“And breaking up Ma Bell was, in retrospect, stupid.”
If it wasn’t for the break-up of Ma Bell, you’d be accessing Free Republic via x.25...on Bell Terminals.
I’ve been in the network business for decades and have seen both sides of it.
On what basis do you assert that break-up was dumb?
2. They become monopolies when they cross categories...or own everything significant in a particular category.
Google owning end devices, OS, search, email, new, youtube etc. is a monopoly by every legal definition. Especially when they are the dominant player in more than one category.
In your case, Cisco smartly avoided monopoly status by NOT buying everything that routed or switched and not expanding into content, transport etc.
Yep.
We would still be using land lines with rented rotary-dial corded phones. Maybe touch-tone phones, but either way...
We would also be charged for every long distance call, probably would still have portable bag phones or at least nothing in the Smart Phone category and the costs would be astronomical.
Without the breakup there would have been no reason to innovate or cut costs and thus cut the charges to the users.
Breaking up Ma Bell started one of the greatest innovation cycles that led to a great portion of what we today take for granted.