Ok, I guess I was looking at it wrong.I was thinking about government-granted monopolies where the government willingly prevents competition. It is my understanding that this was how of most of the telecommunication companies around the world started.
I've heard of other scenarios where the government prevented competition, but they nearly all boil down to the same core: the constituents want X, but some sort of market failure is occurring (or likely to occur) and a temporary market intervention was able to resolve it.
