the same work, and that becomes a price everyone ends up paying for. But absent knocking down barriers to entry, it's a very hard market for a new entrant to get into, unless you are happy to just sell to the existing incumbents as clients.