There's a great book I just finished, albeit somewhat one-sided in its viewpoint, called, "The Rape of Ma Bell". It tells the real story about how the Justice Department started the breakup of the original AT&T back in the early 50s, under the Eisenhower Administration and they successfully fought it - and held back on both lower prices and progress (ie: they successfully stood in the way of any new products and services that might be introduced by their competition) until 1982 when Judge Green forced the actual split of the company.
Once that happened, they had the opportunity to keep pace with their new competitors, but, instead, chose to micro-manage the actual split of the original Bell System into smaller companies, each of which had just enough knowledge to stay in business but not quite enough knowledge to stay ahead of the competition. The only thing that saved the Baby Bells was all of the installed infrastructure and the actual "last mile". Once they were forced to start sharing that for internet connectivity to the home, Whitaker (head of the former SBC and former President of Ameritech, ie: Illinois Bell) decided he wanted to start putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Almost everything he's done to accomplish what he's managed so far has either been illegal or under close scrutiny and it will be interesting to see just how far he's able to get. Unfortunately, the Justice Department has done a complete 180 on the period of the Eisenhower Administration and now needs a centrally managed conglomerate the equivelant of the old Bell System to be able to spy on the American Citizens so they can completely and formally shred the Constitution. This will be an interesting next couple of years. Bruce Barnes -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ronald E. Kushner Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 21:52 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] worldnet Dave Doherty wrote: > SBC bought ATT and then changed their name to ATT. So ATT doesn't > exist any longer. What is now called ATT is really SBC. > > Not that it makes a lot of difference, except to lawyers and tax > people... And the people who think AT&T bought SBC and will fix 'em. AT&T's reputation is going to go down the drain. They micromanage their customers and their employees. -Ron To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
