BT is a state regulated monopoly in the UK for several of the tiers of the telecommunications infrastructure. The vast majority of IP packets from domestic and

BT is a state regulated monopoly in the UK for several of the tiers of the telecommunications infrastructure. The vast majority of IP packets from domestic and SME's will pas through their infrastructure at some point. Simplistically, if their costs go up then presumably their wholesale costs and everyone's phone bills go up too. In practice their accounts are heavily scrutinised (at great cost to the taxpayer) so there is probably some kind of complicated regulatory mechanism that prevents this. Quick rant as an aside: Utilities and infrastructure tend to be natural monopolies as it costs so much to get them up and running nobody wants to do it twice. Competition in infrastructure provision for any given service of this nature always seems to end up being a wasteful and bureaucratic mess of government regulated artificially created 'competition' between a few companies. For more UK examples see British Airports Authority, Network Rail, Electricity, Gas etc. Infrastructure should allow one country to compete effectively with others by improving internal efficiency. Perhaps they should be independent democratically controlled state entities; every citizen gets a share.