Monopolies in Certain Consumer Sectors - Assignment Example

By having monopolies on public sectors, economies of scale can be achieved; which means the cost of per unit production of a product or service declines as the output volume increases. By having more than one supplier would often be wasteful for consumers and economies; besides, this would increase the cost aggregately ( info, web). In the United States of America, United States Postal Service is a government-owned entity that has a monopoly over postal services for the above-given reason.

The regulated monopoly of American Telephone & Telegraph Company, commonly known as AT&T, and its Bell System efficiently worked in its initial period of history. AT&T came into existence in 1875, with founder Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone (Corp.att.web). It enjoyed the monopoly in the telecommunication industry due to its technological advancements at that time and there was no other firm that could become able to secure that kind of technology. As a result, telephones and telecommunication fast spread across America.

Monopolies facilitate investment in research and development. Microsoft experienced monopoly by introducing the latest technology in the shape of MS-DOS and Windows operating systems in its early era of the 1990s and 2000s. Due to its monopolistic position, Microsoft heavily invested in the research and development of different versions of disk operating systems and windows. As a result, today we enjoy the latest and fastest windows, meeting the needs of speed and time in the required way.