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From: laird@slum.mv.com (Laird Heal)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Best and Worst (Was Re: Labor Day, 1990)
Message-ID: <12345@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 90 22:54:56 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 659, Message 2 of 8


In article <12104@accuvax.nwu.edu>, 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E.
Kimberlin) writes:
 
>In article <digest v10,iss627>, one of our Canadian readers reports on

>To which, our Moderator replies:

>>whatever service they want; but why was AT&T smashed to pieces in the
>>process?  PAT]                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[accord with emphasized text omitted]

> I submit it was caused by utter corporate arrogance toward the
>Federal government.

Um, have your telephone bills gone DOWN since divestiture?  The
breakup allowed the now-independent subsidiaries to enter and compete
in other fields of business.  Where did the monies used to invest in
those other business activities come from?  Were the shareholders'
dividends reduced?

>  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

IBM fought off their case.  Ma may have reached out and touched more
of the citizens, but they both have high thrones.

>  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,

Once she found out what Uncle Sam was doing, she discovered she liked
it.  While the Bell system might have held onto long-distance primacy
more creatively, as you point out local lines are still locked up as
tight as a drum.

>  Now, Dear Moderator, you yourself are a lifelong resident of one of
>the more visibly nefarious children of Ma Bell ... Illinois Bell.  You

I spent last year living in Cook County with Ameritech's service.
Each call carries a charge, even if only $.03.  Finding out how much a
call will cost or did cost is painful when possible.  Service was
reasonable but, for instance, my nickel call to Tymnet was fraught
with static.  I could make a long-distance call to South Bend Indiana
at 14.4Kbps while the five-mile one-hop link could not maintain 1200
bps.

Here in New Hampshire things are much better, although the line costs
a little more.  The 'local' calling area runs about 15 miles each way.
I also, to consternate the LATA-holics, am listed in a Massachusetts
phone book and dial at least a dozen 508 exchanges in seven digits
from 603.

><Now stepping down off soapbox and putting on flameproof suit.  If
>challenged, I can fill five or more Digests with abuses of the public
>trust that only one*small*individual observed and even participated in
> ... but they never made an addict of me!>

Don't send them to this Digest - write a book, then get a lawyer to
edit the unprintables out, get a ghostwriter to add some drama and a
comic artist for comic relief, and call it "Ma Bell on the Half
Shell".


Laird Heal	laird@slum.MV.COM
(Salem, NH)	+1 603 898 1406