> I have always seen monopolies as harming consumers and more competition as being beneficial, but this is an interesting observation. They mostly do, and infr

> I have always seen monopolies as harming consumers and more competition as being beneficial, but this is an interesting observation. They mostly do, and infrastructure tends to converge to natural monopolies. The trick is to regulate the hell out of them. For instance in France the former government owned telephony monopoly was forced to provide access to competitors to their physical network, at regulated prices. And to follow up on that, today an ISP can create new lines to link a new city or neighborhood, and they have exclusivity for a fixed period of time - afterwards they're forced to provide regulated access to their competitors. As a result, we have a healthy competition with good prices (usually between 30-50 euros depending on package, max speed, TV options) and good speeds ( multi-hundred Mbit, up to 1Gbit is the norm in most places - there are even villages with hundreds of inhabitants with fiber deployed everywhere, and proud signs "Commune fibrée" on entering them).