it's scary to think that this deal probably will go through. as i think pink floyd said, 'meet the new boss--same as the old boss'.
when they broke up at&t, I think there were 7 baby bells. now, we will back to three: AT&T, Verizon, and the hardly noticeable qwest.
it's disgusting, but in today's washington, it's bidness.
it stinks!
DSwint-
I think it was the Who. Perfect description, eh?
Elaine-
I LOVED the President's Analyst. James Coburn. And I battled the phone company non-stop. The worst, or among the worst, was the slamming era. MCI (RIP) slammed my father's and my aunt's phone service - both old and out of it. I raised so much hell, I'm sure my name is on a permanent list of some sort.
Oh. And my Lucent stock is worth less than $3.00 a share. Don't even ask how much I paid for it.
We now will have the worst of both worlds - a deregulated behemoth monopoly utility.
And assisting in spying on Americans which was what the President's Analyst was all about.
I think it's time for Lily Tomlin to resurrect Ernestine:
One ringy dingy. Two ringy dingys. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?
Ernestine to Gore Vidal: Mr. Veedle, you owe us a balance of $23.64. When may we expect payment? Pardon? When what freezes over? I don't see why you're kicking up such a ruckus when according to our files your present bank balance, plus stocks, securities, and other holdings, amounts to exactly ... Pardon? Privileged information? Oh! (snort, snort) Mr. Veedle, that's so cute! No, no, no, you're dealing with the telephone company. We are not subject to city, state, or federal legislation. We are omnipotent.
Ernestine to J. Edgar Hoover: You don't need agents skulking around tapping wires. You can get all the information you want from us.
Thanks for the memory! I loved her!
We really had an "Ernestine" in our lives. The ancient phones at McDonald observatories were the old crank and call the operator ones. She knew everyone, knew all the gossip and chatted when there were no requests for calls.
To talk to her, you had to YELL at the 1900s style phone with one hand reciever and the mouthpiece sticking out of the box like you see in old movies.
I could stand on a stool and call her and ask for a story. We LOVED her.
Jesus. Calm down. There is a LOT more competition than there was back in the bad old days of TPC.
(And what DID the breakup of the Bell System get us, BTW? Lousier service at a higher price, for teh most part...)
The New Ma Bell needs to keep her eye on the ball - and so do the cable guys! Companies like Vonage will eat these guys' lunch for them if they're not careful. Most large companies (the customers that really matter) use VoIP for internal telephony, and would like to use it for everything.
(I'm sorry if you think you really do matter - but compare your $50/month phone bill with a company that spends a million or two a month for some valuable perspective.)
My god. Day and night difference but maybe in your private hole, none!
First: I own my fricking telephones! Nayyyy. I hope you aren't renting from Ma Bell? Or are you? I also own my wiring which I monkey around with periodically, making it fancier.
Another nayyyy. Hope you don't still use the old prong style plugs!
Are you kidding? I wired my house for voice/data Ethernet some time ago. The PCs wanted to talk to each other.
And I thought, with all the Bad Old Phone Company whining you're doing, you were still living in 1970!
competition in telecommunications peaked about 5 years ago. since then, the big boys have squeezed the life out of the little guys. anyone who can charge $5 for "LineGuard" with a 99% profit margin can build some pretty nice wireless networks.
this has been a typical trend over the years. broken up monopoly -> short term competition -> oligopoly.
and who are the only competitors to AT&T and Verizon? Our good friends in the local cable monopolies.
lesson: if you don't have the free money, don't bother playing.
"and who are the only competitors to AT&T and Verizon?"
Where was all the 'competition' in the late 80s? If you lived in the midwest, you dealt with Ameritech. If you lived in New York, you had Nynex. California? Pac Bell. Georgia? BellSouth.
Of course there were some bit players who leased capacity from Ameritech, Nynex, Pac Bell, BellSouth, etc., but very few (MCI and Sprint being notable exceptions) built any network capacity they could call their own - most were just resellers, who were able to make a profit because they had no maintenance overhead (because Ameritech, Nynex, Pac Bell, BellSouth, etc. still maintained the transport system.)
Whe it comes to networks, I think bigger really is better. The "little guys"? Mom and Pop and a switch out in the garage? Go pound sand, little guys.
Back in 1995, the pay phones for Taconic Telephones, the smallest telephone company in America, was 5 CENTS!
Now, we are part of a behemoth phone company and you pay a lot for the same service. Everything costs much, much more.
I have yet to see what we gained by breaking up the phone companys. I think it's just another case of lazy people trying to bring down the people that work for a living.
And yes we are watching you!!
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