Does it strike anyone else as curious that the two largest cable/internet providers merge, and it doesn't matter because they already don't compete? It might be a sign that something's odd if the premise is that there's no competition between identical products to harm in the first place.
No. I believe in the concept of a natural monopoly for most utilities though - Building outside plant is horrendously expensive - it to me makes as much sense to have multiple cable providers as it does multiple sets of power/telephone/water/sewer infrastructure. I'd even like to see a fewer wireless carriers (consider that each for carrier are spending billions of dollars to roll out what amount to essentially ident…
Or better yet, having the natural monopoly infrastructure, narrowly defined, run by local government and rented out at standard rates to all private service providers.... You know, have the city run roads, not taxi cabs.
The same thing could be done here regarding the internet component. City and local governments could set up last mile infrastructure and rent out access to these lines to ISP's....