Yet public infrastructure requires granted monopolies (i.e. government power). It would be impossible to acquire the necessary land rights and right-of-ways needed - having to contract with every land-owner to build anything would fail due to expense.

The ideal case would be the government owns the infrastructure, taxes (and use fees from bidding out access rights) pay for construction and/or maintenance, private companies to bid for the right to run services for the public.

>Most municipalities grant monopolies to cable providers based on the theory that it's the only way to get someone to build and maintain the cable infrastructure.

The theory is crap. It's a way to give away public infrastructure to campaign contributors. It's corruption: pure and simple, and it worked really, really well for Comcast.

When some municipalities tried to build their own cable system, Comcast sued.

Granting a monopoly to telecoms have been illegal for over 20 years, nationwide.

It's just not profitable to lay a second or third network. It's a natural monopoly.

In fact, it's a coincidence that we have two networks in teh US. The telecom and the cable company.

> Granting a monopoly to telecoms have been illegal for over 20 years, nationwide.

Unfortunately, granting monopolies to information services is not illegal.....