So the current AT&T is not the same as the AT&T of the 70s/80s, is that correct? The current company is actually one of the ‘baby bells’ that now brands itself AT&T? Confusing
Brown got it wrong when he said that he believed that the monopoly wasn't stifling innovation, and that Bell Labs could turn out everything their customers needed and wanted. And yes, the monopoly was stifling innovation because it actively resisted providing easy access to the physical network to its competitors. That resistance may have been well intentioned in the name of technological purity, but what he (and the monopoly) wasn't concerned with was the cost to consumers that the push for purity was exacting. Sure, customer service was second to none. Product quality was second to none. And the price that consumers paid out of pocket for all of that? Second to none. Consumers deserve low cost choices. As for the telephone repair facilities? A complete waste of resources. It would have cost less money to simply trash a broken phone and send out a new one than to have these facilities with high paid low skilled technicians repairing them. And if they were such high quality devices, why were they even breaking to begin with? I guess that when you're a monopoly that will only lease equipment to customers at yearly lease rates that equal more than the cost to make them, you can write your own checks. And the meathead phone repair plant workers complaining about losing their jobs? A lot of them were probably otherwise unemployable, and were being paid 3-4 times what they were worth to just skate along and turn a screwdriver all at the expense of the hapless consumer. There's a reason that those repair plant workers weren't offered a path into the new companies. Because they weren't capable of learning the skill set needed.
I am sorry to hear that this hurt so many loyal employees of a great company. Also, it should be noted that AT&T invented many technologies that influence life and technology today. The internet and also Unix were heavily developed by bell labs and AT&T. You might think, “Unix? Who cares.” It matters because nearly every single computer and device in the world today that doesn’t run Windows runs Unix or a Unix-like operating system. Something to keep in mind. The legacy of AT&T continues. The up side of the divestiture was more competition, lower long distance rates, and more variety of telephone equipment.
Now that 40 years have passed since the break up of Ma Bell, there's absolutely no doubt that the stunning technological developments we all live with today could never have developed if the old Bell System had continued in its previous format!
It was better they were broke up. It was a huge PITA just to get a second phone line installed in the same house before Bell was broken up. That, and they wouldn't allow you to use any phone except the craptastic stuff they produced. Features we take for granted like call forwarding, etc, etc were nonexistent. Last but not least, dialing outside your area code was insanely expensive.
I started out as a janitor with PNB in 1968 and held a lot of different jobs both as non management and management. I worked for the non reg side of USWEST then retired in 96. The break up was hard on most of us.
Wasn't that the Reagan years? This was a disgrace,a travesty. They robbed the american people some of the best research labortories. The main ones who lost is the people,we benefited from their hard work. Bell Labratories helped put a man on the moon. Read "The rape of Ma Bell" for a eye opening look.
POLITICS nothing more, so many good friends and people that have lost so much, the best job I ever had, and the new company kicked the old guys case aside
I hired on in 72 & road the Bell wave till 2012. Saw alot of changes in 40 years. Made the right choice in 83 to go with my region parent company SBC. Only had 11 years service but saw the writing on the wall. Senority was the key. You aint got any, say by. I went inside for 9 years, then outside for the rest. Wow...what a ride. Loved it. They finally got rid of us old guys with a plan cald VSP. Half years pay & full retirement to walk away. Fiber optics got most of the years that cable pairs were king. Now its all about band width, speed, video, cell towers, 5g, I got to work on it all....😪
AT&T is a disgusting company. In 2004 I had their "bundle package" (land line, cell phone, internet). I got behind on ONE of the three bills, so they cut off ALL three services - on Christmas Eve! I called them and explained that the other two were fully PAID and this arrogant, smug customer service rep sounded like he was giggling as I was pleading for them to keep my other 2 services on. They shut all 3 down, I was cut off from calling family and friends on Christmas Eve, they all lived on the other side of the country. I never did business with them again. This video is not touching at all. I always hoped that AT&T would just go out of business permanently.
