[pdonis]

To some extent, provisioning for bandwidth is a natural monopoly, for the same reason that provisioning for electrical service, water, sewer, and other utilities are natural monopolies. It doesn't make sense to run multiple different electrical, water, and sewer services to the same neighborhood just so multiple different providers can compete; the costs of all that extra infrastructure are too high. The costs aren't as high for bandwidth, but they aren't zero either.

As the size of the "municipality" goes up, though, I agree with you that centralization creates monopolies that are not natural.