The market has already converged on essentially this reality. We have cable and fiber monopolies controlling the local networks. These used to be more open when DSL was the prevalent technology. This allowed a variety of ISPs to utilize that shared infrastructure. The telcos didn&#x27;t care about the Internet before. Once there was apparently money to be made they changed their game. They developed faster connections on closed infrastructure and displaced the smaller players. The only way to compete is with new infrastructure. The incumbent monopoly has a massive advantage overcoming this barrier to entry. They have, and need only maintain, dominance. It takes a massive initiative (like Google Fiber) to provide a threat and revive genuine competition. The &quot;free market&quot; isn&#x27;t optimal here. Google is taking one for the team. We can&#x27;t always count on this sort of thing. Without public ownership and regulation of monopolies there&#x27;s no &quot;free&quot; market. There is of course but the entirety of the market is the only object for sale. Once privatized it becomes anything but free. Government ownership mitigates this problem by allowing the public to assert further market freedom via regulation. Like net neutrality. As we are beginning to see, without owning the infrastructure, we can&#x27;t make this regulation stick.<p>When a monopoly is the optimal solution, it ought to be the government. If it isn&#x27;t then it will be a private company. The former can be shaped by public vote in order to enforce an optimal solution. That is: solve the problems that require a monopoly and give the rest back to the free market. The latter has impunity and seeks to monetize it. That is: to control access to the market.