The phone system was deemed a “natural monopoly”, on the basis that it would make no financial or economic sense to duplicate all the necessary infrastructure. Railways were also deemed to be natural monopolies, for the same reason.
As a consequence of deeming those industries ‘natural monopolies’ governments (everywhere) heavily regulated them. The heavy hand of government was deemed necessary, to prevent the companies from abusing their monopoly powers. That regulation, in turn, stifled innovation and progress within the industries.
More recently, we learned that neither the phone company nor the railways are ‘natural monopolies”. Both can share their infrastructure — e.g. the phone companies wholesale blocks of capacity to smaller retail-level companies.
If you’re more comfortable with rule by unelected, and unaccountable tech Oligarchs; than by your democratically-elected* government; that’s on you. Be sure to bow, if Lord Bezos, or Duke Zukerburg happen by.
* One can dream, can’t one?
The problem is when the phone company isn’t a monopoly it makes no economic sense to upgrade the systems anywhere other than your largest metropolitan areas. Small cities just don’t make the money. When our phone system was a monopoly they trickled down, constantly upgrading the big cities with the latest and greatest but then moving the replaced systems down to not as small cities, and down and down. Which meant everybody was getting upgraded because upgrade made sense for a national company.
What’s comfort got to do with anything? Are you comfortable with the sun rising in the east? Are you comfortable with gravity? These are just how they are. America has been an oligarchy run by rich guys for basically its entire existence. Who the rich guys are changes, but the power they wield doesn’t. And won’t.
Yet satellite radio is considered a natural monopoly, or treated as one. They can’t sell a little satellite space to another company?