So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies completely seperate in order to operate; otherwise, they would have too much of a competitive advantage over Comcast.

For the customer, it's just EPB, but for legalize and accountants, it's two completely separate companies, and money isn't allowed to go from the power division to the internet division and vice versa.

Imagine if these conglomerates had to do similar type of accounting. I don't know if that would be a positive for the customer/consumer, but it's an interesting thought exercise. Amazon might even consider shutting down quite a bit of e-commerce if they couldn't subsidize it with AWS...

1850 - 1920 (Railroad + oil/steel trusts)

1880 - 1982 (ATT)

1950 - 1975 (IBM)

1985 - 2000 (Intel/Microsoft)

2008 - current (Google/Apple/Amazon)

2014 - current (Meta)

It's the nature of technology to produce consolidation, before the next breakthrough occurs and incumbents are typically swept away.

On the plus side, the length of dominant periods seems to be decreasing.

And realistically, data portability standards and pricing for cloud & ability to use independent app stores are the biggest tweaks I'd make.