said by idjk :

Things were better b4 1984,it took 1/4 the time to get your phone fixed

said by n2jtx :

OTOH, before the breakup, doing your own wiring was generally prohibited by the telcos. Connecting more phones than you were renting was a violation (my folks used to rent two phones but we had a third one in another room that we always had to hide if the phone company came around).

said by packetscan :

Sprint and Nextel have Merged. Where is the competition there? My cell/digital choices have been halved because of these mergers and i don't see a price cut (competition).

said by Skippy25 :

Being that 1983 was only 22 years ago, that would mean these "regulators" of yours begin "regulating" when they were at most between the ages of 2 and 7.

said by Rob :

Even if AT&T offered, would the FCC allow this? Why are we going backwards instead of forward?

said by vincom1 :

The break up of the Bell System it sel;f was a step in the wrong direction, AT&T buying Bell South would be a good thing.

-Vincent

said by BosstonesOwn :

...Real simple cut the fat from the companies. Sink the ships of the slackers make the company more profitable so they can invest in the future of our country.
...

said by flankspeed8 :

I agree that AT&T buying Bell South would not be a bad thing. Even if these 2 join, there will still be so much competition especially at the consumer level. Now days, you can get your phone from the cable company and cell phone providers as well as VOIP. You can get TV from satellite and in some places, the phone company. Do you like innovations like FTTP? I guarantee if BS doesn't merge, you won't see it. FTTP requires a lot of funding that can only be repayed with large investments and return on those investments. Look at Verizon which has an $84 billion market cap and $72 billion a year in revenues. Wall Street is beating the stock up over fears how much this investment in new technology will cost. There is no way small companies can go it alone anymore.

said by woody7 :

Most of the telcos are getting into these also....so they aren't really competition.....

said by Cod :

Just because a telecom company is getting into these services does not mean, like you imply, that there isn't other competition.

said by woody7 :

they are getting into these to do just that.....

said by BigDaddy05 :

Much of this was around in 1984 in one form or another.

Cable - I had Cable-TV in the early 70s at my house. It was generally called CATV (Community Antenna TV) and in smaller towns where over the air signals were weak.

Wireless - Available in two forms, CB/Ham radio for individuals (required a license though) and microwave links available for businesses.

Satellite - Remember the big satellite dishes? Most of the programming was available without decoders.

VOIP - You have me on a technically here since it hadn't yet been invented, there was no VOIP. But many large businesses had internal voice networks using T1 lines (often over the microwave links above).

said by Rob :

Even if AT&T offered, would the FCC allow this? Why are we going backwards instead of forward?

said by Rob :

Even if AT&T offered, would the FCC allow this? Why are we going backwards instead of forward?

said by rileyjam514 :

Come on. Tell me no one saw this coming and I'll tell all of you about this wonderful bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn.

said by RadioDoc :

The world you use as example no longer exists, if it ever did. Even if Verizon or SBC/ATT were to gobble up every other RBOC there still would be significant competition on all business fronts. You assume that Harold Greene's decision would be completely reversed and we'll all be back in the 60's again. That is just so much rhetorical fluff. Gaining the same monopoly status that AT&T (and GTE for that matter) had prior to 1983 is impossible today.

said by pnh102 :

If you create the same exact set of circumstances that existed prior to 1984, you would see the exact same outcomes that occurred prior to 1984.

said by G_Poobah :

The problem with the mergers, the net neutrality, the filters, the **AA's, etc can all be traced back to the FCC. Sure, congress is owned, and makes all sorts of dumb laws. But the root cause of the problem is that the FCC no longer represents the BEST INTEREST OF THE PEOPLE. It's almost as screwed up as FEMA, and we all saw how well FEMA did after the hurricane. FEMA was bought and paid for by large corporations, who reaped untold billions of profits for many years, because the large corps are not stupid.

Buying off the top man is money you have to spend if your a lobbyist, but it's not where the real investment is. The real investment is buying off, and getting your own bureaucrats promoted to the right level. That's how you get policy created. That's how you build a long term power engine. And that's what we have today. Government agencies wholesale owned by corporations.

The solution, of course, is to look at history, where Stalin was right, when he purged his military at the beginning of WW2. The only way to clean our government now is to purge all the 'officers' (bureaucrats). Sure, it'll be screwed up for a while, but the high level bureaucrats are a cancer, paid for and owned by the corporations. Until that is done, replacing the head of the FCC is treating the symptoms, not the cause.

said by G_Poobah :

The solution, of course, is to look at history, where Stalin was right, when he purged his military at the beginning of WW2. The only way to clean our government now is to purge all the 'officers' (bureaucrats).

said by pnh102 :

You really shouldn't look to someone who murdered at least 20-40 million of his own people and starved millions more as a source for how to run a government correctly. That's like saying Adolf Hitler was a bad guy but he sure as heck solved Germany's employment problems!