The hottest market is India, where the combination of a staid state broadcaster with a free-to-air monopoly and fierce competition among cable and satellite companies has boosted pay-TV.

ECONOMIST: Pay-TV in emerging markets: Finding El Dorado | The

The key, however, is not just privatizing the NPC - replacing a state monopoly with the private one - but actually promoting competition.

CNN: Up from the Ocean

The French have been among the most reluctant to allow competition against their state-owned monopoly, EDF, even though the company has been taking advantage of liberalisation in other countries to enter their markets.

ECONOMIST: Actions speak louder than words | The

Though Rogers has previously dismissed BCE as a "Soviet-style monopoly, " he doesn't take the competition lightly and knows he must eat or be eaten.

FORBES: The Lion in Winter

Either that, or its refusal to sell its infrastructure stems from a desire to continue as a lumbering, dinosaur-like monopoly, and to put off having to face real competition for as long as possible.

ECONOMIST: BT

But the challenge has always lain with the first half of Lincoln's phrase--that is, how to stoke that genius through a system that both rewards the inventor with a temporary business monopoly and protects the competition that lies at the heart of the free-market system.

FORBES: The smother of invention

Another competition concern is that the Tote's pool-betting monopoly will remain.

ECONOMIST: The Tote

Later this year, the Competition Commission will almost certainly insist that BAA surrender its airport monopoly in the south-east by selling Gatwick and Stansted.

ECONOMIST: Airport expansion