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Ma Bell is Back
brass1 writes Ma Bell is back. It seems that for the purposes of branding, SBC is changing its name to AT&T once the acquisition is complete. Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."
Could you please explain what's "Ma Bell" for us foreigners? Thanks.
Can we have Western Electric and Bell Labs back too?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I think that with the tremendous variety of communications options available today, they simply aren't as dangerous to the consumer as they once were. While companies can certainly get "too big" and I love to hate all the big guys, I think this will all be just fine... I don't need or subscribe to their service and I don't plan to.
And thank $Deity for that. Ma Bell did quite a bit of good, Bell Labs being a prime example, but the modern internet/www/etc wouldn't have been possible without the breakup. At least there's some competition, driving down prices and increasing usability, today.
Best Slashdot Co
We Don't Care, We Don't Have To.
Get Lily Tomlin on the line, she's got work to do.
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called. Our telephones were completely out of order (no dial tone) at the time the police say the call came in, and I was sitting peacefully having my second cup of coffee for the morning. After I realized that the telephone company had somehow mis-connected my wife's telephone to the 911 emergency number while the telephones were out of order and repairmen were out working on the lines because of the recent thunderstorms, I had my telephone service discontinued and the wires physically removed from my home.
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim claiming to have received an emergency call and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search, that you also have your telephone lines disconnected. My wife and I now have an excellent cellular telephone plan now that's actually cheaper than what we were paying to SBC.
Ron Dotson
Glendale, CA, USA
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I just recently met with some SBC reps last week who are trying to sell my employer a new phone system, and heard the AT&T name change from them. I asked of them now that SBC owns AT&T if they wished that AT&T had retained ownership of Unix, in light of certain events that have transpired over the years. Their answer was "Absolutely!"
So, the word MILF has been coined after Ma Bell disappeared, i'm kind of curious... what do you call a Ma who wants to screw you?
There are lives at stake here!
Ma Bell brought us the transistor. My guess is the fallout from that single invention drives about 30% of our economy. And let's not forget the development of Unix and C, and the discovery of pulsars. Sure, they were a huge slow bureaucracy, but the research arm changed our lives forever. I'll never forget you, Ma Bell. Unfortunately, the landline phone business is a dinosaur, and will never again support anything like Bell Labs. If you have a cable modem and a cell phone, landline phones are completely optional; there's no chance to reassembel the old Bell monopoly.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Here's some fantastic diagrams that describe the history of telecom. See pages 9 through 12 on this powerpoint slide from MIT. The AT&T breakup made things kind of complicated, the 1996 Telecom Act made them even more complicated, but has allowed everything to go back to a pre-breakup configuration.
So are all their customers now in for some ill communication?
The last time AT&T was on TV commercials, QA engineers could afford houses, people could retire at 50, and gas was $0.89. Having the word AT&T back on TV is going to remind a lot of people of better times.
It's about time they did something to improve their situation by going back to a name from the 80's. When you're a front end to an Indian outsourcing business whose only product is your name, changing your name has a big impact. Hopefully they'll still have enough money to buy the rasterline globe trademark back from Infosys.
Like IBM, and maybe soon Microsoft, the conditions which allowed the phone monopoly to exist no longer are present. A single company can't dominate the computer industry the way IBM did, nor the communications industry the way AT&T did.
How long before Microsoft lose its monopoly on desktop computing software?
sigs, as if you care.
"That blast came from the Death Star! That thing's operational!"
"It's a trap!"
Sounds like a great idea! We don't want Big Brother spying on us, so lets run out and get cell phones that will allow Big Brother to track where we are every second of the day since we will always have the phone with us. That will show those Big Brothers!!!
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
So...How did the event play out? Quick search for bodies followed by sincere apologies, or invasive search worthy of community outrage?
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
SBC/AT&T announced they were looking to acquire the SCO Group and Lucent Technologies. Judge Greene's rotting corpse is reported to have been purchased by the local electric company, who announced it would be used for electric power generation it was spinning so fast, for an undisclosed sum
My blog
Alexander Graham Bell -> American Bell -> American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) + Western Electric -> Bell Laboratories (Bell Labs).
Bell Labs did everything first: telephones, lasers, telecommunications satellites, electronic and packet switching, UNIX, etc.
