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AT&T was for a time the sole provider of telephone service throughout most of the United States. In the 80s it was broken up into competing companies due to ant

• CharlesW 4y ago
  That's a great example! Are there any mediums where this happened organically, or does this almost always happen as a result of regulatory actions? jaredcwhite: When you say decentralization is inevitable, were you talking about as a result of government intervention?
• TchoBeer 4y ago
  It's a good thing this has lead to an increase in competition, especially local competition, and not the entire marketing being owned by a few companies instead of one and none of them treading on each other's monopolized turf.
• 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Before the breakup long-distance calls cost about $1-2 a minute ($3-5 today). After the breakup, they dropped to a few cents a minute. That's one effect of decentralization everyone (alive then) understood. Totally revolutionized telephone-usage. Obviously some aspects can be more efficiently centralized. What matters is who controls the centralized part(s). E.g. There are still a few things to be re-learned from Usenet and Fido.