Telephone roaming charges in the EU.

Internet access after the telcos were forced to share their last mile fibre?

Everything about regulating Big Telecom. They didn’t want to run lines to people, drop long distance, increase broadband speed, etc. Each time, the behavior was countered by regulation or the threat of it.

Splitting MA Bell into the Baby Bells also helped for a while. Then, they started merging back together. Then, the oligopolies made service worse again.

If left on their own, they collude to do a minimum form of competition while cooperating on profitable ways to cheat customers. That’s called cartels. It’s as big a threat to the free market as governments.

What are you talking about - that is deregulation. This was a government granted monopoly - you don't get more regulated than that.

They broke a private company into many competing companies. Then, at various times, they forced the companies to serve customers in ways they were simply unwilling to. They’d tell lies why it couldn’t be done. After regulation or threat of it, they rapidly accomplished what they previously couldn’t.

A recent example that isn’t regulation so much as revealing was Google Fiber vs established telecoms. The established companies had low speeds on purpose in many areas. They couldn’t do better. After Google Fiber hit, we’d sometimes see a comparable offering show up in just that area very quickly. As in, they could’ve done it the whole time but refused to soak up more profit.

That’s the kind of abuse that regulation is supposed to deal with. Whereas, the breakup was using regulation to force the companies to operate like a free market. That’s often necessary because the companies will make more profit if they collude to cheat customers. Or workers as we saw in the wage scheme in Silicon Valley.

When California re-regulated the wholesale energy markets after the Enron debacle.

Source: https://www.apep.uci.edu/PDF_Research_Summaries/Impact_Of_El...

And now CA has gone full circle with how PG&E rules the roost over here. Outside of a few places, it’s very much a monopoly.

Card payments are regulated in the EU, and prices are much cheaper. Contrast that with New Zealand where there is often a 2.5% surcharge on credit card and contactless payments.

Phone roaming in EU. You pay your normal home fares now for voice/data instead of the former massive roaming surcharges.