You need to be careful making the assertion that phone service became cheaper and better after the breakup of AT&T and their loss of "utility" status. I'd guess that many (most?) participants on slashdot aren't old enough to really remember what it was like before AT&T was broken up. I've recently spent some time talking to people in my parents' generation, people who were both in and out of the high-tech industry at the time, and they're pretty unanimous: phone service was relatively cheaper, and MUCH better, when AT&T was the only game in town. For example, if there was a problem with placing calls, you called AT&T and they fixed it. Period. If the problem was your in-house wiring, that was okay; they fixed it anyway. For free, because they had jurisdiction -- and responsibility -- for that part of the circuit as well as the external wiring. I've heard a lot of grumbling about how much worse the actual level of service that you get from Baby Bells is than what you used to get from AT&T. Don't assume that having competing utility companies is always good; they really don't operate in the same environment as (for example) retail companies. Of course, we need to note that Microsoft is not a utility company in any way, shape, or form....
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You need to be careful making the assertion that phone service became cheaper and better after the breakup of AT&T and their loss of "utility" status. I'd guess that many (most?) participants on slashdot aren't old enough to really remember what it was like before AT&T was broken up. I've recently spent some time talking to people in my parents' generation, people who were both in and out of the high-tech industry at the time, and they're pretty unanimous: phone service was relatively cheaper, and MUCH better, when AT&T was the only game in town. For example, if there was a problem with placing calls, you called AT&T and they fixed it. Period. If the problem was your in-house wiring, that was okay; they fixed it anyway. For free, because they had jurisdiction -- and responsibility -- for that part of the circuit as well as the external wiring. I've heard a lot of grumbling about how much worse the actual level of service that you get from Baby Bells is than what you used to get from AT&T. Don't assume that having competing utility companies is always good; they really don't operate in the same environment as (for example) retail companies. Of course, we need to note that Microsoft is not a utility company in any way, shape, or form....