It's a chilling thought. Europe spent more than a decade dismantling her telecomms monopolies. Post-liberalisation (circa 1998), the forces of the 'free market' have needed just five years to put the monopolies back together again. The cycle of evolution is clear. The only serious question is precisely where we are in this cycle just now. We now know that throwing well-intentioned market opening into the same blender as free market forces has imposed a series of phases on the industry's development: 1. pre-liberalisation: the humbling and denigration of the monopoly PTOs; 2. immediate post-liberalisation: the cult of the second carrier; 3. post-liberalisation: the stalling of the nascent second carrier movement, due to financial constraints; 4. circa 2002: the resurgence of the one-time monopolies.
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