In 1949 Bell Labs was sued for antitrust. They settled in 1956 with the US DOJ. Part of the settlement is that Bell Laboratories couldn't use one monopoly (telephone) to gain others. In 1974 they got another antitrust suit which was to be split up in 1984.
Prior to 1984, there was one telephone company. The bell. Mother bell. Ma Bell. Whatever you like. It was so huge and spanned so many products and etc, that many people didn't know where one part began and another ended. They kept telephone and data circuit prices real high, so the DOJ's decision to make a bunch of little bells (baby bells) was to make it easier for others to compete and hopefully bring the prices down.
It didn't work.
After I realized that the telephone company had somehow mis-connected my wife's telephone to the 911 emergency number while the telephones were out of order and repairmen were out working on the lines because of the recent thunderstorms
Can you say accident?
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called.
This would be a good thing. Warrants aren't required when there is reasonable cause. Having a 911 call placed from your line without an answer is reasonable cause.
You had a bad experience, no reason to think that there's some grand conspiracy to have the police check your house.
I had a situation where at college, a friend and I were sitting playing video games with our door open, when two cops came up, and one used the door for cover with his gun drawn and said something along the lines of don't worry, stay back... just plain "stay out of our way." Some other guy had talked to his girlfriend, she was scared he might kill himself, and that he might have a gun, and thus called the local cops where she was at, who called the local cops where we were at, who responded like they did.
I'd say the guy were pissed (he didn't have a gun, and wasn't going to kill himself; his girlfriend was just overreacting). Do I think there was some grand conspiracy for the cops to have come by my room with guns drawn? Hell know, coincidence and accident man. Nothing more, nothing less.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Looks like the stock market gets to modify Judge Greene's Modified Final Judgement again and again and again.
Well, at least the "new" stock ticker symbol should fit the SBC to a "T."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not just Ma Bell. Consider the mergers in the oil industry and the shared refining / distribution systems, and you could make a good argument that Standard Oil is back too.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
No apologies were proffered by the police. The exact same thing happened to me back in January with the local fire department incidentally.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Any decent SCSI-2 compliant judge corpse should spin at least 15K.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Western Electric made telephones you could drive nails with. Most of the phones you get today would break if you dropped them only once, phone cable dialectric craps out after a few months. Stuff that was built to hold up for decades will probably still be around when the cockroaches are all that's left roaming the earth.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does anyone remember the scene in Terminator 2 when Arnie shoots the frozen T-1000 and it smashes to a million pieces, only to coalesque back into a big glob of liquid metal again?
For some reason that image came to mind when reading this article.....
I got nothin'
Lets hope the cops don't come back, because if they saw something during the search worth arresting you for you won't be able to phone home from jail now. The phones in every jail I've been in (thankfully only two, for minor misdemeanors...) do not call out to cell phones. The only folks you can call are good old landlines. This is the only reason I still have my account with Ma Bell, on the outside chance I need to make that dreaded "one phone call".
If anyone's mileage varies here please correct me and provide location of the detention facility.
FYI...
"I'm just here to regulate funkyness." - James Gandolfini, as Winston in The Mexican
It's sort of a bit like the opposite of the Big Bang really. You take a giant corporation, break it up into lots of little ones, and eventually it gravitationally collapses back into the original giant corporation (and gets broken up, rinse, lather repeat). I bet if they re-broke AT&T again tomorrow, in 20 years it will have re-formed, just like the Bad Terminator from Terminator 2.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Does this mean that Captain Crunch is coming out of retirement soon?
Consider the other point of view. Consider what if this was a domestic dispute? What if someone called 911, but was forced to hang up at gun point. Do you want the police to blindly accept the word of anyone who answers the door. To search your house, the police have to have probable cause. And if they reasonably believe that a crime is occuring, they have probable cause to enter. I believe that receiving a 911 call, even if it is cut off, provides the police with reasonable suspicion that a crime is occuring. If this happened to me, I would be upset, but understanding.
SBC merged with two other baby Bells: Pacific Bell in 1997, and Ameritech in 1999.
These mergers in the telco industry are simply adjustmets to survive. With Muni-Wifi becoming more prevalent and VOIP cellphones coming out there is less and less need for land line telephones. Saying Ma Bell is back may be a little too strong with the amount of competition when it comes to telephone service. Its also starting to look like Internet service may be looking more like a 3 way competition with muni wifi coming to San Francisco, Anaheim, and Philly in the near future. We're actually getting more options as consumers and the telco are merging again as a result.
