Telephone Companies Quotes
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. The nature of telephone technology made it easy for companies to obtain monopolies for different areas of the country. When there is a monopoly, there is a huge tendency for the controlling company to charge very high prices and have poor customer service as the usual competition required for quality performance under capitalism is nonexistant. So in 1890, there was the same resentment of the telephone companies, that existed over a century later when there was still a monopoly. Regulation helped somewhat, but the capabilities of the monopolist began to include lobbying and campaign contributions so that typically, in the 21st century, the local telephone companies had much control over the State Commissions that were supposed to regulate them. Long distance service, whose monopoly was broken up by the Federal Courts became a wonderful service for customers and the prices were a tiny fraction of what they had been under their old monopoly.
Historically, the Privacy Issues have taken a long time to be reflected in laws or regulations. Technologists are far ahead of the lawyers and politicians.
As the telephone developed, we made a political decision that virtually everyone should be able to access the system. The result was a system whereby the most profitable parts of the telephone business subsidized basic telephone service so that everyone could be connected to a national network. However, when the Internet came along, there was no such requirement. Cable companies had universal access requirements in a few communities but these evaporated when cable was freed from local regulation. As the technologies converge the differences in approach become problematical.
