Ma Bell is Back 511
brass1 writes Ma Bell is back. It seems that for the purposes of branding, SBC is changing its name to AT&T once the acquisition is complete. Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:5, Informative)
"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instead. (Score:2, Informative)
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim claiming to have received an emergency call and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search, that you also have your telephone lines disconnected. My wife and I now have an excellent cellular telephone plan now that's actually cheaper than what we were paying to SBC.
Ron Dotson
Glendale, CA, USA
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:3, Informative)
It was ruled an illegal monopoly and broken up into many smaller regional companies (the so-called "Baby Bells"). SBC was one of the baby bells.
Re:They aren't as dangerous as before (Score:3, Informative)
Good description (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION (Score:5, Informative)
Bell Labs did everything first: telephones, lasers, telecommunications satellites, electronic and packet switching, UNIX, etc.
In 1949 Bell Labs was sued for antitrust. They settled in 1956 with the US DOJ. Part of the settlement is that Bell Laboratories couldn't use one monopoly (telephone) to gain others. In 1974 they got another antitrust suit which was to be split up in 1984.
Prior to 1984, there was one telephone company. The bell. Mother bell. Ma Bell. Whatever you like. It was so huge and spanned so many products and etc, that many people didn't know where one part began and another ended. They kept telephone and data circuit prices real high, so the DOJ's decision to make a bunch of little bells (baby bells) was to make it easier for others to compete and hopefully bring the prices down.
It didn't work.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea (Score:3, Informative)
Re:service mark (Score:5, Informative)
"We're the phone company. We don't care, we don't have to." is a famous tag-line from comedianne Lilly Tomlin from the old "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" TV show. She played a phone operator (Ernestine) with a plugboard and did things like calling Richard Nixon's White House and asking "Why do you have 162 extension phones?...Well, if they're so silent, why do you need 162 phones?".
Re:Western Electric (Score:3, Informative)
Western Electric made telephones you could drive nails with. Most of the phones you get today would break if you dropped them only once, phone cable dialectric craps out after a few months. Stuff that was built to hold up for decades will probably still be around when the cockroaches are all that's left roaming the earth.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea (Score:1, Informative)
I'd attribute this to incompetance instead of malice in this case--after all, you mention them misconnecting the lines. If someone swapped a couple lines and your neighbor called 911, it could hose their system for determining who called.
Oh, and if they really had used this as a mere pretext, and uncovered evidence of you doing something illegal, the 4th Ammendment provides for the supression of the illegaly obtained evidence. So they cannot use it against you in a court of law if you prevail on that point--they don't even get to show it to the jury. It's so contemplated specifically to frustrate such efforts to perform illegal searches. But if you have to argue over that, you do want a good lawyer--4th Ammendment case law is incredibly complex.
SBC used to be called Southwestern Bell (Score:5, Informative)
SBC merged with two other baby Bells: Pacific Bell in 1997, and Ameritech in 1999.
Re:They even have a "Bell Labs" (Score:4, Informative)
> now that the former holder of the name gave it up for the trendy 90's marketroid name of "Lucent"?
If things keep going the same for Lucent, they might not be needing that name any longer, either.
From today's New York Times [nytimes.com]:
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:1, Informative)
True, but there's a lot more cell towers than CO's! Also, the phone company can get away with noisy generators much easier than a cellphone company. They always use the excuse of needing to provide 911 service when breaking noise laws, other laws, or when stealing property. Land-line service is viewed as a necessity and cellphones as a luxury. For our towers in the city limits of several cities, we're not allowed to use generators. Hell$outh has huge generator trucks that they bring in several times a year when the power is out. They can get away with it.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea (Score:3, Informative)
Google "exigent circumstances".
HAND.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Informative)
IBM is actively trying to move as much of that work as possible to India, and they are overt about this. It's discussed openly in director-level all-hands meetings.
I used to work for Labs, and became an IBM employee with the outsourcing, and then found myself reporting to someone with the @in.ibm.com address.
Then the people who knew WHY we did our jobs kept leaving, and getting replaced by people who only knew how to populate status reports and timesheet codes.
Then I quit and got a job in the Energy sector instead.
AT&T Labs is essentially gone, and will never be reformed in the SBC/AT&T merged company.
