Most of the reaction in the mid 80’s to the AT&T divestiture was that it was a diastrous mistake, a conclusion no doubt encouraged and reinforced by AT&T marketing and the legions of AT&T employees coached by their management. However, when a monopolist has beaten down its potential competitors for years and years, it takes a while for them to recover and offer substantially compelling options. While AT&T and Bell Labs were incredibly innovative in an amazing number of ways, telephone service wasn’t one of them. Admittedly, the phone system AT&T built was and still is incredibly reliable, but it certainly wasn’t functionally very rich.
As enough time has passed and competion has flourished (at least for a while, there), I think that most people, but certainly not all, changed their opinion to be in favor of the AT&T break-up. It’s hard to imagine we would otherwise have the choices we have today with respect to VoIP and mobile service. The choices obviously aren’t as good as they could be, but I can imagine them being far more limited under AT&T.
My brother, who works as an attorney for The Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel, passed on an email concerning public meetings that the California Public Utility Commission is having to hear comments on the proposed SBC Communications and AT&T merger. Fellow Oaklanders and nearby residents can attend one of the public meetings at the Elihu Harris State Building at 1515 Clay Street in downtown Oakland. The meetings are on Tuesday, June 14 at 2 pm and 7 pm. Wednesday meetings at the same times will be at the Clarion Hotel Mansion Inn – Terrace Room, 700 16th Street in Sacramento. If you can’t attend one of these meetinngs, you can email comments to [email protected] or have a uniformed employee of the US government deliver your message to the CPUC Public Advisor’s Office at CPUC Public Advisor, 505 Van Ness Ave., Room 2103, San Francisco, CA. 94102.
If SBC pulls off this acquisition, the US telecom market will become overwhelmingly dominated by Verizon and SBC. Good, better, worse, I don’t really know. I’m highly skeptical of better, and I’m not so confident of good, either.