What is "natural monopoly"

n. Control over the market for a product which occurs when a firm gains large benefit from economies of scale, or from a superior business model or product, and is thus able to produce a very large percentage of the total market demand for a given product and unintentionally exclude meaningful competition via price structures.

A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity. Natural monopolies were discussed as a potential source of market failure by John Stuart Mill, who advocated government regulation to make them serve the public good.