From 1 to 7 to 3
Remember way back when (24 years ago to be precise) when the Justice Department sued to break up AT&T and introduce competition into the market? The local service was broken into 7 mini-monopolies. I could never figure out why the Justice Department somehow decided that 7 little monopolies were better than 1 big one. It's not as if consumers had choice in local phone service until recently. But it did bring down long distance rates nicely.
Anyway, here's what the landscape looked like after the initial split:
Nynex
BellSouth
Bell Atlantic
Ameritech
PacTel
SBC
US West
Here's what the landscape now looks like:
AT&T (SBC, PacTel, Ameritech, and now BellSouth)
Verizon (Nynex, Bell Atlantic)
Qwest (US West)
Just give it another couple of years, and we'll probably be back to one.
Comments
You may not have to wait too long for it to be two because I read that Verizon is interested in gobbling up Qwest.
Posted by: Dad | March 5, 2006 11:57 PM