Before that, the phone system was a national, decentralized, fault tolerant network built without benefit of government funding, research, or protocols. Which

Before that, the phone system was a national, decentralized, fault tolerant network built without benefit of government funding, research, or protocols. Which phone network are you talking about? Certainly not any I'm familiar with. I'm no evangelist for government-financed R&D, but I don't think you could possibly have picked a worse example (http://www.corp.att.com/history/history3.html http://www.corp.att.com/history/history3.html) for your argument.