OK, so the SF Giants no longer play in "Pacific Bell Park"... we JUST changed the name to "SBC Park" after the recent Pac Bell / SBC merger.
So, now it's probably going to be "AT&T Park ?!" This is ridiculous. I miss the days when our stadiums had names that didn't change. The 49ers have played in Candlestick, which was renamed "3COM," which has now been renamed "Monster" Park. And now the Giant's stadium is getting it's 3rd name as well. uhh. Time to change the freeway signs AGAIN.
And on a side note, is it possible for me to change my Slashdot nickname to "Pepsi Presents AquaOSX?"
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
And if there was an actual call to 911 for an emergency that you weren't aware of?
It's "unreasonable" search. Not "any search."
From "Crazy People":
You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don't mess with us, because we're all you've got. In fact, if we fold, you'll have no damn phones. AT&T - we're tired of taking your crap!
A great movie, if you haven't seen it.
Remember in Back to the Future II when old Marty got a call from Needles and a voice at the end of the call said "Thank you for using AT&T"? Well it looks like that movie accurately predicted the return of the company back in 1988!
That movie is like Nostradomus on flim!
> now that the former holder of the name gave it up for the trendy 90's marketroid name of "Lucent"?
If things keep going the same for Lucent, they might not be needing that name any longer, either.
From today's New York Times:
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I'm amazed you were able to get the phone line physically removed.
I had a house where the previous owners had had phone service ran to a garage apartment. I was remodelling and wanted it removed as its placement on the building was awkward and in my way.
The linemen were working in the alley behind my place and wouldn't remove it without a work order. Fair enough. I called and after almost an hour of being transferred around, I got someone to place a work order to remove the phone line.
Fortunately I was at home when they came as they started to remove my phone service at the house. Stopped them from doing that, but they wouldn't actually remove the service off the garage since the work order didn't specify that.
Tried to get them to come back out and never had any luck. So I pulled the box off of the garage, rolled up the attached cable as well as possible and left it at the base of the telephone pole.
That was three years ago. The phone box and cable are still at the base of the telephone pole.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
"Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."
Or maybe Judge Greene realizes that the telecommunications business has changed dramatically in twenty years and that 'Ma Bell' would no longer have a monopoly, so he doesn't actually give a shit. But don't let that keep you from sensationalizing a story, slashdot!
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
It didn't work.
Really? Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
I don't see any reason the the telephone monopoly would have ever gladly spawned the cellular telephone network. They might have developed it yes, but they would have had no impetus to provide good coverage and reasonable rates.
Any scenario I could imagine where AT&T was the only phone company providing cell service doesn't look good at all.
I would say prices have gone down. In the 80's the price of long distance was over 10 cents a minute. Now, you can get plans that run about 2 cents a minute. I've even seen calling cards that give long distance for under a penny a minute. I do agree that the Bells owning the lines still impedes competition (I'd rather the local government own the infrastructure, the same way the government owns the roads), but I would say that the breakup of AT&T and the competition from Sprint, MCI, and other competitors has brought lower prices. Of course, if we had government owned lines, maybe we'd have free phone like we have mostly free roads, then again, maybe not.
So much money was spent to declare an anti-trust/monopoly against the telco giant...now we're just letting it all fall right back into place.
Here's another great one for you, the remedy for the anti-trust/monopoly wasn't really a remedy. Each "baby bell" was still a monopoly in it's region. You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
What NEEDED to be done is one company handles all the infrastructure. They wouldn't be allowed to do ANYTHING other than maintain the lines...that's it....nothing more....ever....period. With an oversight commitee or something to keep them from price gouging or taking advantage of that situation. Then they sell access to those lines to anyone who wanted it. You would then have your choice of phone carriers anywhere in the US as well as internet providers over DSL without having to STILL pay SBC/Verizon/whoever for use of their phone line, plus transport of the DSL.
I can't tell you how many people HATE SBC and refuse to do ANY business with them. But because you have to have an SBC line to get DSL if you're in SBC's region, you're just S.O.L. How is that NOT a monopoly? I mean really.
He's still waiting for residential ISDN. Apparently the crypt is too far from the CO.
