The answer is re-establish telecommunications monopolies.

Telekom's problems are familiar to big former telecommunications monopolies.

The acquisition, he says, would assure the nation a major telecommunications company with the scale to compete when Europe's telecommunications monopolies break up.

But his efforts were blocked by the hostility of powerful state-owned telecommunications monopolies, in a sense, undercutting the European Union's negotiating authority.

These have already begun to erode traditional telecommunications monopolies, and the new deal could speed up the trend.

Experts within the Government are now looking at ways to privatize the Bundespost's telecommunications monopoly without having to change existing laws.

The local telecommunications monopoly in the Kostanay region is the a branch of "KazakhTelecom".

Effectively, the General Post Office retained its telecommunications monopoly.

Then there is Telkom, the South African telecommunications monopoly, which is undergoing privatization.

Shares of the former government-owned telecommunications monopoly dropped 100,000 yen, about $650, to 1.76 million yen, about $11,429.