Breaking up AT&T, in my opinion, was the worst thing that happened in the United States. It was the start of destroying the United States. Today is August 26th 2022
Don't forget, this country was built on competition - If not for the breakup The Internet as we all know it would not exist, prices for landline phone services would have just kept going up and up, cell phones would have costed 100x what they do today, smartphones most likely never would have caught on, and the simplest things, such as text messages, never would have come along
what stood out for me, 1972-2015, MA BELL was trying to put smaller telcos out of business. MA BELL did this by changing their T1 format. smaller telcos couldn't afford to keep buying new equipment every time MA BELL changed the 24 channel sampling sequence. if you wanted to "talk" to MA BELL you had to buy their equipment. it was a great journey though.. amazing.
I was -2yrs old when this happened lol but I love that you uploaded this. This is the kinda stuff I love about RU-vid. I downloaded this so that it could never be lost.
This was the worst day of telephone history. millions of workers have lost their jobs, especially Western Electric, which is no more, the production of telephone equipment went off shore leaving the hundreds ofd thousands of WE employees out of work. Your government did this with the prodding of companies like MCI, no longer with us. Now there are no more operators to help you, yet your phone bill has went higher and higher. Bad day in history! I know I was with ATT, and now retired am watching it slowly go out of business. It went from a business with values, to a Company that now sells porn on its TV service. In my time, if i had taken a video of porn to work, I would have been fired on the spot. Now, porn is in the same buildings I worked in. God is watching ,and ATT is failing, a slow death! What about the competition, NO BETTER, they sell the same stuff as ATT. This is all a part of the General decline in morale values in the USA. What could be more sick than a nation that permits the murder or babies, just born and unborn. Again, GOD is watching, if you are for this, you are doomed.
All I know is my phone bill prior to the breakup was $12 a month. Then after it went to $45 a month. So we the consumer were the "beneficiary' of the breakup my ass.And the biggest bone of contention was the cost of a long distance call.
I was leasing a home phone from AT&T in 1981 for which they charged $3.00 per month. I finally woke up to the fact that I could purchase my own phone, which I did for $13 at a Woolworth. It lasted 13 years, saving me more than $450. That was the magnitude of the scam AT&T was working on its residential customers.
If the Bell System was a complete monopoly, it would have served all of the phones in the country. That was not the case. There were also phone companies and systems not under Bell or AT&T ownership. There was General Telephone, United Telephone, and Continental. Parts of Los Angeles was served by a General System operating company, as was Tampa and St. Petersburg in Florida. General purchased the Hawaiian Telephone Company, which became GT&E operating company. Service in Alaska is also in the General System. United operating companies cover many localities in mid and southwest Florida, including Naples and Sebring. United also has a large section of mid to southern Pennsylvania.
Just think about it for a moment AT&T was so massive back then with a snap of fingers they could have sent us back decades, and we would not have smartphones right now.
Corrupt Marketing Fraud. Just this weekend I called Domino’s Pizza & according to their caller ID MY DEVICE READ JASMINE MILLER. I don’t know who that is. IDENTY THEFT & CORRUPTION CONTINUES FOR ME & I’M TIRED OF FIGHTING WITH AT&T & APPLE & BANKS & INSURANCE COMPANY’S. I’ve been compromised & complaining for years. This is not just unfair it’s DANGEROUS! HIJACKING WEBSITES FOR POLITICAL MARKETING GREED.
I believe their referring to what came to be known as American Bell which was a short lived subsidiary of AT&T which was eventually blocked by the FCC and probably furthered Charles Brown realization business could not carry on as business as usual so this pre-dates '84
We should have never broke up Ma Bell. Bell Labs and Western Electric were the best in the world. After the break up we lost a lot of jobs, these were good jobs, engineers, designers, techs, all the way to general labor. These companies gave a lot of American workers a lifetime of good employment. After the breakup Western Electric closed down, production was sent overseas, jobs went away.
I remember vacationing in Minnesota in 2003. I saw that the phone book for Qwest, the phone company in the Twin Cities, was so big, that they split it into two separate books, a yellow pages phone book and a white pages phone book...
Stocks...thstscwhy they broke it up, it was BOT dependent on currency, and that was dangerous for those controlling currency. Now.. crypto is becoming the uncontrolled stocks of today and now governments are clamping down...nothing should be bigger than goverment or goverment might stop it
Isn't AT&T one of the biggest media companies around overshadowing almost any other corporation they were split apart once they grew back even bigger than before
