The old argument that European governments used to justify them was that Airbus was an infant industry that needed support to prevent Boeing from having a globalmonopoly of civil jet airliners.
Mr. Kumar sat down with Gaurav Raghuvanshi in Singapore to talk about the company's transformation from a government-owned monopoly to a global communications company, and what the partnership with F1 means for the future.
Deutsche Post, for example, was fined by the European Commission in 2001 for abusing its monopoly by allowing its global parcels business to receive big subsidies from its letters franchise.
Clearly, internet investing is going global and the West is losing its monopoly, not just in thinking up clever ideas for web businesses but in financing them.
The network effect is the magic that grew AOL into a juggernaut (AIM), gave eBay an early monopoly on auctions, and has powered Facebook and Twitter to global dominance in recent years.