Strange Days

[nrc]

Whoda thunk it. 20 years ago when I started my first real job with AT&T they were in the throws of divesting their local phone companies so they could get into other, "more lucrative" businesses. For over a decade after that, the regulatory focus was on keeping AT&T from using their monopoly on long distance service from gaining an unfair advantage in other markets. There was little concern over the Baby Bells and their monopoly on local phone service.

Now long distance is something that companies give away free with other services and AT&T is being bought by the one of the companies it "divested" itself of all those years ago. Meanwhile the local phone service monopolies remain largely intact.

Poor management and short-sighted regulators will get you every time. :shakehead

[racer2c]

I like saying 'whoda thunk it'. It makes me giggle.

I try to keep a long distance between me and the phone companies.
Ignore me, I did happy hour tonight. I'm very happy. :)

[cart7]

My friend works for SBC/DSL. It's quite humorous listening to him talk about how they try and separate SBC from the phone company. At one point, they were in the same building together but if he had to send a phone tech out to check the phone line, he had to call outside the building to a 3rd party mediator who then called back into his building to talk to the phone company. :laugh:

[JLMannin]

I terminated my landline almost 2.5 years ago, and I am never going back. The reason?? I had to pay over $30 a month just to have it, and each local call was $0.02. I could have kept local service only for about $20 a month by not selecting interstate access, but it just was not worth it to me.

If I were ever to have wired phones in my house again, they would be broadband access phones. I dot see that as real likely near term.

From my perspective, phone costs went up after the breakup, but my family never did much long distance calling to begin with.

[fourrunner]

AT&T frustrates me

I ( My Business) switched over to AT&T "All in one" service two years ago ... No problems with that ...

We have "Answer Call" which we had with Verizon .. it's a great service ... however Verizon has a "beeper" on the line which lets you know you have messages waiting on the service ... AT&T does not ... they sent notification a year and a half ago that they were adding the "beeper" to the service in about a month ...18 months later and still no beeper ... I have to call into the service 8 or 9 times a day to see if I have any messages ... pain in the ass ... I am surprised because it's AT&T the biggest Phone Company in the world

I'll probably change back to Verizon at some point, but I never think of it when I actually have the time to do it! :)

[dando]

It's like deja vu all over again...and now the next domino to fall is MCI:

Qwest in talks to buy MCI (http://news.com.com/Qwest+in+talks+to+buy+MCI/2100-1036_3-5561732.html?tag=nefd.top)

-Kevin