Busting up the Ma Bell did irreversible damage to America's lead in the telcom market.
That's a bunch of horse manure. AT&T was holding back the advance of telecommunications technology, because they were more interested in preserving their existing business structure. They even held back their own inventions. They invented ISDN and ADSL in the late sixties. ISDN didn't become widely available till the 1990s. ASDL didn't become widely available till 1999 - 2000. I was one of the first DSL customers in Corpus Christi and had to be on a waiting list to get it when it first became available. It is competition that forced new technologies to become available.