Actually, it is not a monopoly. A monopoly would be a company that has exclusive ownership of a commodity through either legal privilege, command of supply, concentrated action, exclusive control/possession or has a commodity that is controlled by that one company. None of these fit what TW or Comcast have. None of them have exclusive control of the internet. Now, if a company is not able to or is unwilling to sacrifice their companies future to raise capital to expand their infrastructure to enable them to do more business, then they are the reason for the other companies having what appears to the public as a monopoly. I would say that in today's world there are few, if any, true monopolies in the US.
If you look back at AT&T before it was broken up into the "baby Bell" companies, that was a monopoly. If you had a complaint with AT&T then, you were told that was the way it was and if you didn't like it "use another telephone company, oh wait, there isn't one, too bad for you," click (not even a bye or have a nice day.) They did have exclusive rights and privileges and had command of the supply and infrastructure. That's why they were broken up into smaller companies.
Phil
Whether it's legally or materially enforced is irrelevant. It's still a monopoly. _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list [email protected] http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug