Bruce Barnes wrote:
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.
Oh wow, that's nowhere near the truth. What AT&T got from the Baby
Bells was table scraps.
I know people who worked at that time for Ameritech and they tell me
that they took nearly everything in way of equipment from AT&T. They
told them they 90% of the frames had equipment that was to be divested.
They might have thought they pulled a fast one, but they were clueless
to what was really theirs.
What they really created with eight companies with the lobbying
knowledge to whitewash Senators and Representatives in Washington.
-Ron
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