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40 Years After Carterphone Ended AT&T Equipment Monopoly
fm6 writes "Wednesday was the 40th anniversary of the Carterfone Decision which brought to an end AT&T's monopoly on telephone terminal equipment. Ars Technica has an opinionated but informative backgrounder on this landmark, which pretty much created the telecommunications world as we currently know it."
It's really amazing that phone companies still don't have mandatory minimal access levels for net access outside major metropolitan areas.
For a solution to this problem google my sig.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Carterphone had a device where the handset sat in the cradle of their device, it worked in a similar manner to the later acoustically coupled modems, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
So there was no electrical connection (coupling) between the Carter device and the phone. The device had a cradle that the handset sat in, coupling the mic and the speaker. The AT&T lawyers said, well, your device is touching our handset. So Carter lifted the handset an inch out of the coupler, and said, is this too close? The AT&T lawyer said yes. So Carter carried his device across the room and said is this too close? The lawyer said no. Then Carter moved closer and closer, and AT&T's defense crumbled.
I still have a lineman's set in the garage. The cordless phone itself would be quite useless in such a situation. I agree.
However, cellphone only households are quickly on the rise. I have only used a cell phone since around 2000. Especially since AT&T came out with that unlimited charter plan years back.
Although I do technically have a phone line with my DSL service I never use it. In fact, the line runs straight from the street to my DSL modem. Just a patch cable in the junction box going straight from the telco box to the specific cat5 run servicing my DSL modem. I rewired the rest of the outlets for RJ45 instead and run Gigabit networking over those cat5 runs.
If I absolutely had too, I could connect the lineman's set directly to the cat5 coming in from the telco box and make a phone call. I could just as easily sit on my couch in the dark and use my cell phone. Those same huge batteries they use for the telco lines also are used on the cell phone towers.
So I would say yes, everybody should have an old touch tone phone if they do not already have a cell phone.
P.S - What about people getting their telephone service through VOIP with their cable company? Batteries won't help in that case and neither would a touch tone telephone. Only a cell phone would provide appropriate fail over.
You of course already know how a monopoly is broken because it happens so frequently. Y'know, cuz like... it's always in the news that our government breaks monothic companies like Microsoft or Halliburton into pieces to foster competition, create free markets, and promote options for the consumer.
Regardless, here is a handy chart to illustrate how Ma Bell was broken up in '84 and what has happened since. Stephen Colbert broke it down nicely here, although that link has been removed do to copyright claims by Viacom, one of our six global media conglomerates.
Thank goodness you can still watch it in Canada.
Of all the AT&T derivatives... we know Qwest didn't spy on us. So that's one.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I could just as easily sit on my couch in the dark and use my cell phone.
But the cell networks typically fall down and are completely useless during any type of large-scale emergency. Cell phones were completely useless to those ensnared in the Northeast Blackout of 2003 but I never had any problem getting through to people on my land line (until the batteries at the CO ran out anyway). Cell carriers design and maintain their infrastructure under the assumption that only a small percentage of consumers will be using the network at any given time and they don't bother to plan for contingencies. So when something happens that prompts a bunch of people to dial a number and hit Send at once, the whole thing falls down.
What you needed to do was provide a bit more information in your original post.
Your speaking of the phone not getting AC power. Big difference than the REN.
But, you do bring up a great point. An even better point would be this.
All (that I know of) telephone (land line based) systems still have to respond to pulse dialing. Screw touch tone, just pulse dial by tapping the on/off hook button X amount of times (x being the number dialed, ie, tap it 4 times to dial a 4, 9 times for a 9, etc).
10 taps means 0
Hope this helps. Yes, there was hacking the phone system before touch tones and the Commodore and BOX autodialer :)
--Toll_Free
As I recall, Lucent wasn't called Lucent until AT&T spun it off. And that business wasn't profitable until AT&T got rid of it. People who were competing with AT&T weren't interested in buying hardware from AT&T. At least, that was the reason they gave when they spun it off. Possibly Lucent just needed to get out from under AT&T's inept management.
Another detail: however much money has been made putting Unix into phone switches is a tiny fraction of what AT&T hoped to make when they were allowed to turn Unix into a commercial product. AT&T spent something like a billion dollars having a company I worked for build 68010-based Unix systems that were designed to compete directly against IBM-compatibles. Never sold a one. Actually, according to one of my sources, they never even tried: their strategy changed and they abandoned the product.
They must have made some money licensing Unix to companies like Sun and IBM. But not a fraction of what they hoped when they decided to give up being a common carrier.
Coincidentally, some 15 years later I briefly worked for Microport, which was a major vendor of UnixWare, the pathetic little descendent of AT&T's big plans for Unix (by then owned by SCO). What percentage of UnixWare buyers were telcos? 100%, or something like it.
Then stop giving ISPs money to get broadband to John Boy.