The reason that Americans view Internet access as a natural monopoly is because there is a monopoly--the city. ISPs have to negotiate rents from the city gover

The reason that Americans view Internet access as a natural monopoly is because there is a monopoly--the city. ISPs have to negotiate rents from the city government. While it is possible for a city to offer fair-access terms they have largely discovered that they can demand rents much higher than you would expect by keeping the number of tenants small. These rents comprise something like 5-10% of city revenue. And so everybody gets what they want: * The city gets a free 7% budget bump, and doesn't care who pays for it as long as it's too complex to be an election issue * ISPs get a monopoly, and don't care that they play the scapegoat because consumers have no other choices anyway * Citizens get better government services at lower tax rates. Sure, they pay for it via a backdoor tax on internet access but nobody really notices that and they direct their anger at the ISP rather than the elected government Really the only way to throw a wrench in this system is something like Google Fiber. Nobody wants to be the elected official that turned Google away, because that is actually a sound-bytey enough issue that could come up at re-election. And Google, as a company that doesn't really care about being a profitable ISP, will only move in to a city if it gets a pretty good deal on the rents.