Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Best and Worst (was: Labor Day, 1990)
Message-ID: <11924@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 9 Sep 90 13:51:00 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, New York City
Lines: 30
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 632, Message 9 of 12

gutierre@nsipo.nasa.gov writes:

> This is an excellent idea that AT&T should have adopted before `ol Harry
> broke them up (that's Judge Harold "Equal Access" Greene to you!).

	The sentiment has been expressed long and loud (perhaps
longest and loudest by our esteemed Moderator) that Judge Greene did
some evil thing to AT&T, forcing them to break up.  Yet, I have heard
the idea put forth from time to time that AT&T actually (at least in
part) engineered the breakup themselves.  They wanted to be able to
shuck off the unprofitable local telcos and keep the long-distance and
manufacturing cash cows, as well as branch out into areas they were
formally prohibited from, such as computers and consumer electronics,
not to mention comsumer credit.

	Any comments?  (Throw a statement like that into the telecom
shark pool and wonder if you'll get any nibbles?  Yeah, right).


Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy


[Moderator's Note: While it is true that AT&T 'engineered the breakup
themselves', they did so only once it was quite apparent that they
were not going to get away intact, allowed to keep their property. A
very sexist slogan says, "If you know you are going to get raped and
cannot do anything about it, then you may as well lay back and enjoy
it." That is sort of what happened here.  PAT]