[Mariner]

You are simply wrong on this one.

Without the government suit a subsequent consent decree, you would be connecting to Free Republic via a 19.2kbs modem owned by Western Electric , installed by Western Electric and maintained by Western Electric.

And you would be typing on a computer owned by Western Electric, installed by Western Electric and maintained by Western Electric.

And only Western Electric/Bell applications would be installed on that computer by a Bell Technician.

The Internet backbone would be X.25 running over T-1s.

I was in the network business when the break-up occurred, and I’m in the business now. The break-up spawned thousands of companies, millions of jobs and a thorough technological revolution similar to the industrial revolution of the 19th century.

[dfwgator]

“We don’t care, we don’t have to, we’re the Phone Company.”

[Myrddin]

I started as as Toll COE at Pacific Telephone in 1980. Just in time to experience (and participate in the process) of the split to "Baby Bells". I had to fight the 7 layer protocol cadre that wanted X.25, X.29, FTAM and similar dreck. I convinced my peers inside PacTel to implement TCP/IP and supporting network infrastructure inside the company in 1985. It spread like wildfire. I ran the DNS in SoCal. David St Pierre ran NorCal. It worked like a charm. Immediately saved a tom of money. The payback was so good that it was a paying proposition to install all we could acquire and install.

I left in 1991 for my current employer. Browsers didn't exist yet, but we were enjoying X Windows and first attempts at Motif. Thankfully, a trip to UseNIX netted a new product called Purify. I was the 10th person outside of their initial development group to have access. That was a stunning success on my floor. We licensed and recommended. Eliminated our X11 core dump headaches inside of a week.

PS Before TCP/IP, I was running a System V UUCP suite over 1200 BPS (212a) modems to move e-mail, files with uucp, remote printing, early netnews (h/t Brian Kantor at UCSD and Phil Lapsley at UCB). It was primitive. the UUMAP project helped populate source routed paths (minimum cost/minimum latency). Even my Xenix system at home was part of the UUCP network in 1983. 1986 is when I graduated to SLIP links and later PPP after Bill Simpson finished it). At work, I was still getting calls to help install 56 Kbps repeaters for ARPANET.