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So, the Standard Oil and Bell breakups didn't work out? Do you still have to pay to rent your telephone handset hardware each month? Also I don't think in this

So, the Standard Oil and Bell breakups didn't work out? Do you still have to pay to rent your telephone handset hardware each month? Also I don't think in this case that the determination that something requires action to mitigate anti-competitive behavior means that the government declares what happens. Not a lawyer, and have not read any precedent but I'd imagine a first step would be to ask these companies about a structure that would work best if business units were separated, with some guidance, rather than some declaratory thing.

ndesaulniers 7y ago
It's common in the US to rent your DOCSIS modem.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- loeg 7y ago
  But importantly, not required. Cable ISPs just make it easy to give them more money, which is the normal incentive for any business. You don't have to rent a modem to buy internet service.
  - magicalist 7y ago
    > You don't have to rent a modem to buy internet service. As required by law[1], though, definitely not by choice[2]. [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=0083f0a8d5afabe6705a4b8738d84113&mc=true&r=SECTION&n=se47.4.76_11201 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=0083f0a8d5... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/charter-blocked-customer-owned-modems-for-two-years-must-pay-fine/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/chart...
kick 7y ago
Quality of calls has dropped through the floor, instead of a well-regulated, government-enforced monopoly, we now have poorly-regulated, government-enforced triopolies on a variety of services (telephony, networking, television, the physical routing thereof, et cetera), most of the aforementioned triopolies partially or entirely consisting of Baby Bells that purchased other Baby Bells... Yeah, I'd definitely say it didn't work out. The Standard Oil breakup was mostly useless, their monopoly power had mostly dissolved as they weren't anywhere near a monopoly by the time it happened, and for that matter, it rewarded Rockefeller by making his wealth skyrocket.
- trentnix 7y ago
  AT&T was broken up in 1982. Call quality is quite a bit better since then. In the country, we had a party line up to that point. Same location today is still rural but has digital telephony, high speed Internet, and multiple cellular providers.
  - kick 7y ago
    Basically everyone agrees that both latency and audio quality has decreased, and that can be measured (without sophistication) simply by checking radio & television call-ins over the past fifty years. It was slightly reduced with the introduction of wideband audio (not the latency problem, though), but has mostly gotten worse over time. This is a great answer on Quora from a few years back to a question on why call audio hadn't improved, where the author explains that it hadn't just not improved, it had actually declined over time: https://www.quora.com/Why-has-the-audio-quality-of-phone-calls-not-improved-over-time-like-visual-media-has/answer/Dave-Haynie https://www.quora.com/Why-has-the-audio-quality-of-phone-cal... There was also a great IEEE Spectrum post from a bit before the takeover of VoLTE and wideband audio as to why the decline had happened (and was probably going to accelerate as providers moved to switch from the PSTN to VoIP internally): https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/why-mobile-voice-quality-still-stinksand-how-to-fix-it https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/why-mobile-voice-...
    - kick 7y ago
      Typo: "both latency [has increased] and audio quality decreased"
tensor 7y ago
The Bell breakups absolutely didn't work out. All the baby bell's have now remerged into almost the same situation. Telecom is not competitive. People rent their phones, modems, and even routers to this day.

ndesaulniers 7y ago

It's common in the US to rent your DOCSIS modem.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
loeg 7y ago
But importantly, not required. Cable ISPs just make it easy to give them more money, which is the normal incentive for any business. You don't have to rent a modem to buy internet service.
- magicalist 7y ago
  > You don't have to rent a modem to buy internet service. As required by law[1], though, definitely not by choice[2]. [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=0083f0a8d5afabe6705a4b8738d84113&mc=true&r=SECTION&n=se47.4.76_11201 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=0083f0a8d5... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/charter-blocked-customer-owned-modems-for-two-years-must-pay-fine/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/chart...

kick 7y ago

Quality of calls has dropped through the floor, instead of a well-regulated, government-enforced monopoly, we now have poorly-regulated, government-enforced triopolies on a variety of services (telephony, networking, television, the physical routing thereof, et cetera), most of the aforementioned triopolies partially or entirely consisting of Baby Bells that purchased other Baby Bells... Yeah, I'd definitely say it didn't work out. The Standard Oil breakup was mostly useless, their monopoly power had mostly dissolved as they weren't anywhere near a monopoly by the time it happened, and for that matter, it rewarded Rockefeller by making his wealth skyrocket.

trentnix 7y ago
AT&T was broken up in 1982. Call quality is quite a bit better since then. In the country, we had a party line up to that point. Same location today is still rural but has digital telephony, high speed Internet, and multiple cellular providers.
- kick 7y ago
  Basically everyone agrees that both latency and audio quality has decreased, and that can be measured (without sophistication) simply by checking radio & television call-ins over the past fifty years. It was slightly reduced with the introduction of wideband audio (not the latency problem, though), but has mostly gotten worse over time. This is a great answer on Quora from a few years back to a question on why call audio hadn't improved, where the author explains that it hadn't just not improved, it had actually declined over time: https://www.quora.com/Why-has-the-audio-quality-of-phone-calls-not-improved-over-time-like-visual-media-has/answer/Dave-Haynie https://www.quora.com/Why-has-the-audio-quality-of-phone-cal... There was also a great IEEE Spectrum post from a bit before the takeover of VoLTE and wideband audio as to why the decline had happened (and was probably going to accelerate as providers moved to switch from the PSTN to VoIP internally): https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/why-mobile-voice-quality-still-stinksand-how-to-fix-it https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/why-mobile-voice-...
  - kick 7y ago
    Typo: "both latency [has increased] and audio quality decreased"

tensor 7y ago

The Bell breakups absolutely didn't work out. All the baby bell's have now remerged into almost the same situation. Telecom is not competitive. People rent their phones, modems, and even routers to this day.