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"SBC is changing it's name" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:service mark (Score:2, Informative)
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.p
Re:What does this mean for San Fran and SBC Park? (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ma bell not back (Score:4, Informative)
Then did Judge Greene divide, and there was AT&T and seven Regional Bell Operating Companies: NyNex, Bell Atlantic, Bellsouth, Ameritech, US West, Southwest Bell and Pacific Telesis.
Nynex & Bell Atlantic -> Verizon
Southwest Bell & Ameritech & Pacific Telesis (and SNET) -> SBC
US West -> acquired by Qwest during the dot-boom
Seven RBOCs down to four, three of them owning a LD carrier or trying to: Qwest already a carrier, Verizon buying MCI, SBC buying AT&T. Bellsouth's the poor sister at this point. What ever happened to Sprint's LD business?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION (Score:3, Informative)
You're saying that thanks to inflation 2 cents today is worth the same as 10 cents in the 80s? I think you'd better go brush up on your economics.
Ma Bell was worse than you think (Score:4, Informative)
I think that the conspiracy between J.P. Morgan and Theodore Vail was more than a bit over the line. Note that Ma Bell didn't become a monopoly without a lot of "help" from the good friend of Vail's. Basically Morgan would withhold credit, the competitor would go belly up, and AT&T would buy it for pennies on the dollar. This is how they went from about 60% market share in 1900 to a near total monopoly 50 years later. Tragically Congress intervened on AT&T's behalf, effectively exempting telephony from the Sherman Act.
It was only though the hard work of the folks at the FCC and NASA that we have any competition in the telphone market today. (FCC because of their tireless work to ensure that customers could purchase their own telephone equipment, and NASA for jumpstarting Comsat Corp. The FCC also made it a policy of subjecting AT&T to much more regulatory scrutiny than their competitors, such as Microwave Communication Inc, later named MCI.)
The early AT&T made Microsoft look like a good corporate citizen. And they only got away with what they did because first Congress rolled over and exempted them from an important antitrust act, and secondly, that two major wars (WWII, Korea) disrupted investigation and enforcement on remaining grounds. But the break up was the result of seventy-four years of repeated predatory activity on the part of AT&T, investigations by the ICC (later FCC), and government policy aimed at curtailing AT&T's power. Note that the ICC's first investigation into antitrust violations started in 1910 and that it took two antitrust cases (both settled out of court) to break the company up.
At its height, the Bell system included AT&T, Western Union, Western Electric, Bell Labs, and all the regional bell operating companies. They had their own radio network and were even attempting to get in on producing motion pictures prior to the consent decree of 1956.
For many years, you could be heavily penalized for putting a piece of cellophane tape on your telephone. No consumer purchased equipment. No acustic fibers that would effectively mute the device, nothing. In essence your telephone was the equivalent of closed source software today. It was licensed to you. You could not dissassemble it. You could not extend it. You could not purchase another one and swap parts. You could not even purchase another one and connect it to the Bell network. And if you did, they would sense the impedance differences and disconnect your service.
Re:They aren't as dangerous as before (Score:2, Informative)
1. it took three appointments of letting them in to check the junction box to see that i *could* get DSL (two appointments they missed and the third they showed up half hour late for their 2-4 hour window)
2. the tech who showed up to do the install was clearly unfamiliar with a PC beyond the little icon that starts up freecell
3. they removed my existing ISP setup during the install (this is important, because they ultimately failed to install the new service)
4. they removed every icon from my quickstart group (because he wanted it to reboot faster while he was installing)
5. he never got it to work, but suggested that i ask someone from work to help, but couldn't leave any of the equipment like the modem because it wasn't a finished install
6. they still proceeded to bill me for service even though it never got installed!
anyone that's lived in one of their markets can tell you that SBC is incredibly inept, yet somehow they keep growing and taking over new markets. are the other carriers that much worse?
