On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 03:09:21PM -0400, ">tewkewl@mindspring.com wrote:
>
>
> Coming from that point of view, yes it does make a major difference... But do you not think technology would have rolled on through regardless of the breakup? I mean hell.. I deal with vendors day in and day out that still give me this kind of lousy service.. (Bell to be a major one that still practices the "No it's definately your equipment" routine) I really don't think that has changed much.
[side note: You might want to check into some line wrapping... All
of the above is on one lone line.]
Yes, we still have these problems. But now, if you really get
tired of them, you can threaten to go to a competator. Back then, you
were a hostage with no recourse, legal or competative. The problems
we have now are bad but no where near as severe as we had then. Take
your examples and scale the up by an order of magnitude and the
recognize that the problems were 10 times worse with a fraction of
the technology or infrastructure we have today.
No... I don't think it would have or, even if it did, it would
have occured at a snails pace compared to current events. I think it
is absolutely safe to assume that would would not currently have things
like T3 and OC48 and ISDN AT THIS TIME. Would we eventually have such
things. I don't really know. Back in those days, the height of the
speed demons was the 56K DDS service and that's what the internet backbone
ran on.
Certainly, we have enough "in your face" examples of where
monopolies have resulted in technological stagnation and busting them
up have resulted in opening the floodgates of innovation. I don't know
of any counter examples where monopolies promoted advances that would
have not otherwise occured.
IMHO... I think it's safe to say that with the technology
that existed prior to the break coupled with the rate of research and
advancement that was in place prior to the breakup that, without the
breakup of the telco monopoly that existed then, the Internet, as we
know it today, would not exist at this time or any time within our
lifetimes, if ever.
> -Patrick
> "Michael H. Warfield" ">mhw@wittsend.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 01:58:13PM -0400, ">tewkewl@mindspring.com wrote:
> > honestly.. I would absolutely love if all of that happened just as you put it... (And it's also nice to see Oracle on top by a billion and a half on another note :) )
>
> > Just thinking back though I can remember this happening to a very large oil company and also to a very large telco provider.... Nothing was really gained as far as the end user. Especially with the telco.
>
> Obviously, you don't remember / didn't experience the bad old days
> before the break-up, or you wouldn't be making this claim. I was a service
> technician for a dictation firm back in those days can regail you for hours
> with horror stories of dealing with the Bell curmudgeons which were
> fielded as "service techs" or trying to deal with Bell for anything
> beyond simple phone service (which was a far cry from what we have now).
>
> > Bell still owns everything and has the right of way to do what they want as they please. Prices have not dropped drastically and are not dropping currently. Additional features are popping up, But truthfully as far as service goes, (large scale connectivity) we got the shaft with Bellsouth. I would much rather have the service that Bell Atlantic offers. Would I have that same service if Bell was back as one? I would hope so... Obviously there's no gaurantee....
>
> Back in the bad old days, you had to get your phone from the
> telephone company and that was that. You could not own the phone and
> modems were "acoustical couplers" or had to be some form of expensive
> licensed technology. IIRC, simple direct connect modems were several
> thousands of dolars and were crude, huge, slow things compared to what
> we have today.
>
> In order to connect "dictation equipment" (or anything else
> "they" didn't provide to you) to the phone system, you had to use a
> phone company interface box that was about 8" on a side and used a
> power pack the size of a brick. Only "they" were allowed to service said
> unit and often, if it failed, they put the blame on your equipment
> failing claiming that their box was working fine. Getting them to
> admit that an interface had failed was so bad and so difficult that we
> took it to be a standard practice, when one of these would fail, to
> take a bare line cord and apply live 110VAC across several components
> to completely fry it in an obvious maner (if you think I'm joking or
> exagerating here - let me assure you that I'M NOT). The service tweedles
> would then replace the box. They not only had no knowledge of diagnosing
> any of their equipement, they certainly could not service it. At least
> if we burned it up, they would replace it without arguement (burn-ups
> happened on their own often enough that encouraging the process never
> aroused suspicion).
>
> Back in those days, they just didn't CARE if their service, their
> products, or their technology sucked. You had to deal with them and
> they had no competition and absolutely no incentive to improve. It's
> still not all that great from some aspects (hell, it takes a long
> time to break out of a monopoly mindset) but it's a long way from what
> it was then and it would have NEVER happened if they hadn't been broken up.
>
> It was not until after the breakup that we were finally able
> to leave this technological dark ages wrt the phone system and begin
> to advance the technology. You can still find some of these archaic
> processes at work in some foreign countries. Monopolies invarible
> lead to higher prices and technological stagnation. Even overseas, they
> are now coming to this realization and deciding that in order to eliminate
> being stuck in technological backwaters, they have to eliminate and
> open up these monopolies.
>
> Mike
> --
> Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | ">mhw@WittsEnd.com
> (The Mad Wizard) | (770) 331-2437 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
> NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
> PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
Mike
--
Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | ">mhw@WittsEnd.com
(The Mad Wizard) | (770) 331-2437 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
--
To unsubscribe: mail ">majordomo@ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message body.