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The original AT&T was made into a national monopoly by U.S. government regulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Telephone_%26_Telegraph#A_national_mono

The original AT&T was made into a national monopoly by U.S. government regulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Telephone_%26_Telegraph#A_national_monopoly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Telephone_%26_Telegrap... Likewise, in many European countries, telecoms were originally national monopolies. Both in Europe and in the United States those national monopolies were either broken up or subjected to more competition. VMG is quite correct to point out that telecoms gained monopoly status due to government action.

masklinn 15y ago
There are two differences (though I don't think they're very important): * In Europe, it was generally an artificial monopoly through a state company, Ma Bell was a natural monopoly sanctioned by the federal government. * Where Ma Bell was broken up following an antitrust case, most european monopolies were simply privatized along with new regulations (or deregulations depending on the market) forcing them to open up their market (instead of turtling)