[ucaetano]

> Effectively, yes.

No. You can always create a market where a company has a "monopoly" (in the market share sense of the word).

> Why is the market so disfunctional that a single company has effectively swallowed all competition?

Where did you get that from? This is a sign that you don't understand the market you're talking about.

> And AT&T wasn't a monopoly, since you could just walk to the person you want to talk to. Oh, wait..

That doesn't make any sense, you're not even wrong.

It isn't just because you can create a mental analogy about a subject you don't understand, that the analogy is actually valid.