On more than one occasion, " natural monopoly " arguments have been used to obtain, and/or hold onto, a government granted monopoly, This is definitely true of access networks where the physical right-of-way to any specific real estate parcel is a limited resource, but the economics of what you put in it have changed over time. At one time it made sense to consider telephone service a natural monopoly. And for most of the twentieth century, telephone service was operated that way (think Bell System in the US and government run PTTs in most of the rest of the world). In the latter 20th century, cable TV became a second such monopoly. Today, it's increasingly clear that telephony and television are higher layer services, not inherently tied to the access network. Yet our laws and regulation have barely evolved ― each access network is still regulated as a different vertically integrated monopoly. And, managers in each business focus on preserving their historic mono...