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Comment by WorldMaker | Hacker News Reader

Telecom is a horse of a slightly different color though because they are intentionally granted regional monopolies over utilities. There should be better regulatory enforcement of these utility deals, but between regulatory capture and nearly trust-like brokered deals to swap regions among each other to best minimize any particular region's regulatory control and collusion opportunities between neighboring regions, almost all of the regulatory enforcement that should prevent certain types of monopolist behaviors has nearly no teeth left in the US.

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Telecoms aren’t intentionally granted regional monopolies. It’s illegal under the Cable Act of 1992.

The distinction is on which meaning of "monopoly" and "monopoly with respect to what". Yes, no telecom should be the only telecom in a region, but each telecom is granted an exclusivity (monopoly) on a particular utility line: cable companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally TV focused fiber and coax cables and phone companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally phone-focused fiber and coax cables. The convergence of all such lines towards data/internet-utility lines has let things like the Cable Act of 1992 declare a telecom not a monopoly with respect to a region so long as there is, for instance, a duopoly with a cable and a phone company. But there is still just one cable company with a (should be) regulated monopoly on cable lines and installations, and there is still just one phone company with a (should be) regulated monopoly on phone lines and installations. Those exclusive utility licenses themselves are still called and managed as intentionally granted monopolies for the public benefit (which is why they are regulated as such, and should be enforced better).

Yet even under this situation of "competition" between say a cable company and a phone company in most regions you have a duopoly and in very rare cases you find tripolies in the US. I did accuse these companies of swapping agreements in a friendly matter like if not exactly as a Trust to evenly distribute such duopolies and make it tough to enforce the places where the laissez faire regulatory environment around the duopolies have led to de facto monopolies by benchmarks such as which provide modern internet speeds at the neighborhood and/or building level. (It's been too long since the US was last interested in trust busting. It's also maybe been too long with the hand off the regulatory rudder for those cable and phone monopoly licenses.)

> Yes, no telecom should be the only telecom in a region, but each telecom is granted an exclusivity (monopoly) on a particular utility line: cable companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally TV focused fiber and coax cables and phone companies are given (in most regions) exclusive rights to a region's originally phone-focused fiber and coax cables.

That's a weird way of phrasing it. Cable companies own their lines because they paid to build them. But they haven't been "intentionally granted monopolies" as you claimed above, because another provider could come in and build lines and provide service. (Power companies, by contrast, generally do have a monopoly in that sense.)

It's a high cost investment to build any such lines. There's only so much space in most area's utility corridors (poles, trenches, what have you).

This has always been called a "natural monopoly": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Most regions are aware that cable and/or phone lines form a natural monopoly, and thus intentionally granted that monopoly, placing regulatory bodies just as they did power, water, etc.

Just look at how badly Google Fiber is failing some cities to see how hard it is for "another provider could come in and build lines and provide service". It may be "slightly" easier to have competing cable providers than competing power companies (though keep in mind early America did have more competing power companies in some regions), but it's not that much easier, it's still a natural monopoly.

WorldMaker's answer to this comment is great. I would TL;DR it by saying that while there are always multiple phone companies to choose from, there is usually only one cable or fiber internet company, which is what matters.

In every state I've ever lived, for example, Comcast is the only company that provides acceptable internet speeds. DSL and satellite providers don't even come close enough to count as competition. So Comcast has the localized monopoly on the infrastructure necessary to actually provide a good product.

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