| > ISPs either need a right of way to lay cable or a license to use RF spectrum. As I understand it, both of those can (and do) support multiple competing services. Further, regulation dealing with scarce (ostensibly government-owned) resources is significantly less anti-competitive than, say, regulation requiring all would-be ISPs to also serve cost-prohibitive rural areas. Look, I can appreciate the position that a government-granted public monopoly might be better for consumers than a government-granted private monopoly, but consumers might still be better served by removing those government-created barriers to competition. > the dominant players would freeze competition out of the market How do you imagine they would achieve that using only market forces? > it was only regulation of the telephone companies that allowed those service providers to exist I'm not grasping your argument. Perhaps unrelated to your point, but telephone service was (and largely still is) a government-granted monopoly. And there too, rather than removing those regulatory barriers to competition, the illusion of competition was created by adding more regulations. |