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40 Years After Carterphone Ended AT&T Equipment Monopoly

Posted by timothy on from the decision-rings-true dept.

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."

3 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. we're the phone company by jacquesm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We don't care. We don't have to...

    Now if only they would get rid of all those dial up lines for internet access in rural areas.

    It's really amazing that phone companies still don't have mandatory minimal access levels for net access outside major metropolitan areas.

    It's getting better, but oh so slow. And in those areas where there is little or no competition 28.8 is still the standard.

    --
    MP3 Search Engine
  2. Re:It's a good thing... by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The breakup was wrong and politically motivated.

    Politically motivated perhaps, but it was still the right thing to do. One has only to look at costs before and after the monopoly to realize that AT&T was one more example of a state-granted monopoly that charged its customers far more than they would have paid in a free market.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  3. Re:It's a good thing... by khallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, *no one* can convince me otherwise, ever.

    Welp. All I can say, is if you can look at the diseased state of the old AT&T monopoly and think it's better than the amazing things that have happened due to that breakup with both the telecommunications industry and the internet, then you are stupid. As they say, you can't fix stupid.

    Here's how I see it, my brother has been employed most of his adult life by Spectralink, a company that makes communication systems for workplaces at the building and campus-level. That job and that business only existed because AT&T's monopoly had been taken apart. My family uses cell phones talk to each other any time and any place civilized. The end of the AT&T monopoly (and the corresponding destruction of the state monopolies in Europe) paved the way for this technology to exist. I connect now to the internet through services that wouldn't have existed in an AT&T monopoly. That's the bald truth. AT&T held us back. It along with the rest of the telecommunication industry helps us now.

    Maybe you were an employee. All I can say is that it's not fair to impose a monopoly on everyone else just so AT&T employees can be well paid.