Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Best and Worst (Was Re: Labor Day, 1990) Message-ID: <12104@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 10 Sep 90 17:04:00 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Telecommunications Network Architects, Safety Harbor, FL Lines: 122 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 641, Message 2 of 2 In article , one of our Canadian readers reports on several good points of Bell Canada, and the perplexing horrors US demonopolization and deregulation have caused. He says: >I've seen and heard about the competition. I like our monopoly. To which, our Moderator replies: >[Moderator's Note: I liked our monopoly here in the United States >also, and it appears, based on consumer organization polls that people >here are finally beginning to wise up to the problems with >divestiture. I have no problem with competition: let people use >whatever service they want; but why was AT&T smashed to pieces in the >process? PAT] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Indeed? WHY would the US take such a major step to literally disembowel an institution like AT&T? Especially one that operates something as near and dear to the heart of every (US) American as "the phone?" It does seem to be beyond belief, doesn't it? I submit it was caused by utter corporate arrogance toward the Federal government. I, for one, received the "word" my very FIRST day on the job at AT&T Long Lines in 1962. It was, in words I recall to be very direct, something like, "Look, we have gotten so big and so indispensable to America that the "regulation" story is a myth. We decide what's good for them and tell them how we have chosen to do it and how much they are going to pay for it." THAT, dear readers, was 22 years BEFORE the Feds killed Ma Bell. And the man who gave me that lecture was, I can assure you a fine person ... but he already knew what had transpired. He cited how AT&T had made the Feds give up in 1958 by flooding them with paper; indicating they would do it again if challenged. But, the "trade secret" of the buggy-whip technology called "the phone" wasn't secure enough. Lots of people began to figure out bits and pieces of it. And, one thing NOBODY dares is to get arrogant with the Feds, not even AT&T. They may go away, but like the Indians in the Western films, they will come back over that hill later. And, the Feds did. By the Kennedy era, smart young folks were going to work for the Federal Government, and they learned how to ask questions and analyze the answers. Their investigations uncovered an incredible array of abuses of the 1913 monopoly; things that in large part technology advances had already made possible, items for which the public was being charged prices that were unconscionable. One item of thousands: the SAME wire pair between the SAME two buildings might have a dozen prices on it, depending on what you used it for. And, a hospital paid far more than the press service to send the SAME kind of electrical signals down that wire! Bell's best answer to questions like that was, "Because I'm the Mommy, that's why! Go away!" Charles de Gaulle once said, "Regimes do not reform themselves," and like to admit it or not, AT&T had indeed become a regime. When the Feds did come back over the hill, they were armed to the teeth, and Ma Bell simply had no good answers. Students of the detail of the antitrust court case (including its back room negotiations) know that AT&T's Chairman Charles Brown (in classic Bell style, how could an American deny a name like that?) finally realized the risk of further protraction was greater than suing for peace. One item of the original attack was to divest AT&T's incredible vertical integration of local phone companies, long distance, technology development and manufacturing supply. Brown had to make some hard decisions about what to keep and what to cut loose. Ma Bell, actually hoisted by her own petard of technology, committed hari-kari. But, like good sci-fi, she exploded into nine pieces that live today. A lot of her DNA still runs through their veins. And, even though the explosion should cause change, may of her bone fragments impacted into the very firms she spawned as "competition," be it other long distance firms or cellular telephones or PBX interconnects. Hormones are tough to fight off. Old ways die hard, dear friends. In the case of the Bell System, life behind Ma Bell's skirts was very comfortable indeed ... complacent workers, a complacent management and too much easy money combined to create a pleasant daily and lifelong working elixir .. one very few would ever give up willingly. Now, Dear Moderator, you yourself are a lifelong resident of one of the more visibly nefarious children of Ma Bell ... Illinois Bell. You even print in here how they still are caught committing illegal acts with the Illinois regulators. Is your denial level really that high? It must be, and I think that indicates how all of us with a memory of that time were addicted, glossing over bad memories and still not wanting to believe there is no genetic thread of them left today. If anything, I think our observers from other nations have been fed a similar dose of Ma Bell's magic elixir, and the very thought of going "cold turkey" scares them silly. Worse yet, your note quoted above shows a tendency to want the elixir again, rather than face up to the larger world and become a participant of it. Are you falling off the wagon of telecomm sobriety, Patrick? Want someone else to become your co-dependent again? (Recovering addicts would do well to read a few books. I note one sociologist accuses us of having lost the "discipline to learn from history." It shows often in posts on here. I suggest: Garnet, Robert W., "The Telephone Enterprise," Johns Hopkins Press, 1985; Tunstall, W. Brooke, "Disconnecting Parties," 1985, McGraw-Hill; Numerous articles and reports in the trade press of 1984-86. Serious reading will cure in the classic manner of curing addiction; "Are you ready to look at what you DID. Are you yet ready to say, " I will NEVER do that to my mind and body AGAIN?'")