If you need to get a hold of him though, call Mary Baker Eddy and leave a message for him.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem with Big Telecom is that in general they don't seem to have a friggin' clue about customer service. They accept the status quo (crappy support, customers get bounced from dept to dept on the phone, arcane billing) and we all do to, because in many geographic regions there is still simply not enough choice. A market split between two of these lumbering giants isn't a truly competitive environment.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The officer who claimed they didn't need a warrant was either grossly mistaken or lying through his teeth. Either one is indicative of the gradual failure of rights protection in the US.
Google "exigent circumstances".
HAND.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Future business plans are to acquire BellSouth and Qwest and change the name to "The Phone Company®."
I still use a StarTac they can only triangulate me when i make a call.. i keep having to fix the phone (replace the screen the wireing harnes) but it works.. funny thing is that if i disconnect it or switch services it is aginst the law for them to reactivate the phone because it doens't support "E911" which is where the phone can transmit it's location when you place a 911 call.. yea.. orginaly i was keeping the startac becuse i like it and i had all the damn stuff for it already.. but i think i will keep it for ever or atleast until the government makes it agisnt the law for them to take my money if i use it.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I would suggest some of Strong Bad's Rhythm 'n' Grammar. Highly educational.
American Bell.
They actually started using it on internal product before the name was shot down. I think I have a piece buried somewhere in my basement.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Working contract at AT&T Computer Systems in NJ '87-'90, they re-used the American Bell badge blanks they'd pre-ordered for the name change. The Name That Must Not Be Spoken was whited over with the authorized building codes.
For all the talk about the evil monopoly, the fact is that the confortable non-competative enviroment of the monopoly allowed AT&T to subsidize all the cool research at Bell Labs. Now-a-days, the ultra-competitve, cost-cutting, outsourcing-to-save-a-dime way of business would never tolerate a "dead-weight" research division that wasn't turning a quick direct profit. The modern business model of pursuit of a quick profit and "enhancing shareholder value" means that the kind of long term research done by Bell Labs is a thing of the distant past.
When was the last time that Lucent (the sucessor to Bell Labs) invented anything that was totally groundbreaking like the transitor or UNIX? Never. They are too busy trying to stay afloat (by selling switches and equipment) to fund any significant research.
I wouldn't expect SBC/AT&T to be any different. Either they will only think about quick profits -OR- they will claim (perhaps trufully) that they don't have the cashflow to fund extra research. From SBC Labs' website that you linked to, it looks like their proudest accomplishment was developing a DSL self-install kit. Whoopie.
In the beginning was Ma Bell, and things were regular.
Then did Judge Greene divide, and there was AT&T and seven Regional Bell Operating Companies: NyNex, Bell Atlantic, Bellsouth, Ameritech, US West, Southwest Bell and Pacific Telesis.
Nynex & Bell Atlantic -> Verizon
Southwest Bell & Ameritech & Pacific Telesis (and SNET) -> SBC
US West -> acquired by Qwest during the dot-boom
Seven RBOCs down to four, three of them owning a LD carrier or trying to: Qwest already a carrier, Verizon buying MCI, SBC buying AT&T. Bellsouth's the poor sister at this point. What ever happened to Sprint's LD business?
In Britain, BT was given an effective monopoly on landline telephone service in 1984. At around the same time, the UK government set up two cellular franchises, and while it allowed BT to be involved with owning one of the operators, it actually insisted that BT own a minority share (Cellnet, for it is them, was majority owned by a company largely known for delivering parcels and money.)
In the early nineties, as this wasn't creating enough competition, they opened up three more franchises (though two franchisees merged early on), and the EU itself forced the UK to open up more (albeit resulting in only one more competitor) a few years ago for 3G services.
I can't imagine it being any different in the US. The AMPS network supported B and A carriers from the start. Would the FCC not have opened up the 1900MHz band in the mid-nineties?
Not that I think the break-up of AT&T did nothing. But the notion that AT&T having a regulated monopoly would have meant it would have controlled cellular too strikes me as unlikely. The only change I can possibly think of is that it's possible that the calling-party-pays scheme would have been more feasable in an environment in which one landline operator exists who sets the charges for every type of call. And, having lived under both regimes, I can't honestly tell you if that'd have been better or worse.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And thanks to the magic of Inflation, the cost is about the same, despite the price change.
