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Would the broadband situation today be better or worse had the Bell System been left in place as a monopoly, with the “universal service” mandate?

by pram 5y ago

gumby 5y ago
The current broadband monopolies/duopolies are strangling the US broadband markets (which lag the rest of the OECD), but I think a bell world would have been even worse (and I'm a Bell system fan!). One good thing would be that the bell system really pursued universal service, and did its best to raise the service quality floor (e.g. they did install, or take over party lines, but also did the work to eliminate such service for individual lines). The QoS requirements in city center (how many times they are allowed to have someone pick up a phone and have no dial tone; how much capacity they needed to provision (the famous Erlang unit) and so on) were the same for almost every subscriber. And even "disconnected" phone lines would still make a 911 call. BUT The flip side of what I said was true too: they didn't deploy a service unless they could tariff it and had to. They had a circuit-switched mentality and could't deal with packet-switched architectures that didn't have a tollbooth. They deployed ISDN and considered that an adequate data service. Their regulation and tariffing also lead to mistakes. For example the price to make a call was typically fixed and regulated by state regulators. Thus calls to mobile phones were the same as non-mobile phones with the person walking around paying for the radio charge (there was less capacity) because they were the ones benefiting for the convenience. This is why mobile phone numbers look the same as fixed ones in the USA. In Europe they went the opposite way: reciving a call on a mobile device was free (just like receiving one on a landline) while calling a mobile number cost extra. Thus mobile numbers had different area codes so the caller could tell. This lead to a huge uptake of mobile phones in the GSM territory while the US mobile providers were stuck in their old bell mentality, causing the US to be 10-15 years behind in mobile calling and SMS.
fcantournet 5y ago
Depends on how the mandate is specified / enforced. But generally speaking : broadband is infrastructure & utility = natural monopoly. Same applies to electric grid & production btw. Way better results to be had this way then false competition.

Would the broadband situation today be better or worse had the Bell System been left in place as a monopoly, with the “universal service” mandate?

by pram 5y ago

Would the broadband situation today be better or worse had the Bell System been left in place as a monopoly, with the “universal service” mandate?

gumby 5y ago

The current broadband monopolies/duopolies are strangling the US broadband markets (which lag the rest of the OECD), but I think a bell world would have been even worse (and I'm a Bell system fan!). One good thing would be that the bell system really pursued universal service, and did its best to raise the service quality floor (e.g. they did install, or take over party lines, but also did the work to eliminate such service for individual lines). The QoS requirements in city center (how many times they are allowed to have someone pick up a phone and have no dial tone; how much capacity they needed to provision (the famous Erlang unit) and so on) were the same for almost every subscriber. And even "disconnected" phone lines would still make a 911 call. BUT The flip side of what I said was true too: they didn't deploy a service unless they could tariff it and had to. They had a circuit-switched mentality and could't deal with packet-switched architectures that didn't have a tollbooth. They deployed ISDN and considered that an adequate data service. Their regulation and tariffing also lead to mistakes. For example the price to make a call was typically fixed and regulated by state regulators. Thus calls to mobile phones were the same as non-mobile phones with the person walking around paying for the radio charge (there was less capacity) because they were the ones benefiting for the convenience. This is why mobile phone numbers look the same as fixed ones in the USA. In Europe they went the opposite way: reciving a call on a mobile device was free (just like receiving one on a landline) while calling a mobile number cost extra. Thus mobile numbers had different area codes so the caller could tell. This lead to a huge uptake of mobile phones in the GSM territory while the US mobile providers were stuck in their old bell mentality, causing the US to be 10-15 years behind in mobile calling and SMS.

fcantournet 5y ago

Depends on how the mandate is specified / enforced. But generally speaking : broadband is infrastructure & utility = natural monopoly. Same applies to electric grid & production btw. Way better results to be had this way then false competition.