Verizon paid for its wireless spectrum, it lost its local monopolies pursuant to the 1996 deregulation, and in most places, it pays the local power company for access to utility poles. E.g. here in Baltimore, it's BGE that owns the poles, not Verizon.

I've been part of an ISP startup -- go find out what happens if you try to pay the local power company for access to utility poles. A de facto monopoly is still a monopoly.

You can't "purchase" a public good like a segment of the wireless spectrum and do with it whatever you please. Exclusive access to that segment can be granted to you in exchange for money by the government, and it comes with many conditions.

> You can't "purchase" a public good

Sure you can. Indeed, one of the dominant theories of contemporary economics is that market failures in public goods should be handled by turning them into property rights and privatizing them.

Take my statement as shorthand for "I don't believe that it's possible to purchase a public good and the economic theory that public goods should be privatized is legitimate only insofar as it would lead to desirable revolution". I'm happy to disagree, though -- it's not exactly a settled question and I doubt either of us are going to convince the other during this conversation.

Dominant among whom? People who want to gut public institutions and "The Commons" and carve up the spoils like post-Soviet kleptocrats for their own personal gain?

There is a large population of people (including many economists) who DON'T subscribe to your supposedly "dominant" theory.

> it pays the local power company for access to utility poles.

That power company is required to permit pole attachment for telecommunications (but not necessarily broadband internet service) companies, according to Title II.