After working in the Internet Access world both on hardware and services for the last 13 years, I have concluded that the physical plant for the last/first mile is a natural monopoly. Now, I'm referring to just the physical plant, layer 1; Conduit, utility poles, dark fiber, rights-of-way, physical interconnects that go from homes and businesses to municipal meet points/peering centers. This physical plant has almost no electronics and nothing that gets obsolete faster than 10 - 30 years and mainly need "men in trucks" to install and maintain it. This layer 1 infrastructure is a perfect match for municipalities that already have similar ownership, management and maintenence for roads, water and sewers. And if not municipalities, then horizontally divested regulated monopolies broken off from the RBOCs and Cable Companies. The layer 1 infrastructure would be made available to all commercial and community entities in an open access way based on costs ammortized over the 10 - 30 year period. These third parties could offer services on top of the fiber (from lighting it to delivering content) to the citizens and businesses of the municipality on a competitive basis. We should consider as a basic tenent that control of Content must be seperate from the control of transport. Anything else leads to stagnation of innovations, thought and governence.