This time of the communications kind.
As a 30 year old, I remember when we had several phone carriers:
- Local/State: Wisconsin Bell
- Regional: Ameritech
- National: AT&T
Then at some point in the 1990s it all went crazy in a big free-for-all that saw AT&T effectively disappear and reappear again (albeit now in a humble all lower-case logo) as one of several phone companies that offered everything from local calls to cable television and internet.
Here in Australia, it’s becoming a bit like deja vu with the partly government owned phone company, Telstra, now being strong-armed into splitting itself into two arms: a wholesale company that would operate the network, and another arm which would be the retail side of it.
The government and consumer advocates are heralding the move, but I’m a bit skeptical.
For starters, even though Australia has a fraction of the US population, distances are such that I believe a state or regional baby bell system might prove more useful than an immediate breakup.
I could very well be wrong, but as the government continues this action, it would be very wise to look eastward to see that ultimately nothing changed.
3 comments:
ultimately nothing has changed? i'm not so sure about that. telecommunication prices are much lower than they used to be and there is a larger array of telecommunications services being offered today. perhaps lower prices and more services would have happened eventually if at&t were not broken up, but i doubt it.
I believe that the lower telecom prices has more to do with technology (i.e. cellphones) rather than the companies offering them.
but that begs the question of whether cellphones (et al.) would have received as much investment as they did if the state monopoly had continued to exist.
after all, if at&t were still the only game in town, it would have only two choices to make: (i) spend millions upon millions developing mobile technology and creating a network of microwave towers, or (ii) sit back, don't take a chance on anything new or risky, and continue to rake in lots of money from all those captive customers with their land line connections (which already represent a huge investment of capital).
i think it's clear what at&t would do (and actually did for most of its existence) -- nothing new.
without competition, none of the state telecoms monopolies had any real incentive to innovate and come up with new telecom services.
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