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Ma Bell was leasing telephones since the days of Alexander Graham Bell. In fact you weren't allowed to use any telephone except one leased from your telco until
by ralph84 7y ago
Ma Bell was leasing telephones since the days of Alexander Graham Bell. In fact you weren't allowed to use any telephone except one leased from your telco until the breakup of the Bell System in the 80s.
Not sure that is what we want to go back to.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThere were definitely problems and abuses with the model. But the hardware itself was robust and reliable.
- bsder 7y agoRemember: "We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company" Fake commercial on Saturday Night Season 2 Episode 1. (It wasn't called Saturday Night Live until later.)
- dredmorbius 7y agoI find the story of Walter Shaw Sr. even more instructive. Independent inventor convicted and gaoled by AT&T for "misdemeanor attachment", the crime of attaching non-AT&T equipment to AT&T's phone network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_L._Shaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_L._Shaw More on this in the first bit of "The Inventor and the Thief" on Snap Judgement: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/snapjudgment/episodes/legacy-snap-judgment https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/snapjudgment/episodes/l...
- CamperBob2 7y agoBecause the hardware didn't do much of anything!
- dredmorbius 7y agoContrast Minitel, a videotext online system provided by the French government phone monopoly Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphones in 1980. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wmf 7y agoSee also the Charter lawsuit where it was revealed that Charter was renting very old equipment to their customers for years and didn't care.
- Aloha 7y agoAT&T didn't just come out and install a newer telephone because they had a newer model. If the equipment is fit for the service why replace it?
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoIf you rent a $100 device at $10 a month for 10 years you end up paying $1200 and still not owning it. I can see why consumers and consumer advocate groups don’t like this.
- Aloha 7y agoThe customer should always have the option to buy their own hardware - that's to me something that was fought for (and won) with Carterphone
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoSorry, I managed to reply to the wrong comment.
- wmf 7y agoI should have said they were renting very old and inadequate equipment; it wasn't fine and they knew it.
- dredmorbius 7y agoAT&T later in its history, 1960s - 1970s, offered the option of uplines (touch-tone, "Streamline", "Princess", and eventually Mickey Mouse telephones) as service upgrades. So there wasn't no interest in innovation, though I'd agree with the general view that the interest was low.