>>14153620does he talk about the part where ma bell wouldn't let anyone buy a telephone, and instead insisted that telephones had to be rented from ma bell or else you couldn't use their network?
how do you think they got to be the most valuable company on earth? why do you think there was public political pressure to break up the monopoly?
why did the cost of a long distance telephone call drop to almost nothing in the years after the monopoly was broken up? why was it so expensive under ma bell?
what percentage of the "pure research" done at bell labs was researching ways to greedily abuse a monopoly at the expense of public good?
would dialup internet access ever have been possible in the 1990s if ma bell was still charging by the minute for phone service?
breaking up the bell brought competition to telecommunications and then better telecommunication tech was developed as a result of the new competition and 20 years later everyone had cell phones and internet. in contrast, in 1960, everyone had metered local and long distance land line phones and in 1980, they had the same thing.
bells were broken up around 1980 or so
