The irony here is that at the time of the Kingsbury Commitment, phone networks were spreading across the country like wildfire. That's not good enough, though.

The irony here is that at the time of the Kingsbury Commitment, phone networks were spreading across the country like wildfire. That's not good enough, though. The phone system was something that needed to be everywhere, including areas where poverty and/or population density could never have justified a business case. Were those 3,000 phone companies all building compatible equipment? I don't know, but I'm guessing not. This would have been a problem when it came time to tie them into a single long distance network. Perhaps some compromise could have been reached in which they would all agree to deploy compatible equipment... but is there really an economic advantage in having 3,000 regional monopolies all doing exactly the same thing, as opposed to one mega-monopoly? Either way the individual customer is going to have to deal with a monopoly.