Earlier quoted context omitted.
The notion of natural monopoly, while superficially plausible, is an ahistorical ex post rationale for government intervention.[1] Any day now some guy or gal will visit my home to hook up my Google Fiber. How can that be if if Time Warner Cable has a natural monopoly? Oops, I should say that TWC, AT&T, DIRECTV and Dish have an oligopoly. Before you protest that I lump guys who launch satellites together with guys wh…
But you're comparing apples and oranges. Are you seriously suggesting that we could duplicate or triplicate all the roads in the country to allow competition between private road companies? (and your example is a bad one - here in my area of NYC, Time Warner absolutely does have a monopoly, I have no other providers to choose from. So it makes sens that someone regulates them.)
You have to ask, why does TWC have a monopoly in NYC? Did the market create it? Does the market protect it? Why do you think Google Fiber is skipping big markets like NYC in favor of KC, Austin (where I live) and Provo? I hear it said that it's too much work to lay infrastructure in Manhattan. Sure it's a lot of work, but as I watch them boring through the hard limestone up and down my street for the last 9 months -- it takes a whole day for a machine the size of truck to bore a hole from one house to the next -- to reach a maybe 1000 subscribers, I cannot imagine it's less work per subscriber here than a big dense city. No, they are avoiding the big markets because of webs of regulation and bureaucracy which protect incumbents like TWC.