Scott Wickstein is unhappy with me for saying that telecommunications is a natural monopoly industry. Scott disliked the old Telecom and prefers competition. The problem is that ‘natural monopoly’ is a technological fact, not a statement about preferences. An industry is a natural monopoly if its services can be delivered most cheaply by a single firm.
To be fair to Scott, who regularly reminds us that he is not an economist, the same mistake has been made by people who ought to know better. The idea that competition can be wished into existence has been the source of most of the silly policies that we have seen in the last decade, policies that are now sending telecoms broke on a daily basis.