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION (Score:3, Informative)
Really? Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
People miss the point. The AT&T divestiture was offered in exchange for allowing divisions of AT&T to monetize products they were not otherwise allowed to sell. Independant wireless phone providers (ala the Carterphone) were encouraged by the FCC, as were alternate long distance circuits (Microwave Communications, Inc-- guess what company they are today
The idea was that if AT&T stopped coordinating between the local bell operating companies and the long distance service, that it would allow for more competition on long distance lines. That part worked. But it was not the only part of the plan. In reality it was a part of a long and concerted effort on the part of the federal gov't to weaken AT&T. Portions of this included the FCC registering protective circuits on telephone equipment so that AT&T had no legal grounds for excluding them, NASA refusing to give AT&T exclusive rights to microwave communication via satellites and instead forming Comsat Corp (1/2 owned by telecom industry, 1/2 owned by private investors, with AT&T barred from owning more than about 25%), and more.
Don't forget that the breakup was mutually agreed upon. And that it formed the final piece of the puzzle regarding competition for long-distance networks.
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:4, Informative)
(Decades later, this entity would be spun off and renamed "Lucent Technologies.")
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION (Score:4, Informative)
That quote is taken out of context so many times it's not even funny. What AT&T said couldn't be done was replacing the analog infrastructure with the digital one required for packet switching.
There are no digital circuits in my town, so I'd say that packet switching still hasn't replaced the analog infrastructure.
I'd never say that it won't happen, some day, but this quote occurred back in 1965 over 15 years after AT&T started experimenting with packet switched networks.
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ma Bell was worse than you think (Score:3, Informative)
It was only though the hard work of the folks at the FCC and NASA that we have any competition in the telphone market today.
Yes, and today the nice folks at the FCC are busy rigging the game against the telephone companies even though they are facing a three front war against major competitors (VoIP, Cable providers, Cell Phones). Care to explain why Time Warner doesn't have to let a startup use their cable plant but Verizon does? Said startup can sell one of Verizon's lines for pennies on the dollar and if it ever breaks they just blame Verizon for it -- and then Verizon get's to fix it for them. I would love to start another cable company in my area -- how do I get started, eh?
The FCC also made it a policy of subjecting AT&T to much more regulatory scrutiny than their competitors, such as Microwave Communication Inc, later named MCI.)
Yes and per my above example they are still doing that today. Because we know what good cooperate citizens Time Warner and Comcast are. Those evil fuckers at Verizon and Bellsouth deserve what they get.
For many years, you could be heavily penalized for putting a piece of cellophane tape on your telephone. No consumer purchased equipment. No acustic fibers that would effectively mute the device, nothing. In essence your telephone was the equivalent of closed source software today. It was licensed to you. You could not dissassemble it. You could not extend it. You could not purchase another one and swap parts. You could not even purchase another one and connect it to the Bell network. And if you did, they would sense the impedance differences and disconnect your service.
Yes and they would also come out and fix that phone if it broke. Which it never did -- because the old phones were bricks. That said, I agree you with that it was a PITA. But how is that any different from Time Warner moving to digital cable that can only be accessed with their box. Thus, either locking out a lot of solutions (picture in picture) or forcing us to jury rig them (TiVo with an IR blaster) to get them to work properly. That double standard drives me up the wall. And don't even get me started on how they are selling their digital phone service to avoid the "hassle" of regular phone service. Yeah, that dial tone and line that always works is such a fucking hassle.
Turn, turn, turn (Score:3, Informative)
The big flaw in that strategy was that they didn't know how to be a commercial company. Every venture of theirs collapse because of bureaucratic nonsense and bad planning. I worked for the company that built Unix PC [taronga.com] for them (basically, one of our 68010 time-sharing boxes clumsily mated with some of their telecom hardware plus an ineptly designed keyboard and display). AT&T spent something like a billion dollars developing this product and paying for initial production — and never even tried to sell it. By the time it reached the market, they decided that they were going to to IBM-compatibles instead. Which made a certain amount of sense — except that product line didn't sell either.
How many different ways did they screw up? Let's see, "phone stores", the TCI buyout...
No they didn't. (Score:1, Informative)
The original transistor was invented by a guy from Europe; and he had a patent on it from before 1930, IIRC.
The Silicon transistor wasn't developed in a vacume (pardon the pun). It was a natural extension of an existing device, one which was rather useful.
Please, give proper credit where it is due. Doing otherwise is an insult to the people who brought us some rather useful results, that we've built from since. Thank you.