:-)
You're saying that thanks to inflation 2 cents today is worth the same as 10 cents in the 80s? I think you'd better go brush up on your economics.
Laugh at stupidity: mod idiots +1 Funny.
Go ahead and mock the Bell System. They did step over the line quite a few times.
I think that the conspiracy between J.P. Morgan and Theodore Vail was more than a bit over the line. Note that Ma Bell didn't become a monopoly without a lot of "help" from the good friend of Vail's. Basically Morgan would withhold credit, the competitor would go belly up, and AT&T would buy it for pennies on the dollar. This is how they went from about 60% market share in 1900 to a near total monopoly 50 years later. Tragically Congress intervened on AT&T's behalf, effectively exempting telephony from the Sherman Act.
It was only though the hard work of the folks at the FCC and NASA that we have any competition in the telphone market today. (FCC because of their tireless work to ensure that customers could purchase their own telephone equipment, and NASA for jumpstarting Comsat Corp. The FCC also made it a policy of subjecting AT&T to much more regulatory scrutiny than their competitors, such as Microwave Communication Inc, later named MCI.)
The early AT&T made Microsoft look like a good corporate citizen. And they only got away with what they did because first Congress rolled over and exempted them from an important antitrust act, and secondly, that two major wars (WWII, Korea) disrupted investigation and enforcement on remaining grounds. But the break up was the result of seventy-four years of repeated predatory activity on the part of AT&T, investigations by the ICC (later FCC), and government policy aimed at curtailing AT&T's power. Note that the ICC's first investigation into antitrust violations started in 1910 and that it took two antitrust cases (both settled out of court) to break the company up.
At its height, the Bell system included AT&T, Western Union, Western Electric, Bell Labs, and all the regional bell operating companies. They had their own radio network and were even attempting to get in on producing motion pictures prior to the consent decree of 1956.
For many years, you could be heavily penalized for putting a piece of cellophane tape on your telephone. No consumer purchased equipment. No acustic fibers that would effectively mute the device, nothing. In essence your telephone was the equivalent of closed source software today. It was licensed to you. You could not dissassemble it. You could not extend it. You could not purchase another one and swap parts. You could not even purchase another one and connect it to the Bell network. And if you did, they would sense the impedance differences and disconnect your service.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Really? Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
People miss the point. The AT&T divestiture was offered in exchange for allowing divisions of AT&T to monetize products they were not otherwise allowed to sell. Independant wireless phone providers (ala the Carterphone) were encouraged by the FCC, as were alternate long distance circuits (Microwave Communications, Inc-- guess what company they are today
The idea was that if AT&T stopped coordinating between the local bell operating companies and the long distance service, that it would allow for more competition on long distance lines. That part worked. But it was not the only part of the plan. In reality it was a part of a long and concerted effort on the part of the federal gov't to weaken AT&T. Portions of this included the FCC registering protective circuits on telephone equipment so that AT&T had no legal grounds for excluding them, NASA refusing to give AT&T exclusive rights to microwave communication via satellites and instead forming Comsat Corp (1/2 owned by telecom industry, 1/2 owned by private investors, with AT&T barred from owning more than about 25%), and more.
Don't forget that the breakup was mutually agreed upon. And that it formed the final piece of the puzzle regarding competition for long-distance networks.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Um no, BBN did packet switching first by building the Interface Message Processor. AT&T said it could not be done.
That quote is taken out of context so many times it's not even funny. What AT&T said couldn't be done was replacing the analog infrastructure with the digital one required for packet switching.
There are no digital circuits in my town, so I'd say that packet switching still hasn't replaced the analog infrastructure.
I'd never say that it won't happen, some day, but this quote occurred back in 1965 over 15 years after AT&T started experimenting with packet switched networks.
The big flaw in that strategy was that they didn't know how to be a commercial company. Every venture of theirs collapse because of bureaucratic nonsense and bad planning. I worked for the company that built Unix PC for them (basically, one of our 68010 time-sharing boxes clumsily mated with some of their telecom hardware plus an ineptly designed keyboard and display). AT&T spent something like a billion dollars developing this product and paying for initial production — and never even tried to sell it. By the time it reached the market, they decided that they were going to to IBM-compatibles instead. Which made a certain amount of sense — except that product line didn't sell either.
How many different ways did they screw up? Let's see, "phone stores", the TCI buyout...